Along with the creation of a Muslim Empire, the growth of the Chinese economy under the Tang in an outward-looking empire gave impetus to trade throughout the Asian continent and the Indian Ocean, triggering its progressive integration within an Eurasian world-system in which Africa had a part. China would once again act as a locomotive, pulling the carriages of the world-system train much more vigorously than it had before, under the Song dynasty, from the late tenth to the thirteenth century. Generally speaking, expansion in China simultaneously involved agriculture, cities, industry, transportation, trade, and culture, during a period which has often been compared – from an Eurocentric point of view – to the Italian Renaissance. The Song state set up an efficient administration, composed of officials recruited through competitive examinations. Agriculture progressed both in the margins of the empire, thanks to the settling of military colonies, and in the south, with the development of intensive rice cultivation, fostered by higher temperatures and precipitation, and inflows of populations from the north. The Chinese population more than doubled between 800 and 1200.