• The rise of the Ch’in
• The 'First Emperor' of Ch’in
• How to rule the Chinese Empire
• Book and scholar burning
• Ch’in accomplishments
• First Emperor Standardizes Writing

Chapter 44: Ch’in Empire (221-207 BCE)

The rise of the Ch’in

As the rules of warfare changed, as mentioned above, the stronger states began swallowing up the smaller ones. By about 450 BC seven states had conquered the rest. These states were constantly battling each other. In about 270 BC, Fan Sui, a disgraced official from the state of Wei, advised King Chao of the state of Ch'in that "Those skilled at enriching their families do so at the expense of the state; those skilled at enriching the state do so at the expense of other states."[1]

Prior to this time, the state of Ch'in had been feudalizing, i.e., the king had given his uncles huge fiefs and they had been warring against their neighbors for their own good rather than the good of the state. If King Chao had died at this time, the state of Ch'in might have split up again. But upon hearing this advice King Chao demoted and banished his uncles, assuming total control himself. This was the beginning of the end for feudalism in China and the beginning of the centralizing process. The state of Ch'in ceased to dissipate their own power by 'enriching their families' 'at the expense of the state', i.e. traditional feudalism. King Chao began 'enriching his state' 'at the expense of other states' by expanding his borders. King Chao retained control for himself. Instead of relying upon family he began to rely upon capable advisors. This rings of Confucius' idea of government. It is opposed to the ju notion of family and hereditary privilege.

The 'First Emperor' of Ch’in

After a 56-year reign King Chao died, having significantly expanded Ch'in's borders and powers. After some very short reigns, his brother's grandson became king of Ch'in. Continuing his grand uncle’s policies, he finally conquered all the states of China by 221 BC, as well as pushing back the 'barbarians' of the northern steppes. Instead of continuing to conquer as did Alexander the Great or Napoleon, maybe there was nothing left worth conquering, he decided to consolidate his gains. He took the name of 'First Emperor' Shih Huang Ti. Anti-feudalism, he killed all the remaining kings and abolished the names of their states.

Let it be reiterated fighting the barbarians on their borders had toughened the state of Ch’in, just as with the preceding the state of Chou. They had absorbed nomadic military techniques as well as their militarily based culture. Thus their foundation was in power not creativity. They were metal not wood.

The metal of the legalistic Ch’in dictatorship under Shih Huang Ti, “The First Emperor”, united China in a way that hadn’t been possible under the feudalistic Chou. Upon seizing control on the law and order ticket, the Ch’in ‘First Emperor’ revolutionized the Chinese world.

“Ch’in Shih Huang Ti abolished the political system of the Chou, with its many petty states and hereditary princes, and divided the country into 36 provinces, over each of which he set officials appointed by and directly responsible to himself. … He introduced a uniform system of laws, weights and measures, thus aiding both unity and commerce.”[2]

This was the good side of metal, introducing regularity and order.

He also burned all the books about the past and executed many scholars.

“The Legalists put up the Ch’in dictatorship (221-207 BCE) which burned all books in 213 BCE except those in imperial archives and works on medicine, divination and agriculture.” [3]

For this reason, Chinese scholars and historians call him the 'First Emperor' of the Ch’in rather than the ‘First Emperor’ of China, which he deserves to be called for uniting China. This was the bad side of metal, excessive rigidity and intolerance.

Hence the First Emperor with his extreme measures unified codes, measures and language, all of which united China as an empire for the first time, that was impossible under the myriad regional variations of the feudalistic Chou. A few questions emerge. How was the 'First Emperor' able to conquer and unify China? How was he able to enforce his laws? How did the philosophy of legalism enter in? Why did he burn all the books?

How to rule the Chinese Empire

After conquering China the first question was how to rule the largest Empire that China had ever known. His advisors of the aristocratic ju class, contrary to Confucius, advised that he reward family and friends with large fiefs. This showed the side of Confucianism that worshipped the good old days of the Chou dynasty. They wanted to return to the supposedly idyllic times of the past.

Li Ssu, Chief Justice of Ch'in, also a philosopher and follower of Han Fei and the legalists, offered a different solution. He pointed out that granting fiefs worked for a short time, but that in the long run it led to the downfall of the Chou dynasty because of the splintering effect caused by infighting. He said reward your friends and family with pensions and titles, but retain power through strict laws. Legalism. Administer the kingdom through a centralized bureaucracy based upon merit rather than bloodline. Confucius.

The 'First Emperor' agreed. The Ch'in passed laws that applied to everyone equally. He abolished aristocratic titles and either killed the aristocrats or put them to work. Attempting to be the enlightened ruler he set himself a daily quota of 120 pounds of documents.[4] Confucius. It became against the Law to challenge the Law or the State. Legalism.

Li Ssu counseled legalistically that heavy punishments should be meted out for minor offenses in order to teach a firm lesson.

“Only an intelligent ruler is capable of applying heavy punishments to light offenses. If light offenses carry heavy punishments, one can imagine what will be done against a serious offense. Thus the people will not dare to break the laws.” Li Ssu

Li Ssu didn’t count on the fact that when the punishment is excessive that it creates outlaws, people living beyond and against the law. It was these people that eventually undermined the Ch’in state.

Book and scholar burning

Nine years after the ascendancy of the Ch'in, a scholar, at a celebration of the 33rd year of the Emperor's rule over the Ch'in, pointed out that nothing lasted long that was not based upon ancient examples. This Ju school rumbling aroused the animosity of Li Ssu. He responded,

"These scholars learn only from the old, not from the new … They discuss each new decree, judging it according to their own schools of thought, opposing it in their hearts, while discussing it openly in the streets. This must be stopped."

The solution they chose was to burn all the ancient books and to execute anyone who quoted from them. The 'First Emperor' had 400 scholars buried alive as an example to the rest. This earned him the perpetual animosity of the Chinese scholars, who refuse to give the Ch'in Dictatorship much credit.

Also the Chinese don't grant much credit to something that doesn't last long. Even though the system set up by the Ch’in dominated the Chinese political structure for 2000 years, even though China itself is named after the Ch’in dynasty, even though the very unification of China with a sense of national identity started from this point, the First Emperor’s family and legalistic philosophy did not continue to rule China after his death. Li Ssu, his main advisor, was so aware of the fragility of the Empire that he concealed the death of the First Emperor in 210 BC for two months. Indeed within four years of his death in 206 BC, the legalistic system of the Ch’in Empire had been overthrown and replaced by the more tolerant Han dynasty.

“Ch’in has fared badly at the hands of later Chinese historians because of its harsh laws and cruel punishments, the grandiose and often eccentric deportment of the First Emperor, the anti-intellectualism of the regime and especially its anti-Confucianism, and the short life and rapid collapse of the dynasty. But Ch’in had fully destroyed the ancient feudal order and had demonstrated that China could indeed be united, centralized, and strong with a new kind of society and government. The establishment of the precedent makes the short Ch’in era one of the major watersheds of Chinese history.”[5]

Whether the First Emperor’s family continued after his death is secondary to his transforming effect upon China. The economic uniformity and the writing system that he introduced still exist. But the Ch’in family doesn’t exist, nor his philosophy. We are getting close to the context of the attack. The Ju school with their connection to ancestor worship judge not by achievement but by family duration. Second the Ch’in looked to the future rather than to the past for inspiration. The Ju School who achieved ascendancy in the Han looked to the past for inspiration. No matter that the Ch’in had created a centralized bureaucracy based upon merit to rule the kingdom. Confucius would have been pleased but not the Confucians of the ju class who judged the First Emperor by their value system rather than on his actual merit. Hence Confucian scholars never refer to the Ch’in ruler as the First Emperor of China but only as the first emperor of the Ch’in.

Ch’in accomplishments

Let us recapitulate. With the disintegration of order at the end of the Chou, the state of Ch’in on the northwestern frontier seized control of the imperial regalia and the country. Subsequent with the expansion of China’s borders they built or finished the Great Wall in order to keep the barbarians out. According to legend this wall was 1400 miles long.[6] Purportedly the First Emperor wanted to construct something that could be seen from the Moon. This has been a great source of pride for the Chinese in modern times, as an example of their ancient tradition and craftsmanship.[7]

“The boundaries of the Empire were greatly extended, bringing South China and Tonkin for the first time under Chinese rule. The Feudal aristocracy were dispossessed and forcibly moved in tens of thousands to Shensi; rigid standardization of the written language, of weights and measures and of wagon axles was enforced and over it all Shih-Huang-Ti set a centralized bureaucracy controlled by the watchful eye of the censors. … But while these measures imposed an intolerable burden on the educated minority, they unified the scattered tribes and principalities and now for the first time we can speak of China as a political and cultural entity. This unity survived and was consolidated on more humane lines during the Han dynasty, so that the Chinese of today still look back on this epoch with pride and call themselves’ men of Han’.”[8]

Before the Ch’in dictatorship China had been dominated by a multitude of small hereditary kingdoms (1000, according to Chinese tradition), each with their own laws, weights and measures, and continually fighting amongst themselves – not unlike Europe up until modern times. The Ch’in abolished hereditary rule and divided China up into provinces with administrators appointed by the Emperor. Furthermore they standardized weights and measures throughout the land. He accomplished over 2000 years ago in China what the Common Market is still squabbling about in Europe today. The First Emperor didn’t listen to partisan politics; he forced his way upon the whole country. By force of personality he created modern China as an imperial power. He also set the stage for the Confucian revolution that would follow.

Basically Europe and Chou China were dominated by hereditary politics, with all the insanity that breeds. During Ch’in China, Shih Huang Ti shattered this system and administered the whole country with the help of his capable advisors, eliminating hereditary idiosyncrasies. The Han dynasty extended this system of administration, by basing these administrative positions upon state exams.[9]

This centralization of China was similar to the centralization of the United States after the Civil War. Before the Civil War, the states had joined the central government in a voluntary way. They reserved for themselves the right to make their own laws and to withdraw from the collective if they didn't agree with the laws made by the central government. The central government under Abraham Lincoln made it clear that this was not a voluntary organization by militarily forcing the Southern States to obey the laws of the federal government. In the United States there were some 40 states to deal with. In China, there were perhaps a thousand states to deal with. The United States Civil War took 4 years. The Unification of China took 250 years. But it was a similar process.

Initially each of the states wanted to make their own choices. Gradually but surely over this 250 year period the smaller states were gobbled up by the larger states until only 8 remained. Then finally only one remained, the Ch'in, who forced everyone to belong to their organization with its laws, weights, currency, and writing system. No more choices, except what was allowed by the Imperial government. The United States of China.

First Emperor Standardizes Writing

Oddly enough, one of the major accomplishments of the First Emperor, was that he standardized the Chinese ideograms.[10]

During the splintering of the Chou into many feudal states, the written language was also splintering, acquiring many regional variations. With centuries piled upon centuries, we can imagine these variations becoming quite extreme. However with the centralization and book burning under the Ch’in dictatorship, the Chinese written language achieved a consistency that bridged cultural differences.

On the one side the First Emperor is burning books and scholars. On the other side he is purifying the Chinese ideograms of local idiosyncrasies. This seemingly paradoxical behavior had a higher meaning. The First Emperor burned all the books with the old ideograms so that individual states couldn’t hold onto their old systems. He felt that metal had to applied in an extreme way to this overgrowth of wood. He cut the tree back to its bare roots, for its own health. This purification and integration of the Chinese language has to be considered the single most important element in the consolidation of the Chinese as a unified culture.

Along with the standardization of written Chinese, the First Emperor also standardized the weights and measures[11]. Hence the large amorphous artistic state of Ch’u in the south of China was unified with semi-barbarian military state of Ch’in in the north through a standardization of the most common elements. This created a common foundation for trade that transcended extreme language, religious, and cultural differences.

Furthermore now the educated elite could communicate cross-culturally developing a common conceptual language for discourse. This additional aspect of Chinese thought is incredibly powerful. In the study of Chinese thought one comes to realize the importance of individual words themselves. In the west we combine many words in interesting combinations to stimulate new ideas. For this reason it is relatively easy to translate one European language into another. In China a word is created to crystallize a unique concept. An ideogram is created to signify that word. Then essays and books are written about what that word means in micro and macro context. In the European languages we might have multiple words signifying the concept at different stages. Hence as the great thinkers extended the meanings of these ideograms while possibly creating new ones, the ideograms would achieve a life of their own spreading throughout the Chinese empire.

To understand the magnitude of the difference and its implications, consider the difficulty of French, German, English, Italian, and Spanish literature, not to mention myriad other European cultures with their own language. Only the most scholarly have read books from each of these cultures in the original language. Therefore only the books, which emerge from the background are translated to the mother language, allowing thinkers of another language to consider the ideas. Also, no matter how much closer our European words are, idioms translate incompletely. Thus a translation is always a step away from the original.

While European mathematicians and scientists were able to achieve incredible cross-cultural leaps through mutual forward progress, they were using the universal language of mathematics to communicate. Indeed It has been suggested that the main reason that European math and science achieved such spectacular results compared to the rest of the world, was the creation of this common universal language. Indeed the Chinese use the same mathematical language of the west to communicate. They had no scientific language of their own with which to communicate effectively.

The scientific concepts are sometimes even tied to the ideograms themselves, i.e. the notation. While Maxwell’s equations have meaning outside the notation, they are more easily understood through the notation than through regular words. Indeed if you have ever attempted to read the old Greek geometry, one quickly realizes how powerful that the modern mathematical notation is. While the words are cumbersome and ineffectual, the same concept expressed in mathematical symbols is precise and unambiguous, no matter which culture on the planet you belong to.

While certain Chinese ideograms are translated with one European word in one context and another European word in another context. Certainly they are translated with different words depending upon the nationality. Hence a multiplicity of words and phrases are used to translate a single Chinese word.

As an example, originally yin was translated as the dark while yang was translated as the light. Obviously dark and light are inadequate translations. Gradually with increased knowledge of Chinese thought the words yin and yang have come into common usage. While not many know the full implications of the words, anyone can form his own opinion as to the meaning of the philosophy associated with them. Yet still it would take hundreds of European words to describe what yin and yang mean. There is still no effective European word that translates as yin and yang.

To finish this line of thought, the Chinese philosophers were able to communicate in a universal language across a broad range of cultures. This cross-cultural mix created a fertile ground for the transmission of ideas. Like European science, they were able to reach a precision and economy of sophistication in their word concepts that transcends that of the west. With a single ideogram the Chinese can express a sophisticated concept to a multitude of diverse cultures, while in the West each culture has its own word with a unique spelling to express the same concept. (Of course this was not as true when Latin was the lingua franca of the West.)

We are like the Greek geometers, expressing sophisticated concepts in a bulky way. It is for this reason that some philosophers have suggested that the Chinese terms must be adopted to express certain concepts rather than attempting to translate them into the mother tongue. Use yin and yang, and Taiji rather than dark, light and grand ultimate. Introduce the concept associated with the word and then expand the word, rather than trying to find a European equivalent.

In this work I have attempted to transcend language itself by reaching at metaphor. Tempered steel is tempered steel globally throughout the ages of humans. A campfire is constant, as is a flowing river, or a fine work of cast bronze. A polarity is polarity, while life is life. Hence while a word can express an idea that must be translated into words, a metaphor transcends words in the universality of its application

According to tradition different individuals memorized many of the Chinese classics. Thus with the overthrow of the Ch’in, these scholars emerged and wrote their books down not in their old script but in the new standardized script. Hence nearly all of our surviving Chinese manuscripts were written after the Ch’in book burning in the new standardized script. This script is basically the same one that is used today.

Thus the reign of the First Emperor, while remembered as a dictatorship for its strict laws and book burning, left a lasting mark on China, by uniting its diverse peoples under a common literary and imperial culture. The legalistic Ch’in government unified China by homogenizing the culture by establishing uniformity of weights, measure and written language. Furthermore they broke down traditional boundaries that had separated the Chinese into different feudal territories. But all these changes were accomplished by suspending Chinese personal liberty and freedom; these were painful, wrenching times. The Chinese had experienced a free but chaotic society at the end of the Chou, then an ordered society with no freedom during the Ch’in. Now they were ready for freedom and order. Enter the Han dynasty.