The fall of the Tang Dynasty and the disruption of the empire did not mean an obvious break with the past. The Five Dynasties were all eager to reunify China and the Later Zhou ( 后周 ) had brought much of the country back under a single governance by 959 AD. The ruling elite remained unaltered and the civil service continued the routine tasks of government with no serious disruption. The Ten States in the south showed the same obvious continuity and the examination system there continued. When Zhao Kuangyin ( 赵匡胤 ) seized power by a coup in Chenqiao ( 陈桥兵变 ) in 960 AD, he was able to consolidate and extend his control in a methodical manner. The Song Dynasty that he founded has been divided into two periods. Firstly, the Northern Song ( 北宋 ) when the capital was in Kaifeng ( 开封 ) from 960 to 1127. Secondly, the Southern Song ( 南宋 ) , with their capital in present day Hangzhou ( 杭州 ) from 1127 to 1279.

In order to lead to a greater concentration of power, the founders of the Song dynasty built an effective centralized bureaucracy staffed with civilian scholar-officials. Regional military governors and their supporters were replaced by centrally appointed officials.

The Song dynasty is notable for the development of cities as centers of trade, industry, and maritime commerce. The mercantile class - a new rank of wealthy commoners - arose as printing and education spread, private trade grew, and a market economy began to link the coastal provinces and the interior. Landholding and government employment were no longer the only means of gaining wealth and prestige. The development of paper money and a unified tax system meant the development of a true nationwide market system. The Chinese industrial revolution also occurred in this period. The output of iron had increased to a considerable extent, which can be used to mass produce ploughs, hammers, needles, pins, cymbals etc. for an indigenous mass market and for trade with the outside world. In the meanwhile, the Chinese invented or developed gunpowder , the cannon , the flamethrower , printing technology, amongst many other things.

In Cultural aspect, the Song refined many of the developments of the previous centuries. Included in these refinements were not only the Tang ideal of the universal man, who combined the qualities of scholar, poet, painter, and statesman, but also historical writings , painting , calligraphy , and hard-glazed porcelain . Song intellectuals sought answers to all philosophical and political questions in the Confucian Classics. This renewed interest in the Confucian ideals and society of ancient times coincided with the decline of Buddhism , which the Chinese regarded as foreign and offering few practical guidelines for the solution of political and other mundane problems.

The Song Neo-Confucian philosophers, finding a certain purity in the originality of the ancient classical texts, wrote commentaries on them. The most influential of these philosophers was Zhu Xi ( 朱熹 ) , whose synthesis of Confucian thought and Buddhist, Taoist , and other ideas became the official imperial ideology from late Song times to the late 19th century . As incorporated into the examination system , Zhu Xi's philosophy evolved into a rigid official creed, which stressed the one-sided obligations of obedience and compliance of subject to ruler, child to father, wife to husband, and younger brother to elder brother. Neo-Confucian doctrines also came to play the dominant role in the intellectual life of Korea , Vietnam , and Japan