The Princeton-China Series

Not Assigned

Su Li, Zhang Yongle, Daniel A. Bell, Edmund Ryden

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781400889778
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de la Chine

How was the vast ancient Chinese empire brought together and effectively ruled? What are the historical origins of the resilience of contemporary China's political system? In The Constitution of Ancient China, Su Li, China's most influential legal theorist, examines the ways in which a series of fundamental institutions, rather than a supreme legal code upholding the laws of the land, evolved and coalesced into an effective constitution.Arguing that a constitution is an institutional response to a set of issues particular to a specific society, Su Li demonstrates how China unified a vast territory, diverse cultures, and elites from different backgrounds into a whole. He delves into such areas as uniform weights and measurements, the standardization of Chinese characters, and the building of the Great Wall. The book includes commentaries by four leading Chinese scholars in law, philosophy, and intellectual history--Wang Hui, Liu Han, Wu Fei, and Zhao Xiaoli—who share Su Li's ambition to explain the resilience of ancient China's political system but who contend that he overstates functionalist dimensions while downplaying the symbolic. Exploring why China has endured as one political entity for over two thousand years, The Constitution of Ancient China will be essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the institutional legacy of the Chinese empire.

Part I

CHAPTER ONE

The Constitution of the Territory and Politics of a Large State

Su Li

Under the wide heaven, there is no land which is not the king’s;
Within the land’s sea-coasts, there is no one who is not the king’s subject.

—BOOK OF POETRY, “NORTH MOUNTAIN”¹

A State must rely on its mountains and rivers.

—SAYINGS OF THE STATES: ZHOU²

The Problem Posed by a Large State

It is very difficult to form a state in a traditional rural economy of small self-sufficient villages. First, it is hardly necessary to do so. “At sunrise we set out to work; at sunset we return to rest. We bore wells and drink; we plough the fields and eat. Of what use is the emperor’s beneficence to us?”³ These lines, which are said to come from one of the earliest folk songs recorded in China, express the idea that peasants have no need for a political system or an emperor. Even though government may be necessary to avoid the occasional conflicts and wars that might break out between agricultural communities—there may be a need for an arbitrator whose power transcends that of the particular villages—living in villages “where the sound of chicken and dog carries and the people do not ever meet each other,”⁴ people have very little need of a large state or even any idea of what one might be like. It is even difficult to form a large state, not only because—more so than in a commercial society—it is very difficult to collect the taxes that are needed to support an effective administration, and because it is very difficult to support the administrative apparatus of a large state, but also because heaven is high and the emperor far off, so the administration has great difficulty in entering into the villages. Thus, how can the hearts and minds of the people be led to identify with a state? Information about the change of a dynasty could not be passed on even six hundred years after the event—“they had no knowledge of the Han dynasty, let alone the Wei and Jin,” Tao Yuanming (陶渊明) says.⁵ Although the Peach Blossom Land described by Tao may be an exception or even a figment of the author’s imagination, it nonetheless sets out the issues.⁶

As I mentioned in my introduction, regulating the Yellow River demands a unified coordination of an even larger area. There is also conflict, opposition, and unification between the agricultural civilization of the central plain and the pastoral civilization of the north. These two major factors led the agricultural communities in this area to establish and uphold a unified administration.⁷ The two areas involved were not only very large but also virtually overlapped. Management of the water was largely focused on the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, but competition with the pastoral peoples led to this area expanding ever further westward, across the plain formed by the River Wei to the south-central section of present-day Ningxia and Gansu. The two factors of the regulation of a long river and the clash of two civilizations were ongoing issues in premodern times, and so the need for administration was ever present.

Historical records that predate modern archaeological discoveries show that during the time of China’s first three dynasties—the Xia, Shang, and Zhou (ca. twenty-first century BC to 256 BC)—the territory under central rule was already significant and the population not small. Political rule was maintained for a sufficiently long time and each dynasty was a direct successor of the preceding one and built on its foundations. They conquered and absorbed small states on the borders, expanded the influence of the soft and hard power of their political culture over the territory under their sway, and gradually increased their actual rule over several areas. By the time the Western Zhou adopted a feudal system for royal princes, the area controlled by the Zhou, as can be seen from the territories assigned to the princes, covered the modern province of Shandong, most of Henan, the west of Hebei and Shanxi, the center of Shaanxi, the east of Gansu, and the north of Jiangsu, Hubei, and Anhui, a total area of nearly one million square kilometers. Since it is not possible to determine the borders of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou with great accuracy, there can be no sensible estimate of the total population.⁸ Yet the area and population both exceeded those of the thirteen colonies that formed the United States, at which time America was already a large state by European standards, and only then did the issue of being a large state arise.⁹

Although various dynasties rose and fell over this area of land and there were revolutions such as from the feudal system to that of commanderies and counties, and even long periods of war and chaos, division and separation, with bordering tribes entering into the central plain, gradually bringing about an integration of peoples, by the Qing dynasty China’s borders encompassed an area of thirteen million square kilometers and a population of 450 million. Therefore, on the basis of the size of its territory and population, this broad area of land called China from the Western Zhou onward showed an overall tendency to seek the kind of administration a large state needs. In general, since the foundation of the empire by the Qin and the Han, it never lost the status of a large state with centralized power unifying many peoples. The main dynasties generally ruled for two to three hundred years and, objectively speaking, provided a long period of peace for ordinary people. From this we may postulate that the people of this land had their own inherent and sustained reasons for creating the administration of a large state, since from an empirical point of view the administration of this large state was created by the dynasties and politicians throughout history. It was something that they imposed on the people of this area.

A large state is not a small state writ large; the administrative requirements of a large state are not the same as those of a small state. While not denying the special wisdom and organization of some small states wedged between large states—the practical wisdom of the ancient Greek city-states is indeed widely consulted by scholars of many countries even today—Aristotle also recognized that the population of a city-state could not be too large, since the larger it became the more difficult it was to administer.¹⁰ A god would be required to do so. Who could really believe that it might be more difficult to administer Singapore, Nauru, or Tonga than China, the United States, or India? Would a more complex form of organization be required? Even if both large and small states have their own peculiar problems, this only implies that in the matter of administration of states there can hardly be any “common standard for any place surrounded by four seas,” some kind of magical administrative panacea.

In fact, because the area covered is very broad—something implied by the notion of a large state—it will encompass many different kinds of terrain that might even be separated geographically or topographically. The means of production in the diverse areas will differ, and so there will be many cultural groups, dialects, and writing systems. Although these need not lead to cultural barriers, they quite probably will tend in that direction. It is hard to please all tastes, and so with more tribes and peoples the chances of differences leading to conflict are greater. Indeed, even among a people who share one common culture, even among members of the same society or community, an increase of population will necessarily lead to greater separation of interests and even to contradictions and divisions.

Hence, the greatest difference between large and small states must surely lie in their constitution (Constitution/formation). Small states, such as the Greek city-states, have no problem with different levels of administration, but in large states there is clearly a need for some kind of administrative hierarchy, and so there is what might be termed the issue of “the relationship between the center and the peripheries.” The existence of this issue gives rise to the danger of possible separation of certain peripheral areas, which invariably implies war, as in the Civil War in the United States or the referendum on Scottish independence of 2014.¹¹ Furthermore, unlike island states, continental states face the issue of why there should be one state rather than many. Why is it that some rivers and mountain ranges constitute political boundaries and others do not? At least in some cases, these boundaries must be created by human administrations rather than by nature.

The first issue that constitutes a problem here is how historical China became a geographically large state. One might say that historical China was gradually built up in the course of history, but what history or what modern state has not previously faced different periods and levels of history in one way or other, including clan-based, village-based, tribal-based, even state-based incorporation, absorption, and integration? Without being the chosen people of God or enjoying the blessings of a leader, how is it that there can be a China that has lasted for three thousand years since the Western Zhou in this territory? Is this simply an accident of history? Why has history not shown a similar preference for the Xiong-nu (Huns), who once held sway over the northern part of the central plain, or some other great people of the continental steppe of Eurasia, or the Greeks, who were roughly contemporaneous with the Western Zhou and the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods in China, or even the later Macedonia? Besides the idea of undertaking military conquest, there is also the issue of holding onto power. Alexander the Great created the Macedonian Empire, which straddled the Eurasian landmass and North Africa, but when he died the empire split into several parts. This is rather similar to what happened a century later on the death of the Second Emperor of Qin. But the point is that shortly afterward, the Han succeeded the Qin and created an even larger empire that lasted for four hundred years, through the Western and Eastern Han dynasties. The same scenario was played out again and again before the present formation of China, whereas Macedonia never again appeared in history.

A large state is not the product of a wide and fertile terrain. An abundance of natural resources would seem to imply that a larger population could survive in a given area, but it cannot guarantee that these people will get along harmoniously or respect one another or form and maintain a sufficiently large population that they can establish and sustain a long-lasting, peaceful, united, and large state. The vast expanse of continental Africa is far greater than the plains of East Asia, yet it has never given rise to a large state on the scale of the Han or the Tang. Even at the time of the Roman Empire it would be very difficult to say that Central and Western Europe enjoyed the peaceful and unified rule of a large state, since not only were there constant wars, there were, even more important, divisions that are still manifest in today’s European Union. It was only after its “discovery” by Europeans that the fertile land of North America produced a large state. Throughout history there have been several empires in the Eurasian landmass, including the Mongol Yuan dynasty, which entered into Chinese history, but all have passed when the wind blew them away. In terms of being a territorial state/civilization, and not just a civilization like ancient India or Arabia, and one that has continued as a large state, historical China, it would seem, is the only contender.

Vast distances and complex terrain will obviously weaken the administrative power of the center over the peripheries and lead one to the reasonable hypothesis that, without the support of an outstanding and effective organization along with the length of time in office, alertness, and wisdom in constitutional practice of a ruling class, then the very size itself will play against their being able to form a state, or at least if one happened to be formed then they would not be able to continue ruling it for long. Of course, the constitution of any state must come about as the product of basic political, economic, military, and cultural components; there is no such thing as a unique hidden weapon. Therefore, this chapter concentrates on examining the constitutional framework that encouraged, sustained, and expanded historical China so that it became a large state, and in particular on a broad understanding of the relationship of the center to the periphery.

The next section discusses the feudal system of the Western Zhou. This should not be taken as meaning that the relationship between the Son of Heaven and the feudal states was one of the center to the periphery.¹² Rather, I have good reason to place it in the context of a broad theoretical framework of the relationship between the center and the periphery and to analyze it as such. I shall look at it as constituting the earliest attempt to create the constitutional setup of a large state and as establishing the conditions for the later conversion into the commandery system (郡县制). Even in the Qin and Han, the feudal system was highly regarded for a time and served as one choice for the constitution of a large state, but based on a cost-effective analysis it was rejected or at least set aside as a form of political practice. The third section will consider the significance and role of the commandery system for the political constitution of ancient China. The fourth section discusses the geopolitical considerations that played a role in the administrative divisions of historical China. Faced with a large country encompassing many different forms of terrain and seeking to prevent separation or division and to strengthen the central government, the central authorities needed to adopt certain constitutional measures to deal with these considerations. Yet such considerations and practices are completely absent from Western constitutional practice and the academic tradition. The focus of the fifth section is another basic issue in the constitutional tradition of historical China, namely, that from the Western Zhou on, there was the additional remit of “bringing peace to the world under heaven,” which went beyond administering the central, agricultural region (“administering the state”); that is, it was necessary to provide a basic structural framework to regulate potential conflict between an agricultural China and the surrounding peoples. Although this issue is not directly equivalent to the relationship between the center and the periphery, it was at least sometimes in history formulated as parallel to this relationship. Finally, I draw a conclusion.

The Feudal System during the Western Zhou

The Chinese of a later time generally depict the commandery system as having provided historical China with its strongest and most powerful form of centralized power appropriate to the constitution of a large state, but the first attempts to draw up this constitutional framework should be traced back to the feudal divisions of the Western Zhou, for three reasons. First, the landmass under the rule of the five emperors of early legends was comparatively small and the Xia and Shang were still states composed of villages or leagues of villages, whereas the Western Zhou was—or, rather, more closely resembled—a large state with a political class. Second, counting from the decision by King Ping to move the capital east in 771 BC, the royal power of the Zhou Son of Heaven went into decline. The feudal states struggled fiercely among themselves, but before this the feudal system provided the Western Zhou with more than 270 years of stable political order. Third, no feast lasts forever. Any structure created by human beings is bound to succumb to history. Long and short are merely relative. What matters is to what extent the feudal system contributed to the constitution of a large state and whether that contribution was irreplaceable in its own time.

For this reason alone, the contribution of the feudal system of the Western Zhou to the constitution of historical China should not be underestimated. Although the Xia and the Shang had already held sway over a sufficiently broad territory, they did not exercise territorial jurisdiction or rule based on territory. Rather, towns and their hinterland constituted “hot spots” that had no clearly defined boundaries. That villages were granted the status of “fief” under the Xia and Shang was far more a matter of recognition of the political reality of a confederation of villages. In contrast, historical records inform us that in the early years of the Western Zhou, a whole series of new factors were added to those constituting the organization of the state. In addition to confirming that the lower reaches of the River Wei and the middle reaches of the Yellow River came under the direct rule of the special central area, the royal domain, the Zhou Son of Heaven, “set up the feudal princes and split the land among the people.” He divided all of the land outside the royal domain into many parcels of various sizes based on the population living there and placed his relatives or meritorious ministers as fief holders, leaving some villages unconquered. He established states ruled by princes of the blood and other states ruled by others.¹³ The fiefs of the Western Zhou brought to the earlier “separate” and “established” entities a new order that gradually led to the creation of a class and body of fief-holding princes.¹⁴

This implies, first, that the Zhou Son of Heaven was actively pursuing a form of direct political power and not simply passively recognizing the actual power of existing tribes or leaders. The use of “separate” and “established” entities shows that the highest ruling layer of the Western Zhou had the same awareness of how politics could be used to shape a state as did the Xia and the Shang and, more important, made efforts to begin this system. Second, although they lacked sovereignty, the feudal princes had land, people, and a political establishment and thus in these respects were very like modern states. The land and people held by the feudal states all came from the Zhou Son of Heaven. Since ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Editors’ Acknowledgments
• Editors’ Introduction
• Introduction
• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Glossary of Key Terms
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Contributors
• Index