The Everlasting Empire (5 page)

Finally, to understand fully the contribution of the intellectuals of the Warring States period to the imperial unification, we should note not only what they said but also what they did not say. That not a single individual is known ever to have endorsed a goal of regional state’s independence is most remarkable. Denied ideological legitimacy, separate polities became intrinsically unsustainable in the long term. Having been associated with turmoil, bloodshed, and general disorder, these states were doomed intellectually long before they were destroyed militarily. In retrospect, it seems that centuries of struggle could not have ended differently: insofar as everybody expected unification, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. The zero-sum game of the Warring States ended, amid tremendous bloodshed, in 221 BCE, when the most powerful of the regional states, Qin, wiped out its enemies in a series of brilliant military campaigns. The proud king of Qin proclaimed himself the First Emperor (r. 221–210 BCE), ushering in a new era in China’s history.

SUSTAINING UNITY

Unification was attained through resolute military action; but how to sustain it? The experience of the first unified imperial dynasties, the Qin (221–207 BCE) and the Han (206 BCE-220 CE), is particularly illuminating with regard to both challenges that faced the empire’s unifiers, and the ways developed to cope with those challenges. As ideological, administrative, and social patterns of the first dynasties had a lasting impact on Chinese imperial history, in what follows I shall focus on their experience before proceeding to analyze broader trends throughout the imperial millennia.

It seems that the empire’s most powerful asset was its uniform acceptance by its subjects. While imperial unifications were invariably achieved by force, establishing the empire was not a purely military enterprise. Let

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us focus on the Qin example. The wars of unification, in which Qin wiped out its six formidable eastern foes, lasted for ten years, during which huge armies of hundreds of thousands of soldiers operated simultaneously in the freezing Liaodong Peninsula in the northeast and the humid areas of the Yangzi delta in the southeast. Success would have been impossible had organized resistance on the part of the newly conquered population slowed the Qin armies. Yet, despite widespread hatred of Qin, frequently designated by its rivals as a “land of wolves and jackals,” the people of the vanquished states made no significant attempts to regain independence.
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Why was this the case? How did Qin succeed in imposing its will on the subjugated population? A brilliant analyst, Jia Yi (200–168 BCE), who lived a generation after the Qin’s collapse, explained:

Qin appropriated all within the seas, annexed the regional lords; [its
ruler] faced south and called himself emperor. Thus, he nourished all
within the four seas, and the gentlemen of All-under-Heaven docilely
bowed before his wind. Why did this happen?

I would reply that recently the world had for a long time been with-
out [a true] monarch. The Zhou house had sunk into insignificance,
the Five Hegemons have passed from the scene, and no commands
were obeyed under Heaven. Hence, the regional lords governed relying
on strength alone, the strong impinging on the weak, the many lording
it over the few; arms and armor were never set aside, and the people
grew exhausted and impoverished. Now, after Qin faced south and
ruled All-under-Heaven, this meant that there is a Son of Heaven
above. The masses hoped that they would obtain peace and security
and there was nobody who did not whole-heartedly look up in rever-
ence. This was the moment to preserve authority and stabilize achieve-
ments, the foundations of lasting peace.
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An astute thinker, Jia Yi realized that widespread support of the longexpected unification was a greater factor in Qin’s final success than sheer force. After the long period of turmoil and wars, the people obtained peace and security; hence they acquiesced in Qin’s domination. The First Emperor shrewdly appealed to these feelings to bolster the legitimacy of his rule. In his tours through the newly conquered realm, the emperor established stone steles on the tops of sacred mountains, on which he proudly proclaimed his achievements. In these inscriptions, the emperor repeatedly addressed the universal quest for peace and stability, reminding his subjects that “warfare will never rise again,” that he “brought peace to All-under-Heaven,” and that “the black-haired people [= the commoners] are at peace, never needing to take up arms.” By “uniting All-under-Heaven, he put an end to harm and disaster, and then forever he put aside arms,” ushering in the “Great Peace” (
tai ping
). The imperial

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propagandists even inscribed the newly issued weights and measures with a uniform text that began with the words “In his twenty-sixth year, the Emperor completely annexed all the regional lords under Heaven; the black-haired people are greatly tranquil.” Thus, even in the marketplace, each customer was reminded that the emperor fulfilled the venerable aspirations of the Warring States period thinkers: “Stability is in unity”!
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Aside from pure propaganda, Qin sought to convey to its subjects the feeling of stability and uniform orderly rule through a variety of practical and symbolic means. For example, they imposed unified systems of measures, weights, coinage, orthography, laws, and calendar, establishing thereby a standard repertoire of unification measures for the subsequent dynasties. Equally important was the incorporation of members of the conquered states’ elites into the imperial regime. While Qin rulers naturally mistrusted members of the ruling lineages of the enemy states (whom they reportedly transferred to the vicinity of the Qin capital in order to control them), this mistrust did not pertain to other elite members of the eastern rivals. Even before unification, Qin, like other contemporaneous polities, routinely employed foreign advisers in high positions, notwithstanding occasional protests from the members of the ruling lineage. The “foreigners” were crucial for Qin’s success: thus the administrative architect of the empire, Li Si (d. 208 BCE), was of Chu origin; the eminent general Meng Tian (d. 210 BCE) came from the eastern state of Qi, and many of the “erudites” at the Qin court came from Qi and the neighboring Lu. By promoting these men to the top of the administrative and military apparatus, the First Emperor vividly demonstrated to the inhabitants of the eastern states that they were not second-rank subjects but legitimate participants in the imperial project.

Attaining acceptance for a newly established universal empire was only one of manifold tasks that faced the Qin regime. A more challenging issue was sustaining the hard-won unity. How was the huge realm to be preserved intact? What did it require administratively? Here, there were no clear answers. One ready model, that of the Zhou kings who exercised suzerainty over highly autonomous regional lords, enjoyed a respectable pedigree; but in the eyes of many pre-Qin and Qin thinkers, it was too lax and could not prevent renewed disintegration. An alternative model of centralized rule emerged in many of the Warring States, most notably in preimperial Qin itself: it endowed the court with a much higher degree of control over the localities than in the Zhou case. However, the unified empire was immeasurably larger than any of the regional states; and it was unclear whether the tightly centralized Warring State model was applicable to the enormously expanding realm. The debates over proper administrative settlement began immediately after the unification had been accomplished. Several leading Qin ministers proposed reestablish

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ment of autonomous princedoms in the eastern parts of the realm, emulating thereby the Zhou model. However, the Emperor, backed by Li Si, rejected this proposal:

The world suffered immensely from incessant strife and warfare be-
cause of the regional lords and princes. Now, with the help of my an
cestral spirits, All-under-Heaven has just been pacified. To reestablish
princedoms means to sow weapons. Will it not be difficult then to de-
mand peace and tranquillity?
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The Emperor’s views prevailed: Qin extended its preimperial two-tier system of local administration to the entire realm, dividing it into thirtysix (later forty-two) commanderies (in later dynasties, prefectures) and numerous counties. The commanderies were headed by a triumvirate—a governor, a military commander, and a superintendent, whose tasks were primarily supervisory; this system of “checks and balances” prevented undue concentration of power in the hands of a single executive. Beneath was a horde of officials and clerks, who reached downward to the smallest hamlets, performing their tasks under the tight control of their superiors. Recently unearthed Qin legal and administrative documents disclose amazingly powerful mechanisms of control over local officials. An overseer of the subcounty unit applied to the county head to approve the appointment of a village chief and a postman in a local hamlet in the recently conquered southwestern territory. After four days, he received an answer: the application was rejected owing to the negligible size of the hamlet (only twenty-seven households). That the affairs of such a minor unit in a huge county were handled so swiftly and efficiently defies imagination; but as we shall see, this amazing efficiency came at a price.
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Several factors hindered the applicability of the Qin model in the long term. First, the sheer magnitude of the empire with its huge distances and highly heterogeneous local conditions made an ideal of uniform centralized rule very difficult to attain. Qin duly tried to improve internal communications by creating a series of radial “highways” from its capital, Xianyang, to the frontiers; but this was of no avail when major rebellions, which broke out soon after the death of the First Emperor in 210 BCE, disrupted communications and profoundly shattered the empire. Second, and more importantly, centralized control was a costly affair. Huge amounts of written information had to travel back and forth, imposing an undue burden on the locals, who had to provide post services and whose taxes had to support local officials. We cannot estimate accurately the weight of this administrative burden, but there is little doubt that it was enormous, and that it contributed indirectly to the flurry of popular uprisings that brought about the first imperial dynasty’s swift demise.
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The breakup of Qin and the ensuing collapse of the sociopolitical order caused the pendulum of centralization to swing in the opposite, “Zhou,” direction. First, the imprudent rebel leader Xiang Yu (d. 202 BCE) attempted restoration of a modified version of the multistate system. Having briefly tried to maintain a loosely unified empire under the puppet emperor, Xiang Yu then opted for an even looser model, in which he was to govern All-under-Heaven from the position of a “hegemonking.” Immediately, the void of legitimate power led to chaos, and the renewed war of all against all devastated most of the Chinese world. Then the more centralized model reemerged. Xiang Yu’s rival and the founder of the Han dynasty, Liu Bang (d. 195 BCE), had skillfully posed as the only candidate able to restore unity and bring an end to war and turmoil, and this attracted many outstanding advisers and generals to his camp. Eventually, Liu Bang had to compromise his goal of centralized control by agreeing to reestablish highly autonomous princedoms, which were granted to some of his most powerful allies. Yet immediately after the establishment of the Han dynasty, Liu Bang and his successors diligently undertook the reduction of the princedoms’ autonomy, moving steadily in the direction of ever-stronger centralization.
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Throughout the imperial millennia, the empire’s administrative structure fluctuated between the two models depicted above. On the one hand, bureaucratic logic and political theory alike generally favored tighter control over local potentates, to prevent both potentially subversive political activities and power abuse in the localities. The imperial government developed an impressive repertoire of control techniques over local officials, ranging from the Qin-related “checks and balances” system, to the “rule of avoidance” that prevented an official from serving in his home province, to frequent rotation of officials among different localities. Central government gradually increased its intervention in appointments of low-level officials in counties and prefectures; and it established an elaborate inspection apparatus to monitor local administrators. These and a variety of other means were supposed to solidify unified rule.

Against these tendencies, there was a recurring pattern of decentralization and establishment of semi-independent satrapies under the nominal suzerainty of the emperor. These satrapies, like the Zhou fiefs, were ruled by lifelong or hereditary potentates, who controlled local economic, human, and military resources with minimal intervention from the emperor’s court. There were several reasons for the resurrection of these autonomous units. The emperor could use them as an alternative to the regular system of local government if he mistrusted the officialdom, or when he had to reward his most powerful allies or kin. These considerations were particularly important under the rule of nomadic tribesmen, whose political operational mode was generally less centralized than was

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common in China proper. Furthermore, relegation of power to local potentates could cut the court’s expenses and diminish the burden on the central apparatus. Moreover, local autonomy could allow greater flexibility in the ruling of remote territories or areas inhabited by ethnic minorities, where Chinese administrative practices were at odds with local conditions. Finally, decentralization could be helpful when the regime had to cope with extraordinary economic, or, more often, military situations. It may be argued that in terms of pure efficiency, the dispersal of royal authority might have been more attractive than excessive centralization.