The Everlasting Empire (11 page)

In retrospect, this almost unanimous adherence of preimperial thinkers to the principle of monarchism appears as significant as their consensus in favor of a politically unified realm. Monarchism was promulgated under an exceptional “open-ended” situation, when no government was able to impose political orthodoxy, and when divergent ideas were freely aired at competing courts. It is exceptionally significant that during that period of intellectual openness and creativity we know of not a single philosopher or intellectual, aside from Zhuangzi, who opposed the rulercentered political order. Throughout the two subsequent millennia many thinkers raised their voices against the excesses of the monarchic system, and some of them, such as Deng Mu (1247–1306) and Huang Zongxi (1610–1695), made sweeping accusations against dynastic rule as a whole, but even they never departed from the ideological framework established during the Warring States period: the common good is attainable only under the morally impeccable and selfless emperor.
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Having become singularly legitimate long before the formation of the unified em

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pire, the monarchie principle of rule remained virtually unchallenged until the very last years of the imperial polity.

SAGES, MEDIOCRITIES, AND INACTIVE RULERS

Ritual and institutional empowerment of the monarch was a reasonable solution to the ongoing disintegration of the sociopolitical order in the centuries preceding the imperial unification; but it was also a dangerous gamble, insofar as the enormous monarchical power could be abused by a malevolent ruler. The awareness of the dangers that a bad ruler might inflict on his subjects was embedded already in one of the foundational myths of Chinese political culture: the story of the last king of the Shang dynasty, Zhouxin (d. ca. 1046 BCE), whose atrocities brought about Heaven’s withdrawal of its Decree from the Shang, and the resultant overthrow of the tyrant and collapse of his state. This event was rationalized in the concept of the transferability of Heaven’s Decree, which served throughout Chinese history as a powerful warning to the rulers to mend their ways, and as justification of the occasional overthrow of a dynasty and/or the replacement of an erring ruler.
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We shall return to the concept of legitimate rebellion in chapter 5; but here it should be noted that hideous tyrants who deserved to be overthrown were an exception rather than the rule. Much more frequent were average, inadequate rulers, who were neither as depraved as Zhouxin nor as good, intelligent, and moral as the ideal envisioned by most thinkers.

The question of the ruler’s potential ineptitude became increasingly acute during the Warring States period. With the rapid adoption of the meritocratic principle of rule—the appointing of officials according to their abilities rather than their pedigree—an odd situation ensued: the monarch came to be the only power-holder who owed his position exclusively to his birth rather than his merits. This added a paradoxical dimension to the contemporaneous monarchistic discourse: the same thinkers who committed themselves to enhancing the ruler’s authority commonly considered themselves to be morally and intellectually superior to their sovereigns. Accommodating this inherent contradiction became one of the most challenging tasks for political thinkers of the preimperial, and, mutatis mutandis, the imperial age.
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It is against this background that the discourse of the True Monarch came into existence, adding another, extraordinarily important dimension to the emerging culture of monarchism.

The idea of the True Monarch as a person who unifies political with moral and intellectual superiority burgeoned in the second half of the Warring States period, in tandem with the increasing interest in the concept of a Sage. The Sage was a semidivinized person whose ability to develop his mental and moral qualities to the utmost would allow him to

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subdue human beings and possibly the cosmos itself. This construct was an outgrowth of the increasingly intensive search for individual perfection; and it had manifold ramifications in the realm of ethical, metaphysical, and political thought.
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Occasionally, the discourse of sagehood, with its focus on a hierarchy of abilities and morality separate from the sociopolitical pyramid, could become subversive of the political order, especially as thinkers unanimously refused to identify current rulers as sages. Yet it was also widely recognized that the bifurcation between sagacity and rulership was a temporary aberration: the two had presumably been unified in the age of legendary sage rulers of the past and would reunify in the figure of the future True Monarch. The latter’s all-penetrating intellect and paradigmatic goodness would eventually enable him to put an end to war, turmoil, and bloodshed, and to establish an era of universal peace and orderly rule.

The towering figure of the True Monarch—a quasi-messianic savior, “who arrives once in five hundred years,” and whose coming is long overdue
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—overshadowed the political discourse of the century that preceded the imperial unification. This monarch was conceived of as essentially distinct from the current, inadequate sovereigns, not only in terms of his individual abilities but also in terms of his expected achievements. It was widely agreed that only the True Monarch would be able to unify the world at last after centuries of bloodshed and turmoil; only he would bring about tranquillity, a perfect sociopolitical order, universal compliance, and, in some texts, moral and intellectual uniformity. Only under the True Monarch would the Utopian dreams of thinkers finally be realized. These high expectations of the future savior are evident, for instance, in the writings of Xunzi (ca. 310–230), arguably the single most important political thinker of the Warring States period:

The [True] Son of Heaven is the most respectable in terms of his pow-
er and position and has no rivals under Heaven… His morality is
pure; his knowledge and kindness are extremely clear. He faces south-
wards and makes All-under-Heaven obedient. Among all the people,
there is none who does not politely hold his hands following him,
thereby being compliantly transformed. There are no recluses under
Heaven, the goodness of no one is neglected; the one who unites with
him is good, the one who differs from him is bad.
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Under the rule of the perspicacious, kind, and moral True Monarch there is no room for injustice, for neglect of one’s duties, for noncompliance. Even independent-minded intellectuals of Xunzi’s ilk will not be needed: indeed, if the only criterion of goodness and badness is identification with the monarch, then members of the educated elite lose their importance as the ruler’s guides. The future sage ruler, whom Xunzi identi

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fies elsewhere as a counterpart of Heaven and Earth, deserves nothing short of absolute obedience.

Panegyrics to the True Monarch at times may fuel the misconception that Xunzi and his fellow thinkers were empty flatterers whose support of the monarchic principle of rule blinded them to its potentially negative consequences. This impression is patently wrong, though. In the
Xunzi
and elsewhere exaltation of the future unifier coexists with strong criticism of contemporaneous inept sovereigns.
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Actually, idealization of the True Monarch served here and in other texts primarily to underline the inadequacy of current rulers, whose mediocrity was contrasted with the superb abilities of the future Sage. Insofar as reigning rulers fell short of that superhuman hero, they could not expect the degree of obedience and submissiveness that would be owed to the True Monarch.

Inasmuch as the reign of the True Monarch remains a distant and barely attainable possibility, how should the monarchic system function in the meantime? Here Xunzi proposes what appears at first glance to be a brilliant solution: the sovereign, while ostensibly omnipotent, should relegate most of his everyday tasks to meritorious aides: he should reign but not rule:

The enlightened sovereign endorses the guiding principles, while the
benighted ruler endorses the details… The ruler selects one chancel-
lor, arranges one law, clarifies one principle in order to cover every-
thing, to illuminate everything, and to observe the completion [of af-
fairs]. The chancellor selects and orders heads of the hundred officials,
attends to the guiding principles of the hundred affairs, and thereby
refines the divisions between the hundred clerks at court, measures
their achievements, discusses their rewards, and presents their achieve-
ments at the year’s end to the ruler. When they act correctly, they are
approved; otherwise they are dismissed. Hence the ruler works hard in
looking for [proper officials] and is at rest when employing them.
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In this passage Xunzi speaks of an “enlightened sovereign”: one who is able to select a truly worthy aide and to relegate to him everyday tasks. Elsewhere Xunzi argues that a capable chancellor would successfully run the state even under an inadequate (infantile or senile) monarch.
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This appears to be an effective merging of the principles of monarchism and meritocracy, both of which Xunzi cherished: while the ruler will enjoy ritual supremacy and also preserve the crucial right to appoint, inspect, and, naturally, dismiss his aide, it would be the latter, a man of proven capabilities, who would run everyday affairs. The appeal of this approach to members of the educated elite was considerable: even two millennia later Huang Zongxi viewed it as the best solution to the problem of a

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monarch’s inadequacy.
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But why should an “enlightened monarch” relegate much of his power to an underling? Would the promise of “being at rest” suffice to entice the sovereign to give up active intervention in policy making?

Xunzi leaves this question unanswered. Perhaps he did not consider his proposal to be threatening to the ruler: after all, Xunzi repeatedly reiterates his assertion that the ruler’s ministers would forever be morally upright men whose actions would benefit the monarch. Not all of Xunzi’s contemporaries shared his belief in harmonious relations between the ruler and the ministers, though: Xunzi’s dissenting disciple, Han Feizi, for example, compares the ruler’s underlings to hungry tigers, who are ready to devour the sovereign unless he is able to overawe them into submissiveness, and who seek nothing but personal gain. Yet despite their diametrically opposed assumptions about ruler-minister relations, Han Feizi’s practical recommendations curiously resemble those of Xunzi. Han Feizi warns the ruler that excessive engagement in the tasks of government would expose him to scheming ministers: it is better, then, to display impartiality, to avoid overengagement in administrative routine, and to allow the ministers to rule the realm while closely supervising them and mercilessly exposing their machinations.
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Differences aside, Han Feizi and Xunzi agree that the ruler should rein in his whims, limit his intervention in everyday administration, and enjoy the utmost prestige and absolute power without actually realizing it. In the final account, both thinkers propose radical reduction of the monarch’s personal involvement in routine government affairs.

The ultimate convergence of two supposedly antithetical approaches is not incidental. Texts from the late Warring States period, whatever their ideological affiliation, repeatedly advocate the ruler’s impartiality, his lack of emotion, and his refraining from action as the quintessence of political wisdom. Rationalizations for these suggestions differ, but the bottom line appears to be surprisingly similar for all: the ruler is supposed to retain his ritual prestige, the right to appoint chief ministers, and the final say on major political matters; but he is not expected to exercise his will directly. In this fashion the thinkers apparently hoped to ensure that even an inept ruler would not cause irreparable damage to his state. Only under the morally and intellectually superb True Monarch would this situation have to change. What most thinkers might not have anticipated is that their ideal of the sage monarch would be appropriated by one of the most powerful—but also one of the most ruthless—rulers of China: the First Emperor of the unifying Qin dynasty. Having proclaimed himself the True Monarch, the First Emperor brought about a radical change in rulerminister relations and forever altered China’s monarchism.

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THE FIRST EMPEROR: THE REIGNING SAGE

The First Emperor of Qin is arguably the single most important ruler in China’s long history. His reign became a crucial historical juncture: both because he creatively appropriated aspects of the monarchistic discourse of preceding centuries, molding them into a novel image of a reigning Frue Monarch; and because the new pattern of emperorship that he established lasted, with certain modifications, for two millennia.
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Moreover, his reign is important not only for its positive but also for its negative impact on subsequent dynasts: those rulers adopted many of his institutional and ideological innovations but distanced themselves—at least declaratively—from his alleged hubris, harshness, and arbitrariness. Fhis complex legacy highlights the essentially contradictory nature of Chinese emperorship, with its simultaneous emphasis on the ruler’s omnipotence and on the desirability of limiting his personal impact on political affairs; and, as I shall argue below, the First Emperor’s reign exacerbated this contradiction.

The First Emperor’s reconceptualization of his position was primarily a result of his truly unprecedented success. Having put an end to centuries of warfare and having unified the entire known civilized world, he fulfilled the major requirement for becoming the Frue Monarch. Indeed, his propaganda efforts focused on stressing his identity with the Frue Monarch, both in terms of his individual features, such as sagacity and morality, and in terms of his achievements—most prominently, peace, perfect sociopolitical order, universal prosperity, and the populace’s total compliance with the emperor’s will. “Wherever human traces reach,
I
Fhere is none who does not declare himself subject”; “men and women embody compliance”; “there is none who is not respectful and submissive”; “all live their full life and there is none who does not achieve his ambitions”; and even “horses and oxen” receive the emperor’s favor.
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All this means that the dreams of generations of thinkers had been realized: the First Emperor became the savior of humankind!