Yang Wu
one of the Ten Kingdoms in 10th-century eastern and central China
Wu (吳), also referred to as Huainan (淮南), Hongnong (弘農), Southern Wu (南吳), or Yang Wu (楊吳), was a dynastic state of China and one of the Ten Kingdoms during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. It existed from 907 to 937 with capital at Jiangdu Municipality (江都; modern-day Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province).
Some historians consider Wu to have begun in 902, when Yang Xingmi was named Prince of Wu by the Tang dynasty. All three rulers of Wu after 907 (when the Tang dynasty collapsed and Zhu Wen established the Later Liang dynasty) were Yang Xingmi's sons. The first ruler Yang Wo was murdered by his ministers Xu Wen and Zhang Hao, and his two brothers after him were effectively puppets dominated by Xu Wen at first, and later Xu Wen's adopted son Xu Zhigao (Li Bian) who in 937 usurped power to establish the Southern Tang dynasty. Yang Pu, the last ruler, was the only one to claim the title of emperor; the other rulers were kings or princes.
Founding
The founder of Wu, Yang Xingmi, started his career as a volunteer soldier before seizing power in his home prefecture Luzhou in a military coup. The weak Tang court could only confirm his position. In 887 the governor of Huainan, Gao Pian, was captured by Bi Shiduo. Xingmi defeated Shiduo and captured the provincial capital Yangzhou later that year, but by then Pian had been put to death by Shiduo.
“Yang Wu” enters the record as one of the Ten Kingdoms in 10th-century eastern and central China. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Yang, Kingdoms and 10th-century can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1323195. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Yang Wu” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.