Jia Chong

Jia Chong is a senior adviser to Sima Zhao whose interventions help make the Sima family’s control of Wei increasingly explicit and violent. He probes whether officials will accept Sima Zhao as ruler, backs the suppression of Emperor Cao Mao’s resistance, and later helps set in motion Deng Ai’s arrest. Across these episodes, his political work turns private ambition into action while leaving Sima Zhao at the center of power.

Position in Wei Politics

By the time Jia Chong appears, Sima Zhao is already making the major decisions in Wei without even pretending to consult the emperor. The title of the year has been changed to Celebrating Victory after Wei’s success against Shu, but the display of imperial satisfaction only underscores who actually governs: Sima Zhao. In that setting, Jia Chong encourages his chief’s aspirations by offering to take soundings about how the country might respond if Sima Zhao pursued imperial status.

His first approach is to Zhuge Dan, a Wei commander and official who controls forces on both sides of the Huai River. Over dinner, Jia Chong cautiously reports that some worthy people supposedly think Emperor Cao Mao is unequal to his task and that Sima Zhao should take over. He presents the proposal as a question about Zhuge Dan’s opinion, but the exchange is a test of loyalty. Zhuge Dan answers that he would die defending the throne and rebukes Jia Chong for raising the idea, exposing the danger of turning an unspoken ambition into a political proposal.

From Sounding Out Opposition to Lethal Force

Zhuge Dan’s refusal is reported to Sima Zhao, who is unsettled by the strength of the opposition. He tries to draw Zhuge Dan to court with a new appointment, while a separate order demands his execution. Jia Chong’s probe has thus helped reveal a serious obstacle to Sima Zhao’s ambitions, though the evidence does not describe Jia Chong carrying out Zhuge Dan’s removal himself.

Jia Chong’s role becomes more direct in the crisis over Emperor Cao Mao. After a poem by the emperor angers Sima Zhao, Jia Chong offers to act as soon as Sima Zhao gives the word. When Cao Mao later leaves the palace with a small procession to confront the regent, Jia Chong appears armed and mounted, accompanied by Cheng Ji and Cheng Zu and backed by thousands of troops. Cao Mao asserts his authority as Son of Heaven and asks whether they mean to murder their rightful ruler. Jia Chong tells Cheng Ji that this is why Sima Zhao has retained him. Asked whether the emperor should be killed or taken prisoner, Jia Chong answers that he is to be killed, on Sima Zhao’s orders. Cheng Ji strikes Cao Mao with his halberd, killing him.

The aftermath reveals the distinction between Jia Chong’s immediate command and Sima Zhao’s management of responsibility. Sima Zhao arrives and feigns grief, then convenes the officials to discuss punishment. Chen Tai demands that Jia Chong be killed as an apology to the country, but Sima Zhao searches for a lesser penalty. He instead identifies Cheng Ji as the traitor, orders him tortured and executed with his brother, and has their clan destroyed. Cheng Ji cries that he acted on Sima Zhao’s orders conveyed through Jia Chong, but the response silences him. Jia Chong’s participation is unmistakable; the punishment falls on the men who carried out the killing, while Sima Zhao retains power.

The Deng Ai Affair

Later, during the campaign to remove Deng Ai, Jia Chong again acts as an instrument of Sima Zhao’s political calculations. Jiang Wei advises Zhong Hui to write to Sima Zhao describing Deng Ai as treacherous, so that Zhong Hui can obtain permission to crush him. Zhong Hui sends the memorial and further manipulates the situation by intercepting Deng Ai’s own account and adding sentences that make it appear more incriminating to a suspicious reader.

Sima Zhao orders Zhong Hui to arrest Deng Ai and marches with thirty thousand men toward Chang’an. He tells his adviser Shao Ti that his reason for going is not Deng Ai but his distrust of Zhong Hui. The episode places Jia Chong within a volatile triangle of ambition, suspicion, and manufactured evidence: he had helped cultivate Sima Zhao’s pursuit of power, and now accompanies the political response to a plot in which Zhong Hui’s forged additions help turn distrust into an arrest order. The account does not say that Jia Chong wrote or altered the memorial himself.

Narrative Role

Jia Chong’s defining function is to give Sima Zhao’s intentions practical reach. He tests an official’s response before a succession bid is openly advanced; at the palace, he translates the regent’s command into an order that makes an emperor’s death the immediate outcome; and in the Deng Ai affair, he remains among the figures involved as suspicion is converted into coercive action. His career in these scenes is not presented through private reflection or personal background, but through the consequences of political service.

That service also exposes the gap between formal authority and effective power. Cao Mao is still emperor when he confronts the armed force outside the palace, yet Jia Chong’s invocation of Sima Zhao’s command determines what happens next. The subsequent punishment of Cheng Ji and his family does not undo the killing or dislodge the regent. Jia Chong therefore stands at a threshold where control exercised in the emperor’s name gives way to rule enforced by Sima Zhao’s agents.