Rise and Decline of the

Imperial Autocracy

None of royal family in the world ruled as large a state as

China or maintained such as monopoly of central power.

By comparison, European dynasties were provincial

potentates within the inhabited world of Christendom,
ruling regional kingdoms.

Rise

Periodizing Chinese history by dynasties

The sequence of dynasties was due to the inveterate
Chinese impulse during a dynastic interregnum toward

political reunification.
Unity was so strong an ideal because its promised
stability, peace, and prosperity.

No civil war
Preventing invasion from the nomadic empires

Europe at one time had kings and emperors of many kingdoms and
empires all making history simultaneously.
China ideally, and most of the time in fact, had only one emperor
on earth, like one sun in the sky.

Decline

At the end of 17th century, the Kingdom of France was just getting
organized while Imperial China had long been a great centralized
empire governed by a uniform administrative system.

Traditional Chinese: immoral emperor

Modern economic interpretation: farmland & tax

At the beginning of a dynasty the land and the population were

recorded in a rough sort of census, and it was used for tax collection.
Ruling classes (great families and gentries) were gradually able to
increase their land-holdings and to remove them from taxation by
corruption, official connivance, or legal falsification.
Big lineages got more and more farmlands, i.e., they could take under
their wing small farmers as clients who paid less to big household
than they would have to the state
Then, smaller % of the land (poor farmers) needed to pay more.
Peasant disorder and rebellion would eventually result.

Warring States

Spring and Autumn Period

CHIN

Wade-Giles

Chin
(Qin)
pinyin

The First Disunion

The Spring and Autumn and the Warring States

The Western Zhou lost its power

Growth of many aristocratic family-states, out of Zhous control

They formed alliances and leagues, or conquered each other

Warring States (403 221 BC): 7 states

In 771 BC, due to the barbarian invasion, the Zhou house gave
up the fertile Wei valley near Xian
Small boundary, few farmland, lack of harvest and manpower

Spring and Autumn period (722 481 BC): 170 states

Only SEVEN major states remained in the competition

Most of them on the populous North China plain

Iron tools and weapon

Greater agricultural production, more trade, centralized
administration, uniform taxes, larger armies, central army
From chariots to cavalry

Two components of the eventual Chinese imperial

government military rulers and scholar-teachers
were already visible.

Before the First Unification

An interesting phenomenon in Chinese history is that:

the two greatly violent disunion periods,
first the Spring and Autumn and Warring States, Later
the Great Division of Northern and Southern Dynasties,
turn out were the greatest ages for the development of
philosophical and intellectual thinking.

Yet the Warring States context of sanctioned violence

and killings, many philosophers developed their idea
yearning for peace and order

The Confucian Code:

the ethical response

The Confucian Code:

the ethical response

Li , the rituals, the social norm, or proper behavior

according to status, did not originally apply to the
common people, was absolutely essential for government
among the elite.

Organizing society began with the cosmic order and its

hierarchy of superior-inferior relationships

It is more important the law, code, or political reform.

The Five bonds (wu lun) king & minister, husband & wife,
parent and children, elder & younger brother, between friends

Ren , benevolence, the origin of morality, which is

within human nature so that human being could be
perfectible.

Confucius never put military affair in first priority. Thats

why he was never appointed by any kings or feudal lords.
His idea was never considered to be the best before the
end of Qin Dynasty which militarily united the whole
China but collapsed quickly after 15 years.

John King Fairbank, western observers were early impressed with their
agnostic this-worldliness. As a philosophy of life the golden mean, .
And, above all, a mellow humanism taking man, not God, as the
centre of the universe.
But if we take this Confucian view of life in its social and political
context, we will see that its esteem for age over youth, for the past over
present, for established authority over innovation has in fact provided
one of the great historic answers to the problem of social stability. It has
been the most successful of all systems of conservatism.

Philosophical Taoism and Alchemists

Taoists the Way :

the naturalist response

Dao , the path, the way.

Naturalist cosmology and belief in the unseen spirits of nature

The philosophical Taoist naturalists generally refuse

against the necessarily of aggressive activities to change
nature or society. They doubt about the effect of human
effort which challenges the natural order.

Chinese individualism
Religious Taoism

together with popular animism, alchemy, ancient magic,

Chinese medicine, elixir of immortality etc

Lao Zi

Non-action wu-wei

Zhuang Zi

The religious response

Mo Zi and his sect, the radicalism

Jianai [universal love]

Feigung [against aggression]
Tianzhi [will of Heaven]
Minggui [on the existence of spirits]

God and ghost would guarantee the power of morality.

When the persuasion did not work out, they would help
the weaker state which was unjustly attacked to defend
themselves from the invasion from powerful state.

The response from scientists in

astronomy
or astrology,
geography,
medicine, physics

Pseudo-science: the Yin Yang and Five Elements

Everything in the Cosmo are correlated.

/

It disappeared gradually after the Warring States.

Fire
Earth

Wood

Water
Metal

The realistic response:

Legalists, or the theorists of the state

political, military and administrative experience

emphasize the importance of political system and institution

New economic, social, and political reforms

The system must be just and equally applied to everyone.

Shang Yang

Eliminating all nobles

punish any unwanted action, reward those who follow it

But never thought about how to prevent any emperor ruling

unjustly and unfairly.

Sun Zi : Art of War

Prince also needs to follow the law

Han Fei Zi

The king, such a good solider! He follows the law!

He dont afraid of either you, the future king, or me!
The solider was then promoted.

According to the law, no one is allow to pass through

the entrance by chariot.