The Yuan Dynasty was a minority regime established by the Mongols, the territory of this regime was extremely large, the capital was Dadu, that is, the area around today's Beijing, in order to strengthen the rule of the Han people, the Yuan Dynasty implemented a policy of national oppression.
At that time, according to the requirements, all people were divided into four levels according to ethnicity, the first rank was Mongols, the second class was Semu people who were mainly Western Xia people, the third level was Han Chinese, including Han People, Jurchens, and Khitans in the jin rule area, and the fourth level, that is, the lowest level, was the Nan people, including all people in the southern Song Dynasty rule area.
Different peoples have different ranks, different ranks have different life prices, and at that time it was stipulated that the payment for killing the Mongols, the fine for killing the Semu people was forty bari, and killing a Han Chinese was only necessary to pay the price of a donkey. It is also stipulated that Han Chinese are not allowed to serve as guards if they are soldiers, and if they become officials, they can often only be deputies and cannot be a leader.
In addition, Han Chinese are forbidden to hunt, learn martial arts, and possess weapons, and even to walk at night. At that time, the Han people needed to pay for the death of the Mongols, and the Mongols only needed to "cut off the punishment and go on a campaign and burn the silver in the whole army." Under such a policy of national oppression, the life of the Han people was extremely difficult, so the rule of the Yuan Dynasty was extremely unstable, and there were anti-Yuan uprisings everywhere.
Due to the decay and degeneration of the Yuan Dynasty's rule, many of the lower classes of the Mongols lived in quite difficulty, they had no privileges, those privileged Mongols could act as the leaders of various places, and when these people could not be divided, the Mongolian nobles would not send the lower Mongols to act as leaders, but appointed some Central Asians who bribed the Mongol nobles.
In the middle of the Yuan Dynasty, a large number of Mongol slaves began to be sold in the area near the capital of the Yuan Dynasty, and many lower-class Mongolian people became slaves.
On the contrary, some Han people with strong power were not only not restricted by the fact that Han people could not hold weapons, but also had large manors, armed Zhuang Ding, and many people served as officials in the court of the Yuan Dynasty, and some were still in full office.
Why is this particular situation? There are two reasons, one is that the cultural level of the Mongolian nobles in the Yuan Dynasty is too low to be able to do many jobs; on the other hand, the rule of the Yuan Dynasty is very corrupt, so many rich Han Chinese can become officials through bribery or own a large amount of land, property, and population.
Due to the very corrupt rule of the Yuan Dynasty and the corruption of officials, many of the systems of the Yuan Dynasty became a blank piece of paper, neither enforced nor actually enforced, but only some records of the people at that time or later.
Therefore, during the Yuan Dynasty, there may have been a system in which ten families shared a kitchen knife, but in actual implementation, because it was too difficult to implement, it became a slogan.
At that time, the rule of the Yuan Dynasty also had its relatively enlightened places, although people of various nationalities were forcibly scored into four grades, but the Yuan Dynasty did not prohibit interracial marriage, and people of different nationalities could intermarry, which indirectly broke the original policy of ethnic hierarchical oppression.
At that time, the Yuan Dynasty really held power not by all the Mongols, but by the upper echelons of various nationalities, and the imperial court became a multi-ethnic aristocratic joint ruling group, which was also hierarchically differentiated, the Mongols were the highest ranked and the most noble, and people of other nationalities could act as bureaucrats at all levels.
However, these people were all people from the landlord class, which meant that the serf owners and nobles on the steppe and the landlord class in the Central Plains had combined with each other to form a federation of feudal serf-owning nobles and landlords, who jointly held political power.
It is precisely because of this that in some places there will also be some oppressed Han Chinese as yuan dynasty officials, and even the Mongols in an oppressive position will be reduced to slaves and sold.
Therefore, the Yuan Dynasty established by the Mongols was essentially not a regime in which the Mongols were in power entirely in power and oppressed all other nationalities, especially the Han nationality, but a feudal ruling clique that bought and brought down the upper forces of all nationalities and jointly oppressed the lower classes of all nationalities.