1. The Real Question: Why Can Some States Fight So Long?
When we talk about the strength of an ancient state, we usually start with territory, population, GDP(-ish).
From a war-planning point of view, though, a sharper question is:
“Can this state reliably send the right number of troops, to the right place, at the right time – and keep doing it?”
The Sui–Tang fubing system (府兵制) was East Asia’s answer to that problem – a fusion of land system and conscription that turned peasants into a standing reserve army.
On top of that, Sui built one of the most aggressive “war machines” in premodern East Asia. That’s how it could drag a so-called “million-man army” all the way to Goguryeo’s doorstep – and also how that very machine helped destroy the dynasty in barely 40 years.
This piece walks through:
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where the fubing system actually came from,
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why Sui’s army really was dangerous, not just a meme,
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and why the Goguryeo wars are better understood as “an overclocked military state crashing itself” than “a mob blundering north and getting dunked on.”
2. Roots of the Fubing System: From Northern Wei to Sui
2.1 Steppe conquerors invent a peasant army
The fubing system did not appear out of nowhere under Sui Yangdi.
Its genealogy runs like this:
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Northern Wei (Tuoba/Xianbei) – first big “conquest dynasty” in the north
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tries to stabilize rule over North China
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experiments with versions of equal-field land distribution (均田) and military colonies, early ancestors of fubing
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After Wei splits into Eastern and Western Wei,
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Western Wei → Northern Zhou build a more systematic arrangement:
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frontier and inner garrisons,
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hereditary military households,
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regional commands like the famous “Eight Pillar States”.
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By the time Sui takes over Northern Zhou, a template is ready:
“Give ordinary farmers land – and at the same time lock them into a permanent pool of part-time soldiers.”
That is the core of 兵農一致 – “soldier and farmer in one body.”
3. Sui’s State Engine: Equal-Field + Fubing + Grand Canal
3.1 Counting people: Sui Wendi’s census drive
After seizing power, Emperor Wen of Sui (Wendi) does something very modern: he cleans up the numbers.
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In the 580s, he orders a full household and land census after decades of chaos.
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Around unification (589), official figures show ~4.6 million households.
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By 609, records claim ~9 million households and about 46 million people – almost double.
Even if the stats are padded (ancient regimes loved inflated numbers), the trend is clear:
By early 7th century, Sui controls the densest tax–manpower base in East Asia.
3.2 Equal-field + fubing: land and soldiers tied together
On top of that, Sui rolls out a formal equal-field system:
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Adult males get allotted land (with some permanent, some returning to the state at death).
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In return, they owe:
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tax in grain and cloth,
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corvée labor,
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and military service as fubing soldiers.
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A typical fubing soldier’s life cycle:
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Busy farming seasons – work his own allotment.
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Off-season – do regular military drills with his local unit (a 府).
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Periodically go up to the capital on rotation duty as a guard.
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Once in his life, serve a multi-year frontier posting.
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In emergencies, be mobilized into field armies for big campaigns.
So Sui doesn’t maintain a huge, constantly paid standing army. It maintains a country-wide network of semi-professional reservists plugged into the land system.
3.3 The Grand Canal: the circulatory system of the war machine
Then Yangdi adds the third key component: the Grand Canal.
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He repairs and extends existing canals like Guangtong and builds new sections like Tongji and Yongji,
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physically connecting the political north (Chang’an, Luoyang) with the rice-rich Yangtze basin.
From that point on, the canal becomes:
“A conveyor belt sending southern grain and tax north,
and then sending northern soldiers and supplies wherever the throne wants.”
The same artery that fattens the capital is what will carry massive expeditionary forces toward the Liao and Yalu rivers.
4. “Just a Mob”? No – Sui’s Army Had Teeth
In modern Korean and East Asian internet culture, Sui’s invasions of Goguryeo often get reduced to:
“A huge but clueless mob that marched north and got farmed by a smarter defender.”
Fun as that is, it’s not historically accurate.
4.1 The test run: smashing the Chen dynasty in the south
Before going north, Sui has to unify China – which means crossing the Yangtze and taking out the Chen dynasty in the south.
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The Yangtze is a serious moat, and southern regimes had centuries of experience in riverine warfare.
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Yet in 589, Sui’s combined army–navy operations crush Chen stunningly fast.
That required:
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large-scale river crossings,
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organized naval logistics,
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coordination of multiple army groups over long distances.
Those are exactly the skills Sui will reuse in the Goguryeo campaigns.
4.2 Northern frontier ops: Tuyuhun and the Türks
Sui doesn’t just fight “soft” southern dynasties.
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It campaigns against Tuyuhun on the Tibetan–Qinghai frontier,
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and pressures Eastern and Western Türks (Tujue) in the steppes.
By the 610s, Sui’s military elites have already:
marched in desert, grassland, mountain, and riverine environments –
this is not a force of rookies seeing their first war in Goguryeo.
5. The Goguryeo–Sui War: Overclocking the System
5.1 598 – the first clash: weather, sea, and raiding
The first war (598) happens under Wendi.
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Sui sends a reported 30-something-thousand to 300k mixed land–sea force (figures vary wildly).
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Heavy rains, disease, supply problems, plus Goguryeo’s hit-and-run and naval raids shred the invasion before it really gets going.
Lesson learned in Chang’an: “This opponent won’t collapse from one push.”
5.2 612 – Yangdi’s grand gamble
Then comes the big one: 612, under Yangdi.
According to the Book of Sui and related sources:
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The court calls up over a million men – 1,133,800 by one famous count – not all combat troops, but including supply and labor.
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Even if the figure is inflated, modern historians generally agree it was one of the largest mobilizations in premodern East Asian history.
The real problems are not “low quality soldiers” but:
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Micromanagement by the throne – Yangdi wants to control too much, leaving frontline generals little room to adapt.
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Insane logistics – the longer and larger the columns, the more they eat their own supply lines.
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Speed vs. mass – with that many men, the army moves slowly, giving Goguryeo time to watch, harass, and choose its battles.
To the Goguryeo side, the Sui advance must have looked less like a blitzkrieg and more like:
“A gigantic but lumbering machine – terrifying if it reaches you intact, but full of joints that can be jammed or cut.”
5.3 Salsu: a tactical kill shot on a strategic overreach
The campaign’s turning point is the Battle of Salsu (612).
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After a series of hard fights in Liaodong, one major Sui force begins to withdraw, stretched and tired.
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General Eulji Mundeok and Goguryeo’s commanders lure, shadow, and then ambush the retreating Sui army as it crosses the Salsu River,
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causing catastrophic casualties – some sources claim only a few thousand out of tens of thousands make it back.
Strategically, what matters is this:
Sui’s system can move massive forces across half a continent –
but if the campaign design is flawed, those same forces turn into a slow, brittle target for a smaller, more agile defender.
6. On Paper vs. On the Ground: Numbers and Asymmetry
We don’t have a perfect headcount for Goguryeo’s population, but most reconstructions agree:
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Sui’s subject population – in the tens of millions – is on a different scale.
So in raw resources, it’s something like:
Giant imperial core vs. a tough but smaller frontier kingdom.
That makes Goguryeo’s performance even more striking:
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It cannot win a straight attrition contest.
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It wins by:
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exploiting terrain, fortresses, and rivers,
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forcing Sui to overextend logistics,
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and going for decisive blows against isolated columns, like at Salsu.
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So instead of:
“Goguryeo just turtled in mountain forts until the enemy tripped and fell,”
a more realistic picture is:
“A mid-sized state surviving by chopping chunks off an overextended great power’s limbs while refusing the kind of set-piece battles the empire wants.”
7. From Sui to Tang: Fubing’s Peak and Collapse
7.1 Tang inherits – and refines – the machine
When Sui implodes in the late 610s, the Tang founders are not stupid: they keep most of the machinery.
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They preserve equal-field + fubing,
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organize military households into standardized jiedu and zhechongfu (節度府 / 折衝府) commands,
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and use those forces in Tang Taizong’s campaigns against Goguryeo, the Türks, and the Western Regions.
In early Tang, fubing is near its functional peak.
7.2 Why the system can’t last
Over time, though, the prerequisites that made fubing work start to rot:
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The equal-field system erodes – land concentrates in big estates,
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military households get absorbed into aristocratic and local magnate followings,
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long-term postings and frequent rotations ruin peasant livelihoods.
By the mid–late Tang:
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fubing is hollowed out, and
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the dynasty shifts toward paid, professional troops under powerful regional commanders (jiedushi).
Those semi-autonomous warlords are exactly the people who later launch the An Lushan Rebellion and turn the empire into a patchwork of private armies.
In other words:
The very impulse to create a hyper-efficient war machine eventually spawns fragmentation and warlordism a couple of generations later.
8. What to Salvage from the “Million-Man Army” Meme
Pulled together, the more sober take looks like this:
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Sui–Tang fubing was not a joke.
It was a highly developed system by contemporary standards:-
tying land, tax, and conscription together,
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integrated with a canal network capable of moving men and grain on continental scales.
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It still failed spectacularly when paired with bad strategy.
The problem in the Goguryeo wars was:-
over-centralized command,
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over-ambitious objectives,
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and a blindness to the limits of logistics and terrain.
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Goguryeo’s success is even more impressive in that light.
It wasn’t just “beating up a clown army.”
It was surviving multiple invasions from the most militarized state of its era, and turning that state’s own overreach into a path to collapse.
So yes, “Sui Yangdi’s million-man army” is a fun meme. But if we leave it there, we miss the more interesting story:
A high-performance imperial war engine,
pushed past its safe limits,
crashing into a smaller—but very hard—frontier state.
If you want to end the post with a slightly more emotional twist, something like this would work:
We like to say “our ancestors were good at war,” and we reach for familiar names – generals from Imjin, righteous armies, independence fighters with rifles older than they were.
But if you zoom out to the 7th century and stare at the Goguryeo–Sui wars, the picture gets rougher and, in a way, more impressive.On one side stood Sui, the most heavily armed and integrated war state East Asia had seen up to that point – land system, census, Grand Canal, fubing, everything wired for mobilization. On the other side stood Goguryeo, a kingdom with far fewer people and resources, but with mountains, fortresses, and commanders who understood exactly where the imperial machine was likely to jam.
The result was not a fairy-tale underdog victory, but something more sobering: a mid-sized state wrecking the great power’s best armies just enough to trigger its own self-destruction.Next time someone shrugs off “Sui’s million-man army” as a bunch of clowns blundering north, it might be worth asking a different set of questions:
What kind of state does it take to move that many men at all? What kind of mistakes does it take to burn that capacity down in a handful of campaigns? And what does it mean, for a much smaller kingdom on the frontier, to survive that kind of onslaught at all?
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