Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"Song Zhenzong's first big project was to build a series of canals and dikes along the Song-Liao border, dotted with well-garrisoned fortresses, to keep the Liao troops out. It promised to be a formidable barrier, and as it neared completion, the Liao--still ruled by Liao Shengzong, no longer a teenager and hardened by twenty years of rule--launched a last major attack against their southern neigbours, bursting through the unfinished fortifications and sweeping southwards. Song Zhenzong folded. . . . In 1005, Song Zhenzong agreed to peace terms that were unequivocally humiliating to the Song. . . . Without major wars to fight, tax money went not to the army but to roads, buildings, schools, and books. . . . The technique of printing books with carved wooden blocks, rather than writing them by hand, made it possible to produce multiple copies of the most popular books and to sell them for prices that wouldn't break a student budget. . . . The woodblock receipts, circulated through the markets of Song China, served as the world's first paper money. . . . The temporary peace that followed the Treaty of Chanyan allowed Song China to grow rich."