of influence slowly built up tax-free estates, usually by illegal means, and court aristocrats acquired in their own names large tracts of land as rewards for their services or through political manipulations of a less honorable nature.
On the one hand, the local gentry needed protection for their holdings from the tax collectors of the central government. On the other hand, powerful court families and great monasteries were acquiring large tax-free estates, and needed local men to represent their interests on these lands. From these reciprocal needs a pattern of land-holding gradually developed in which provincial manors and estates were controlled and operated by local aristocrats but were owned, at least in theory, by influential court families or monasteries. The peasant, who came to have definite proprietary rights to his own little tract of land, gave to the local aristocrat, acting as estate manager, a generous portion of his produce; and the estate manager, in turn, passed on to the noble court family or great monastery a share of his income in payment for protection from the central government.
Tax-free manors grew and expanded during the eighth and ninth centuries until, by the tenth, the national domain had virtually disappeared. With its disappearance, the income of the state from taxes, the economic basis for the Chinese form of centralized government, dwindled to almost nothing. As a result, provincial governmental agencies, which had never been strong, withered away almost completely, leaving behind imposing but meaningless administrative titles, such as Governor or Vice-Governor. Even the central