Thanks for all the suggestions everyone.
@
kholieken, didn't Jin appear after the Northern Song was destroyed?
@darthfanta, the Guo Rong suggestion might work

How about
Emperor Taizu of Song being killed or crippled when his head hits that gate in his youth?
Perhaps the man who would become Emperor Taizu of Song just doesn't decide to betray Later Liang at Chen Bridge and instead fights the Northern Han and Liao as he was ordered to? Turning around may very well have started a civil war and left the country open on the eve of what he believed was an invasion. Would it be too tempting to just turn around and take over the country? How would that campaign against Liao and Northern Han have worked out?
Would Later Liang get obliterated, paving the way for a Southern Han or Tang reunification of China? How did Song, such a militarily weak state manage to reunify China anyway?
The Song may have had their impressive traits but I'm rather curious if they the Swan Song of Chinese civilization which actually died with the Tang due to the Jiedushi?
A pov wth Guo Rong surviving is better.Since the child emperor who survives him might be incompetent.
The first Song enperor won’t go for the throne as long as a capable emperor is at the helm.Arguably,the whole affair with the Chen bridge was planned and orchestrated by Zhao Kuangyin himself.Everything was just too coincidental and that the he had the support of Imperial Guards,the most powerful military force in the country.The only military force that could oppose him was the Tianxiong army located in the Hebei region,whose commander was the empress dowager’s own father,the problem however was that the empress dowager’s younger sister was married to Zhao Kuangyin’s younger brother(who later became Emperor Taizong),so it made no difference to the commander of the Tianxiong army in regards to who was in power,so he just let the coup take peace unopposed.
And by the way,the regime Zhao Kuangyin took over from was the Later Zhou,not the later Liang.The Song managed to take control of the rest of China due to the fact that the other regimes were even weaker(in terms of population, economics and the martial tradition) and largely ruled by incompetent rulers by the time Zhao Kuangyin came to power.For example, Southern Tang,the most powerful state other than the dynasties that controlled the Central Plains was already badly crippled by the campaigns of Guo Rong and forced into acknowledging the Later-Zhou as its’ overlord.Finally,the army the Song Dynasty inherited from Later Zhou was actually pretty good—it’s just that mismanagement by Song rulers led to its’ later decline.
problem with the Chinese society of the time was less that of the Jiedushi,but that of unruly soldiers.The army of the time was basically like the army of the Roman Empire during the Crisis of the Third Century.They were unruly,ill disciplined and often murdered the commander whom they disagreed with.
It wasn’t uncommon for jiedushis to be killed and replaced through mutiny.To ensure that they stay in power,jiedushis often had to tax the population under their control highly in order to dish out lucrative pay and privileges to the soldiers under their command.Sometimes,their men force them to usurp the throne so that they can gain greater wealth,titles and privileges.
Few jiedushis were true masters of their own turf.The situation was so bad that a number of Jiedushis don’t really want to be jiedushis and actually wanted to submit to Imperial authority due to the risk of the profession(being killed by their soldiers in a mutiny).
Due to the fact that the soldiers under their command benefitted from the power structure of the commander having to stay in their grace in order to stay alive however,they often forced their commander to remain a warlord autonomous from the government.
One of the ways a Jiedushi can stay in power,apart from indulging their men, was to have the blessing and support of the Imperial government to legitimize his rule,which meant that these jiedushis have to walk a thin line between supporting the government and the interests of his own troops.
Even if the central government can eradicate a jiedushi,the central army sent to conquer that particular circuit will often attempt to force the central government to make their commander the new jiedushi of the circuit,so the cycle just perpetuates.The government tried to install bureaucrat-generals as jiedushi under the assumption that scholar-generals will be better behaved,but a good number of these scholar-generals turned out to be warlords all the same either due to ambition or actually being forced by their men to become so.
The result was that the Jiedushis were not always bad to the government and that the government might not necessarily want to eradicate them due to the fear that a worse jiedushi(one that’s genuinely capable and disloyal) might pop up.
I don’t think that the Song Dynasty was destined to be the Swan Song of Chinese civilization,but the thing is that while they were able to eradicate the problem of unruly soldiers,they could have done better.