Since the imperial state system established by Qin Shi Huang has turned land into public and private, everyone will think that the more land they own, the better, and it is best to own the land under the whole world.
And the emergence of this desire is bound to be detrimental to the emperor who already regards the land under the heavens as his own.
Therefore, the emperor was bound to take the necessary measures to eliminate the threat. Qin Shi Huang, worthy of being a heroic and ambitious tyrant, understood the seriousness of this threat, so he concentrated the power to govern the world in the imperial family and institutionalized it.
The basic characteristics of this system can be seen from the design of the political system in the early Qin Dynasty.
Map of the Centralized Political System of the Qin Dynasty (1)
First, at the central level, state power is divided into three parts: military, administrative, and supervisory, with the highest power concentrated in the emperor and maintaining a military force that can be directly commanded by the emperor to prevent the independence of the county and county powers. The taiwei, the chancellor, and the imperial master in charge of military, administrative, and supervisory duties are the three dukes. But these three dukes are not the three dukes of the royal era. The main functions of the three princes of the monarchy are to assist the king, provide advice to the king, and educate and train the next generation of kings. The main functions of the three dukes of the imperial system were to carry out the emperor's decrees, protect the safety of the emperor and the imperial family, and perform the emperor's law on behalf of the emperor.
Second, counties were set up to manage the people, land, and taxes of the world, and the emperor directly appointed the county shou and county orders to exercise centralized control over the people, land, and taxes. County-level governments also implement the principle of separation of military, administrative and supervisory powers, while county-level governments do not have supervision. This system design, which is different from the royal system, negates the system of equal land ownership of land that "the world is under the heavens and the people in the world are obtained and cultivated". The new system allows for different amounts of land, that is, the principle of "those who can cultivate more in the field under the heavens" is pursued in order to harvest more taxes. This necessitates strengthening the management of cultivators and land while granting land to private individuals. The method of directly appointing county guards and county decrees from the central government, which both guarantees direct control over these officials and eliminates the possibility of them appropriating land and people for themselves, rather than sending officials to their ancestral homes, is a remarkable political wisdom (this wisdom has been abandoned by various regimes in the modern East and the West). In addition, the nobles who had hereditary titles and fiefs before the unification of Qin were concentrated in Xianyang, the capital of Qin, with a total of about 120,000 households (2).
Since then, the basic administrative system of Chinese society has consisted of three levels of government: central, county, and county government, and the county and county governments have maintained basic consistency in the imperial history of 2132 years. For example, in the establishment of counties, there were about 1,000 counties when yingzheng was called emperor, about 1314 counties in Han in 2 AD, 1381 counties in the late Qing Dynasty in 1911, and 1479 counties in the People's Republic of China in 1972 (excluding Xinjiang, Tibet and Yunnan).
Administrative divisions of the county system in the Qin Dynasty
Third, the power of supervision is independent of the executive and military powers, especially the power of supervision at the county level is directly subordinate to the institutional design of the Imperial Master, which can ensure the independent supervision of local administrative and military powers. This design is somewhat similar to the independent supervision power advocated by modern governments. The military power owned by the local government is not under the jurisdiction of the central government's lieutenant, so as to form a restriction on the military power controlled by the lieutenant.
Fourth, among the nine secretaries of state of the central government, the functions conferred by the five posts of Lang Zhongling, Tai Shu, Wei Wei, Zong Zheng, and Shaofu were necessary to ensure the safety of the emperor and the imperial family, the emperor's independent mobility, and the imperial family's ability to act independently. Comparing the functions of the Nine Qings of the Qin Dynasty and the functions of the Nine Qings of the Zhou Dynasty, it is not difficult to see that the Nine Qings of the Zhou Dynasty are mainly related to social and public affairs and policies such as the indoctrination of the world, agricultural affairs, hundreds of workers, animal husbandry, ritual sacrifices, and the maintenance of the law, while the Nine Secretaries of the Qin Dynasty focus on the affairs of the imperial family and the dignity of the royal family, and the safety of the royal family. The change in the functions of the Nine Qings reflects the different psychological tendencies of the heavenly son of the imperial system and the emperor of the imperial system, which will also promote the psychological changes of the people. For example, from the beginning of the Shang Martingale Transformation Law, Qin attached importance to ruling the country with criminal law rather than ritual music, and in the era of the First Emperor, all kinds of torture counted as bing (stripping off the knee), cutting off (sawing feet), palace, bang plunder, waist beheading, head beheading, abandonment of the city, poking corpses, pit death, chiseling, coercion, wok cooking, car cracking, Yi three tribes, etc. For example, 460 warlocks who criticized Qin Shi Huang were killed, and Shang Martin was killed by a car after the death of Qin Xiaogong. The fact is that the Qin Dynasty was known for its torture, but it lost its ritual and indoctrination, and the people's hearts were not benevolent, of course, Confucianism was no longer there, and under torture, people not only complained bitterly, but also greatly increased the number of adulterers, and the two were mutually beneficial, and Chen Shi and Wu Guang could only rise up for the sake of survival.
The Qin Dynasty's System of Three Dukes and Nine Secretaries
Of course, the short-lived Qin Dynasty was not all caused by the above characteristics of institutional design, and more importantly, people could not get used to the imperial state system.
This unaccustomedness is typically reflected in Xiang Yu. In 206 BC, Liu Bang invaded Xianyang, and because Liu Bang and Xiang Yu had a pact of "breaking Qin into Xianyang first", an enraged Xiang Yu also invaded Xianyang and burned the capital of Qin and declared himself the King of Western Chu instead of emperor.
The powerful Western Chu kingdom temporarily gained the right to rule the world, and crowned the rebellious generals with armies, including Liu Bang, and the descendants of the Six Kingdoms who were destroyed by the Qin Dynasty as 19 kingdoms, but did not clarify the relationship between these kingdoms and the Western Chu Kingdom, if Xiang Yu publicly declared himself an emperor above the kings like Qin Shi Huang, it is estimated that Liu Bang would have little objection.
However, the honest Xiang Yu was not accustomed to being called emperor, so Liu Bang, the king of Han, gathered several kingdoms to attack the Western Chu Kingdom until Xiang Yu's power was destroyed. Liu Bang was a wise man, and of course he knew that choosing the imperial system was better than choosing the royal system.
However, Liu Bang still faced the dilemma of choosing whether to divide the feudal system or the county system, because Zhou died in the sub-feudal system and Qin died in the county. After weighing the pros and cons, he chose a compromise strategy between the two, so he named 9 kings with the same surname (royal family), 8 kings with different surnames (allies who attacked Xiang Yu together) as princes, and also made more than 130 meritorious servants (such as Xiao He, Han Xin, etc.) the marquis, and implemented the county system in the unsealed land.
However, Liu Bang knew that his naming of a different surname as a king might be harmful to the Liu family's world, so he used various reasons to reduce the king with a different surname, and before he died, he swore that "not the Liu clan but the king of the world will strike at it together." ”
Portrait of Han Gaozu's Liu Bang
However, the Han Dynasty sub-feudal system is not the same as the Zhou Dynasty sub-feudal system, the Zhou Dynasty fiefdom can be hereditary as a Feng Lu, and the fief king has independent governance power;
The Han Dynasty fiefdom was a reward given by the royal family to the lords, and the Jing Emperor also appointed the prince to master the military charm, and the military power of the princes was controlled in the hands of the emperor (3), which was actually a kind of county-based sub-feudalism, and the title of the marquis was a kind of reputation in name only, because the real power of the marquis fief was in the hands of the "minister of state" appointed by the emperor, and the land under the jurisdiction of the central government was all implemented in the county system. The same was true of the "sub-feudalism" of the Tang Dynasty after that.
However, in any case, the imperial state system established by Qin Shi Huang released the desire to take the world for himself, which is an indisputable fact, and it is also an indisputable fact that the political system of the Qin Dynasty became the blueprint for the ruling system of later emperors.
This is illustrated by the fact that there were almost only records of the struggle for the country and mountains and no records of Zen making the world.
In modern times, Sun Wen had a hard time "humbleing" a "great president", but the result was that a selfish Yuan Shikai chose the cheap, and the republic based on "Shangxian" almost became an imperial system again.
During the Han Dynasty, Liu Bang divided the territory of kings with different surnames
Since then, after experiencing the chaotic era of Datong (the era of the Three Emperors and Five Emperors) and Xiao kang (the Era of the Xia Shang and Western Zhou Dynasties), it was replaced by the ideas of "the world is home" and "gentlemen are ordained by heaven" (the emperor is ordained by heaven), and the ritual system with the sacrifice of heaven as the core began through the revision of the Shang martingale transformation law, and was gradually revised into a supreme imperial power system centered on the emperor.
After experiencing the Spring and Autumn Warring States Rebellion, people's hearts were corrupted, the liturgical music of the royal era was gradually abolished, and its indoctrination function was no longer effective, so it could only change the law to impose heavy punishment.
Shang Martin understood this while Mencius did not. Therefore, Mencius lobbied everywhere to make people pay attention to benevolence, righteousness, wisdom, filial piety and faithfulness, but throughout his life he failed to stop the increasing chaos of the chaotic world.
But like Confucius, he won the respect of later generations and became a sub-saint of China. When King Hui of Liang asked Mencius how to strengthen the country, Mencius's advice was:
Wang Rushi governs the people, the punishment of the province, the thin taxation, the deep ploughing is easy to be easy, the strong take the leisure time, cultivate their filial piety and faithfulness, enter into the affairs of their fathers and brothers, and do things for their strengths, so that the system can be used to tart Qin and Chu's jianjia and soldiers. (Mencius Liang Hui wang)
Mengshi Images
Although Shang Martin also grew up learning the way of Confucianism, he was not as pedantic as Mencius, and did not think that provincial punishment, father and brother, thin taxation, deep cultivation of easy cultivation, filial piety and loyalty, etc., could make the country a country with strong armor and sharp soldiers.
Therefore, after he became the minister of Qin, he put forward the policy of making the Qin state an efficient "farming war" country.
This policy abandoned the royal tradition of ritual education, emphasizing criminal law, rewarding farming, abolishing well fields, setting up counties, and prohibiting fathers and sons from living together in the same room to facilitate marriage and children, which was basically contrary to Mencius's propositions, especially the "Shiwulian sitting system" (4) he promoted, almost treating the people with an attitude of doubting that "the people are good people", which clearly violated the Confucian standard of "the son of heaven as the parents of the people".
However, Shang Martin's change of law was successful, and a Qin state with "cultivation war" as the national policy, heavy criminal law, industry and commerce, and strict organization soon became strong.
The core of Shangmartin's "farming war" policy is to abolish well fields, grant land to private land, let it be cultivated, no limit, and the tax is changed to be calculated in terms of fields and acres, the more land is reclaimed, the more the Qin government income, while stimulating agricultural production, the original public land is privately owned, that is, family ownership, and allowed free trade.
This inevitably led to the division between the rich and the poor, and the form of equal wealth of the common people under the well field system based on the principle of equality was broken, and the phenomenon of land concentration appeared.
At this time, the landlords who owned more land used employment and rent instead of labor (the government used differences and servitudes instead of levy), and the equal society of the common people was differentiated in status due to the differentiation between the rich and the poor, which was tantamount to completely destroying the economic foundation of social stability.
Quotient martingale transformation method
As the Yuan Dynasty scholar Ma Ruilin said: "Those who serve the people are also officials, and those who serve the officials are also people." The county has a guard, the county has an order, the township has a chief, there is a zheng, its position is different, and all the servants are also. (Literature General Examination and Preface)
Since the fall of the Qin Dynasty, the people's tax burdens have become heavier and heavier, and the tax system has become more and more detailed, making the people increasingly poor and haggard.
This not only led to the collapse of the country due to tyranny in the 26 years after the establishment of the imperial system by Qin Shi Huang, but also caused the social unrest in the imperial era that began repeatedly, and continued until the end of the imperial system.
The root cause of the peasant movement set off by the Communists in the early days of the modern republic was the intensification of the phenomenon of land concentration and the increasing rent.
Qin Shi Huang abolished feudalism and the policy of setting up counties and counties, which also destroyed the system of dividing feudalism and placing knighthoods in the royal state system, and thus made the county system the institutional basis for the centralized power of the imperial system.
In a positive sense, China's land is under the unified control of the central government, thus ensuring the unification of the Chinese national land, and then becoming the material basis for national integration, but at the same time, it must be noted that the hereditary system of knighthood has not completely disappeared, while the control of the imperial family over the land has been strengthened, and the members of the royal family have become one of the important reasons for the social turmoil in the imperial era due to the division of land and private ownership, until the Zhao royal family of the Song Dynasty basically eliminated this phenomenon.
In this regard, Marien believes:
The emperor of the ancients did not try to be selfish in the world, so the land of the Son of Heaven was thousands of miles, the princes were all one hundred miles, the bo was seventy miles, the son and the man were fifty miles, and the king was served by the gongqing doctor Caidi Luyi,...... Therefore, at that time, the field of the world belonged to the official (press: gong). ...... Qin began to think that Uchi was selfish, and one person was alone on it, and shouzai's renju was more convenient, and he regarded it as a hereditary, and Lu Li's feelings were false, although the wise and wise could not know it. ...... Three generations upwards, the world is not the son of heaven to get private, Qin abolished feudalism, and the world began to serve one person. For more than three generations, the field property was not privately obtained by the people, and qin abandoned the well field, and the first donation of field property was used by the people. (Ma Ruilin's "Literature Examination and Preface")
The symbolic difference between the monarchy and the imperial system is whether it is "the world is public" or "the world is private". Taking the world as selfish, one person regards the exclusive transport of the land of Uchi as the imperial system, and not the selfish people in the world as the royal system.
【End of this article】
exegesis
(1) Quoted from: Lü Simian, Illustrating the Unification of Chinese History, Medieval History, and Qin Zhizhi and Its Policies, Jilin Publishing Group Co., Ltd., 2009.
(2) "History of The First Emperor of Qin" said: "The richest people in the world migrated to Xianyang with 120,000 households." The purpose of migrating these royal nobles to Xianyang was to prevent them from creating a duplicate state. But it seems implausible to move such a large number of people to the capital. If this number is calculated according to 5 people per household, 600,000 people will be relocated to Xianyang, and why should the rich family have more than 5 people per household? Taking the 170 kingdoms at the most in the Zhou Dynasty, 3 secretaries of state, 5 doctors, and 27 scholars, plus 300 central officials of the Zhou Dynasty, the total number of officials even those knighted at all levels, the total number of households is about 6500, even if the limit of the fifth knighthood is considered (dukes 9, 5, marquis 240, 4, earl 501, 3, viscount, baron a total of 1023, 2 and 1 generations), each generation multiplies, it is possible that the number of households as rich people will not exceed 30,000. Under the monarchical system, the people were limited by Ida and could not become rich; after the implementation of the reform of the Ida system in the late Warring States period, even if the number of people who could get rich through land trading was considerable, they would not be migrated to Xianyang as a force to control. Other than that. At the end of the Warring States period, the total population of the country was about 11-12 million, and it was impossible to migrate 600,000 people to Xianyang.
(3) When the Jing Emperor Liu Qi was expanding, he threatened the central government due to the expansion of the feudal power. He decided to cut down his domain, which ensued a joint rebellion of seven fiefdoms. After the counter-rebellion, Liu Qi took back the administrative and military powers of the feudal state, and appointed the feudal state to appoint a minister, and the real power of the feudal state was transferred to the hands of the feudal minister, and the power of the princes was weakened, so as to ensure the central government's control over the feudal state. The vassal states were dozens of counties in size, equivalent to or even larger than counties, parallel to the counties. The largest fiefdom of the Marquis (Meritorious Servant) was a county, as small as a few townships.
(4) The main content of the "Shiwu continuous sitting system" implemented by Shang Martin during the time of Qin Xiaogong was: It is forbidden for fathers and sons to live in the same room, and all people with two male laborers or more must live separately and form independent households; at the same time, with the idea of "peasant warfare", the common people are organized according to military organizations, with five families as a company, with wu chang, ten families for what, shi chang, and one village for gathering, above which are li, pavilion, township, county, and county. There are lizheng in the pavilion, there are pavilion chiefs in the pavilion, there are three elders in the township, and it is not allowed to move without authorization; the people of the same shi must supervise each other and report each other; if someone commits a crime, they must actively expose it, otherwise the ten families will sit together. Because Shang Martin believes, "The reason why the country is prosperous is also the agricultural war." (Book of Shangjun: Agricultural Warfare). Shang Martin also adopted a land policy of preferential taxes and incentives for farming to attract ordinary people from other countries to come to Qin to cultivate. The Shiwu system of the Qin state became the basis for the Baojia system and the hukou system in later generations; it was also the precedent of agricultural-military communism in the period of communalization.
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Highlights from previous issues
Qin Shi Huang's centralized system and its main differences from the Xia-Shang Dynasty monarchy (Part 1)
The change of Zhou Qin: from the monarchy to the imperial system and from the world to the world
The journey of the avenue, the world is the public - China's royal system and royal way
In the xia, shang, and zhou dynasties, there was a system of separating officials and selecting meritocrats
Xia Shang's three generations of the world were public and well-fielded and tithe systems
The Xia Shang Dynasty's sub-feudal system and equal feudal alliance
The Chinese Experience of Social Governance: The Law of Heaven and Earth: A System of Ritual Music Centered on Celestial Sacrifices
Xia Shang's Kyushu Five Costume System and the Great Unification Of The World Thought
The power of the early monarchy depended on the virtue and benevolence of the king
The Renwang of the Western Zhou Dynasty had the slave problem and the 14-year republic beginning in 841 BC
From the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire (Part 1)
From the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire (Part 2)
The civil community of Athens and Aristotle's views on political life
The Spartan republic, the four regimes of ancient Greece and their souls