Early China: A Social and Cultural History

by Li Feng

  Taking this as the starting point, significant changes must have taken place in land ownership and in the whole set of economic relationships surrounding the land. In the texts, when the Warring States politicians and philosophers talk about the condition of the peasantry of their time, it is clear that the small households of free farmers, the families that had recently won independence from their original lineages, are the ones in question. And this private land ownership by such small household farmers as the basic production units in agriculture was considered the economic foundation of the territorial states. In the transmitted agricultural theory of Li Kui, whose reform had empowered the state of Wei in the early fourth century BC, it is clearly said that a husband with a family of five mouths occupying a land unit of 100 mu should be made the foundation for tax calculation by the state. Historians have tried to calculate the size of such landholdings measured by the ancient unit, yielding roughly 5.14 acres (or 31.2 present-day mu) which seems to have been the common size of land a farmer could cultivate and a family of five could live on.

  In some states, the size of the household of small farmers was strictly controlled by law as the basis for calculating tax revenue available to the state. During the reform that took place in the state of Qin in the middle of the fourth century BC, Shang Yang imposed double taxes on families that had two or more adult males; later, even a father (presumably still of socially productive age) and an adult son were prohibited from living in the same household.8 Some scholars consider this to have been a method to break down the solidarity of the family in order to enforce a universal administrative order, but the economic advantage for the state invoked by the policy was unequivocal. From the standpoint of social history, this was probably the first time in Chinese history that the state used legislation to regulate the size of peasant families. In any event, the Qin practice strongly indicates the importance the state placed on the households of the small farmers as the cornerstones to support the superstructure of the territorial state.

  Control of Farmers: Law, Taxation, and Universal Ranking

  Discussed above are changes in the social standing of the farmers; what did this really mean for the state? The small farmers, unmediated by the traditional lineages, had become the new citizens of the state which regarded them as socially independent and capable of planning their lives, organizing their agricultural production, and being responsible for their own conduct. The state, by the same token, now entered into direct contact with individual farmers and had moral responsibility for their well-being. On the other hand, small farmers constituted a huge reservoir of manpower that the state was eager to draw on for its service to pursue supreme victory in war. The relationship between the state and the farmers was realized in a number of ways but most importantly through the promulgation of law, taxation, and military service. And the universal ranking system that was designed to reward such services created another long-lasting bond between the state and the individual farmers.

  As discussed in Chapter 8, since the beginning of the sixth century BC we hear frequently that legal codes were composed and cast on bronze vessels displayed to the new citizens of the state. However, none of the statutes, if they existed at all, survived the centuries thereafter and made their way into the literary tradition that is available to us now. Since the discovery of the legal texts in a tomb at Shuihudi in Hubei in 1975 (see Chapter 11), dated around 216 BC after the unification of China by Qin, it has often been surmised by scholars that some of the statutes included in these legal texts of the Qin Empire might have already been in use in the state of Qin during the late Warring States period, if they were not actually originated in the reform of Shang Yang back to the mid fourth century BC. However, this can only remain a reasonable speculation. The fragments that have survived in the transmitted texts regarding legal practices in the previous centuries, for instance in the states of Zheng and Jin, seem to suggest that legal codes were constructed around the central concern for public security. The most unambiguous thread of this vague information attributes a text called Canon of Law to the reformer Li Kui in the state of Wei in the early fourth century BC. The canon is said to have been composed of six articles, dealing separately with offenses such as robbery, physical injury, and hiding from the government; it seems to have also included rules for handing out verdicts at the court, miscellaneous laws, and the increase and reduction of penalties. Some of these articles certainly have parallels in the laws of the Qin Empire from Shuihudi, but unfortunately no detail of any of the articles has been transmitted. In all, nothing like an actual legal statute or a synthesis of law has been passed down from the Warring States period. Nevertheless, the surviving information is enough to make the basic point that a legal system that was based on written laws was evidently in place in the pre-unification period.

  Fortunately, concrete bits of information about the legal practice in the southern state Chu during the Warring States period were brought to light by the extraction in 1987 of bamboo strips from tomb no. 2 at Baoshan near Jiangling in Hubei Province, dating securely to 316 BC by the chronological records from the tomb. Most of the legal strips from Baoshan carry descriptions of actual legal cases and the so-called “date tables” which give dates for hearings after they were first filed with the government. For example, for most cases brought to the Chu central court, after their initial filing and acceptance a hearing was usually scheduled in about ten to ninety days depending on the location of the alleged crime. During this period local officers and sometimes special commissioners from the central court would be ordered to investigate the case before the court reopened. Both the plaintiff and defendant were allowed to enlist their witnesses to construct testimony but their close relatives were excluded from the groups. Sometimes, a previous case was given a chance for a second trial and when necessary could be transferred to another official by royal order. But there seems to have been a time limit before the officials eventually disposed of certain cases.9 The strips from Baoshan show that legal procedures were well established in the state of Chu.

  One other high concern of the state that we learn from the Baoshan strips was the accuracy of records of population registration as the basis for tax calculation by the state. Magistrates of the Chu counties were given orders to verify records on registers, and in cases where certain figures are missing from the records, particularly when the missing ones were of a young age, the minor officers in the local areas were liable to carry out an investigation in order to avoid their own punishment. The offenses of “keeping incorrect registers” or of “failing to register youths” had their close parallels in the Qin laws from Shuihudi; they also echo the name of an article dealing with people fleeing from the government included in the Canon of Law attributed to Li Kui. Certainly, accurate registration of population was critical to the new state for the purpose of mobilizing the maximum volume of resource, to support its expanding bureaucracy and military operations along the borders. There seems little doubt that this was important to all states.

  However, our information for a rough estimate of the actual figure of land tax is vague at best. In the transmitted agricultural theory of Li Kui, a 10% land tax payment in kind was taken as the basis for calculating the income and consumption of a household with five mouths. In an excavated manuscript text, Sun Wu, the master of war, is said to have remarked that the grade of land tax commonly imposed by the ministerial families on the lands they owned in the northern state Jin during the sixth century BC was 20%, a very high figure which Sun Wu considered would inevitably lead some of these families to fall.10 To the other extreme, the political philosopher Mencius once remarked that the figure of 5% land tax was too low and it suited only the situation of the “barbarian” nations where the land yields were low and officials were few, but this was certainly insufficient to support the bureaucratic and ritual institutions in the competing states in the Chinese (“Huaxia”) world. Based on this information, some scholars have suggested that, variations cons
idered, the scale of taxation during the Warring States period was somewhere around 10%. But certainly this can only be taken as good speculation.

  Military service was the responsibility of the small farmers. In fact, many of the earliest counties were created for the purpose of organizing the resident farmers in the local areas to fight in war. But gradually, as the scale of war increased, the unit called “Commandery” (Jun) which usually combined the areas of a number of counties had become the regular administrative structure to mobilize the peasants for military operations. There is no record telling us about the legal age or the terms of military service, but the number of casualties from the period indicates the possibility that in some cases, the entirety of the male population of a county or a commandery could be moved into battle. There is one case, for instance, in the famous battle of Changping between the states of Qin and Zhao in 260 BC, every male person of fifteen or above in the Henei Commandery (present-day northwestern Henan) was thrown into battle by the state of Qin. However, since this was reported as an unusual measure taken by the Qin state in facing an extreme situation in war, conscription of such young age was probably not normally practiced by the warring states. As in theory the entire male population was subject to conscription, they were also rewarded indiscriminately for military contributions. For instance, in the state of Qin, twenty ranks were created with the gongshi as the initial rank of foot soldiers. The merit of cutting off one enemy head was rewarded with a single rank along with 100 mu of land (about 5 acres). Ranks can be accumulated over time and can also be used as payment for a fine in cases of legal offenses. In contrast to the traditional aristocratic ranks, these new ranks can be given to any commoner on account of his military contribution.

  The Bureaucratization of the Governments and the Absolute Monarch

  It was discussed in Chapter 7 that the central government of the Western Zhou state was gradually bureaucratized from the early ninth century BC, and that process created new dynamics in the political and social life of the royal domain in Shaanxi. However, the governments of the many regional states, though structurally replicating functional roles of the early Western Zhou central government, remained largely personal and unbureaucratic through the early Spring and Autumn period. Therefore, when the sway of bureaucratization took its second turn in China after the Western Zhou state had long gone to dust, bureaucracy manifested itself as a key technique for the creation and management of the territorial state.

  During the Warring States period, the widely existing office in civil administration was invariably that of magistrate, though called by various names. In Qin, after the reform of Shang Yang, there were some 350 such magistrates. To assist the magistrate, a secretarial official named Assistant (Cheng as in Qin) or Secretary (Yushi as in Hann and Wei) was established in most states to handle land registration or other types of paperwork in the respective counties. In the more bureaucratic states like Qin, the office of Commandant was established to handle military and security matters and the office of Supervisor of Lawsuit (in Hann) was charged with responsibility for overseeing legal matters. Under them, there were certain subordinate officers down to those who had responsibilities at the village level. The military administrative unit commandery, usually headed by the Commandery Protector, was not universal and in states that had it, the commandery existed only in the border areas of military importance. The office of Grand Chancellor (Xiang) already appeared during the Spring and Autumn period and became a regular role during the Warring States period as the head of the central bureaucracy; in the southern state Chu, this role was played by the Chief Commander (Lingyin) who, originally a military officer, had by now come to bear both military and civil responsibilities in the central government.11 There were other civil and military offices in the central government of the state such as the Scribe, Supervisor of Multitudes, and Supervisor of Horses, all titles inherited from the Western Zhou bureaucracy, but their responsibilities varied from state to state and from time to time.

  Besides the development of functional offices in many states, the Warring States was remarkable also for the creation of mechanisms to control the bureaucracy, an element that the Western Zhou bureaucracy lacked as far as we can tell on the basis of current evidence. One of the measures was the “Annual Report” which had become a standard administrative practice in most states during the Warring States period. A variety of elements were included in the content of such an “Annul Report”: statistical numbers of land size, tax quotas, balances of the county granary, rosters of officials, scholars, and farmers with breakdowns for men and women, aged and young, and statements of local security. The document was produced presumably by the county secretary on wooden blocks and was personally brought to the capital by the county magistrate in the twelfth month of every year when it was due to be submitted for inspection by the king or the Grand Chancellor. The system effectively enabled the state to monitor the resources available to it and check on the performance of the bureaucracy. Certainly, throughout the year the kings frequently commissioned special inspectors and sometimes went on trips themselves to observe the situation in the counties as necessary.

  Overall, the Warring States officials earned salaries in kind for their performance and were subject to standard systems of promotion and punishment. All officials down to the county level were appointed at the central court and could be removed at any time if found guilty of misconduct. There were master philosophers such as Shen Buhai and later Han Fei who advised the kings on how to exercise effective control over the officials by punishing them for not matching exactly what their offices required them to do (see Chapter 10). Such voices in the philosophical texts suggest perhaps a certain degree of cruelty in practice, but they highlight the issues that really concerned the Warring States kings. In general, the Warring States kings were more powerful than the rulers of the Spring and Autumn period, not measured by their title “King” (Wang) in contrast to the early “Duke” (Gong) as ruler of the state, and not measured by the size of armies that they could command, but by the degree of their grasp on power within the power structure of the state. Since the fortune of all officials now depended on the favor of the king (rather than, for instance, on their hereditary rights as in the early period),12 the king had become the sole powerhouse in many states. Their power was absolute and unmediated, not only over the soldiers and farmers they ruled, but also over the ministers and officials who helped them to rule.

  Transition in Warfare

  As pointed out above, during the Warring States period, warfare was the most important aspect of social life, the principle of the state, and the compass that directed government policies. It is no exaggeration that by the late Warring States period (third century BC), war had escalated to the level that the entire state was organized for the very purpose of war, and this was true for all states. No other period in Chinese history was as militant as the fourth to third centuries BC. On the other hand, over the course of the nearly three centuries of the Warring States period, warfare itself as a social behavior conditioned by human and material factors had undergone fundamental changes both in terms of its objectives and in the ways in which it was fought.

  During the Western Zhou through much of the Spring and Autumn period warfare was the privilege of the aristocrats who fought mainly from their chariots. Commoners sometimes fought in battles but they did so normally as attachments to the charioteers who were usually their lineage leaders. Therefore, in the Western Zhou inscriptions, besides the renowned Six Armies and Eight Armies, the standing royal forces, troops thrown into battle by the Zhou central court were often organized around or by lineages. Moreover, the maintenance of an army composed of a large number of horse-drawn war chariots was costly and the bronze weapons they used in combat were hardly affordable to commoners. These factors had significantly limited the scale of war which through much of the Spring and Autumn period remained as essentially an aristocratic exercise. However, the wide use of iron weaponry sinc
e the fifth century BC had made war economically more affordable to commoners, who by that time were largely free farmers living in the new counties. And the new states were eager to move the farmers into war to overcome the enemies (Fig. 9.3). Scholars have shown that the real purpose of the many reforms that took place during the early Warring States period was precisely to extend military service to the entire population, composed largely of small farmers.13

  Fig. 9.3 Battle scene engraved on a bronze jian-basin (h. 30.1 cm, diam. 54.6 cm) from Shanbiaozhen, northern Henan.

  As a result of this change, the type of soldiers was dramatically changed and the size of armies greatly inflated. War was no longer the contest of fighting skills between warriors but rather was a matter of the large number of men a state could field to simply overwhelm its enemies. In the Spring and Autumn period, war was very often fought by several thousand soldiers. The standing army of the state of Jin under Duke Wen was composed of three divisions (Upper, Middle, and Lower), and each was calculated to have had some 12,500 or more soldiers (or a total of 37,500 soldiers). The Chu royal army was also divided into three parts (Left, Center, and Right), massing a total power comparable to that of Jin. These were the most outstanding military forces of the Spring and Autumn period. With the arrival of the late Warring States period, the most powerful states Qin, Qi, and Chu are said to have each possessed an army close to 1,000,000 soldiers, and Hann, the smallest of the major states, had a total number of 300,000 troops.14 It was not uncommon for 100,000 to 200,000 soldiers to be fighting on each side during a single engagement, and the number of soldiers killed in a battle could easily reach 30,000. Moreover, because the training required for such peasant–soldiers was minimal, a state could easily move its entire male population of fighting age into a major battle when necessary. The extreme case was the battle between Qin and Zhao in 260 BC. In the narrow valley called Changping in present-day southeastern Shanxi, the Zhao army comprising some 400,000 soldiers was forced to surrender after the death of their chief commander Zhao Kuo. The enormous number of prisoners caused major logistic problems for Qin. Thus, the Qin commander Bai Qi ordered the systematic murdering of all Zhao soldiers, leaving only 240 younger ones to spread fear in the eastern states. Although scholars have doubted the high figure of Zhao soldiers that the Qin army was able to murder, another broadly based statistical analysis shows that in the twenty-six major battles in the fourth to third centuries BC, a total number of some 1,800,000 casualties were suffered by the defeated states (exclusive of the death toll of the victorious states).15