In spite of the economic consolidation at the beginning of the Later Han dynasty, and in spite of the more balanced trade, the political situation within China steadily worsened from A.D. 80 onwards.  Although the class of great landowners was small, a number of cliques formed within it, and their mutual struggle for power soon went beyond the limits of court intrigue.  New actors now came upon the stage, namely the eunuchs.  With the economic improvement there had been a general increase in the luxury at the court of the Han emperors, and the court steadily increased in size.  The many hundred wives and concubines in the palace made necessary a great army of eunuchs.  As they had the ear of the emperor and so could influence him, the eunuchs formed an important political factor.  For a time the main struggle was between the group of eunuchs and the group of scholars.  The eunuchs served a particular clique to which some of the emperor’s wives belonged.  The scholars, that is to say the ministers, together with members of the ministries and the administrative staff, served the interests of another clique.  The struggles grew more and more sanguinary in the middle of the second century A.D.  It soon proved that the group with the firmest hold in the provinces had the advantage, because it was not easy to control the provinces from a distance.  The result was that, from about A.D. 150, events at court steadily lost importance, the lead being taken by the generals commanding the provincial troops.  It would carry us too far to give the details of all these struggles.  The provincial generals were at first Ts’ao Ts’ao, Lue Pu, Yuean Shao, and Sun Ts’e; later came Liu Pei.  All were striving to gain control of the government, and all were engaged in mutual hostilities from about 180 onwards.  Each general was also trying to get the emperor into his hands.  Several times the last emperor of the Later Han dynasty, Hsien Ti (190-220), was captured by one or another of the generals.  As the successful general was usually unable to maintain his hold on the capital, he dragged the poor emperor with him from place to place until he finally had to give him up to another general.  The point of this chase after the emperor was that according to the idea introduced earlier by Wang Mang the first ruler of a new dynasty had to receive the imperial seals from the last emperor of the previous dynasty.  The last emperor must abdicate in proper form.  Accordingly, each general had to get possession of the emperor to begin with, in order at the proper time to take over the seals.

By about A.D. 200 the new conditions had more or less crystallized.  There remained only three great parties.  The most powerful was that of Ts’ao Ts’ao, who controlled the north and was able to keep permanent hold of the emperor.  In the west, in the province of Szechwan, Liu Pei had established himself, and in the south-east Sun Ts’e’s brother.