>>40345
Holcombe ends his train of thoughts with the Tangs.
However China's history really going in cycles. The consequent dynasties all doing miracles of setting up the imperial state, first defeating enemies, unifying the country, introducing reforms, restoring land ownership, correcting taxes, stabilizing currency, etc etc. But then all goes to shit, the system starts to crumble, power slips to local lords, land gets accumulated in a couple of hands, free peasants lose their independence and sink into serfdom, trade withers, money gets devalueated, rebellions start, states secede - everything returns back where it was before and then the cycle starts again as a new dynasty rises.
So does that really matter that the Tangs were able to do something that one might could call "not exactly a classic feudalism"? No, not really. As we saw even the European feudalism wasn't a model feudalism in most of it's existence.