Construction on the stone and brick Liaodi Pagoda begins in the year 1001 during the reign of Emperor Zhenzong of Song, who intends to have Buddhist scriptures gathered by the Chinese monk Huineng from India stored at the pagoda's site.

When completed in 1055, it will be the tallest existing pre-modern Chinese pagoda and tallest brick pagoda in the world, surpassing the height of China's previously tallest pagoda still standing, the central pagoda of the Three Pagodas, which stands at 69.13 meters (two hundred and thirty feet).

(The tallest pagoda in pre-modern Chinese history was a one hundred meter-tall three hundred and thirty feet) wooden pagoda tower in Chang'an built in 611 by Emperor Yang of Sui, yet this structure no longer stands.)

The Song dynasty, under their third emperor, Zhenzong, have continued their war against the Khitans in the north.

They have suffered occasional reversals, but have gradually reconquered much of the former Chinese territory north of the Hwang He.

After many years of fighting with each other, the the Northern Sung and the Liao Dynasties finally decide to negotiate a truce, which is achieved in 1004 through the treaty of Shanyuan, the pivotal point in relation between the Sung and the Liao.

The signing of the Shanyuan Treaty is the first time that the Liao are able to force the Song, who consider themselves the natural heirs to the Central Kingdom (Zhong Yuan), to recognize them as peers.

The Khitans agree to abandon southern Hebei to the Chinese in exchange for …

…northern regions of Shanxi and an annual tribute of one hundred thousand ounces of silver and around two hundred thousand rolls of silk.

After the treaty is signed, the nature of the relationship between these two states changes from one of purely political rivalry to a supposed fraternal relationship.

For the first time in Chinese history there are two Sons of Heaven, recognized by each other.

The Fatimid-era Egyptian sea captain Domiyat travels to a Buddhist site of pilgrimage in Shandong in 1008, where he presents the Chinese Emperor Zhenzong of Song with gifts from his ruling Imam Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, establishing diplomatic relations between Egypt and China that had been lost during the collapse of the Tang Dynasty in 907 (the Fatimid state had been established a few years later, in 910).

The Guangyun (literally "Broad Rimes") is a Chinese rhyme dictionary that is compiled from 1007 to 1008 under the auspices of Emperor Zhenzong.

Chen Pengnian (961–1017) and Qiu Yong are the chief editors.

It is a revision and expansion of the influential Qieyun rhyme dictionary of 601, and will itself later be revised as the Jiyun.

Until the discovery of an almost complete early eighth century edition of the Qieyun in 1947, the Guangyun will be the most accurate available account of the Qieyun phonology, and is heavily used in early work on the reconstruction of Middle Chinese.

It is still used as a major source.

The Guangyun has a similar layered organization to the Qieyun: The dictionary is split into four tones in five volumes, two for the Middle Chinese level tone and one each for the three oblique tones, rising, departing and entering.

Each tone is split into rhymes, with a total of two hundred and six final rhymes, increased from one hundred and ninety-three in the Qieyun.

Each rhyme is divided into groups of homophonous characters, with the pronunciation of each group given by a fanqie formula.

The dictionary has a total of 26,194 character entries, each containing a brief explanation of the character's meaning.

The Egyptian Fatimid Empire under Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, seeking to reestablish trade relations between Egypt and China, sends the sea captain Domiyat on a tributary mission to the Song emperor Zhenzong.

Emperor Taizu, the founder of the Song dynasty, had found various ways to consolidate and strengthen his power, including updated mapmaking so that his central administration could easily discern how to handle affairs in the provinces.

In 971, he had ordered geographer Lu Duosun to update and 'rewrite all the Tu Jing [maps] in the world'; a daunting task for one individual.

Nonetheless, Lu Duosun had traveled throughout the provinces to collect illustrative gazetteers and as much data as possible With the aid of the scholar Song Zhun, the massive work is completed in 1010, with some fifteen hundred and sixty-six chapters, showing maps of each region, city, town, and village.

The atlas has taken thirty-nine years to complete.

The Song Dynasty Chinese encyclopedia Prime Tortoise of the Record Bureau (which had been compiled since 1005), is completed in one thousand volumes of none million four hundred thousand written Chinese characters.

The largest of the Four Great Books of Song, it is an encyclopedia of political essays, autobiographies, memorials and decrees.

Kaifeng, the capital of the Chinese Empire, becomes the largest city of the world around this time (1013), taking the lead from Córdoba in Al-Andalus.

The city has some half a million residents by 1020; the population is over a million people including all those present in the nine designated suburbs.

The Song military has one million registered soldiers by 1021, a ten percent increase over the twenty years since the turn of the eleventh century, when the Song military only had nine hundred thousand soldiers.