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The evolving statehood before nation-formation: Qin’s wars of unification and

the genesis of China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation
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Xu, Yi. 2022. “The Evolving Statehood Before Nation-formation: Qin’s Wars of Unification and the Genesis of
China’s Pre-modern Ethnic Foundation”. Loughborough University.
https://doi.org/10.17028/rd.lboro.21085252.v1.
 The Evolving Statehood before
Nation-Formation:
Qin’s Wars of Unification and the
Genesis of China’s Pre-Modern
Ethnic Foundation
by

Yi Xu

A Doctoral Thesis
Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of
Doctor of Philosophy of Loughborough University

September 2022

©Yi Xu 2022
Acknowledgement

This PhD research has been a fascinating and enjoyable experience for me.

Throughout the years of this research, I have read a variety of literature on European

and Chinese society. I have also visited museum, galleries and historical sites across

Britain and in some Chinese cities, which enriched my understanding of nation and

nationalism. The process of conducting this research has considerably deepened my

understanding of European and Chinese societies. Therefore, even though the

presentation of my thesis could only count for no more than half of my effort during

this research due to requirement on the length of thesis, I still feel worthwhile

conducting this research and enjoy the whole process very much indeed.

I want to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisory team – Iris Wigger, Daniel

Chernilo and Nikos Sotirakopoulos. Iris has been my personal tutor since I came to

Loughborough in 2011 and then became my PhD supervisor in 2015. She is

absolutely supportive, patient and reliable, which therefore makes her a great

supervisor indeed. Daniel is also a knowledgeable and expressive supervisor. His

research interest on nationalism and cosmopolitanism is where my initiative for this

research get inspired from. Even though he left Loughborough in 2017, his

supervision was still inspiring and important for this thesis. Nikos stood in for Daniel
in 2017. He is full of energy and passion, which has motivated me a lot during the

research. Nikos’ academic background in international relations has also offered me

brilliant suggestions from a different angle. It is especially grateful that all my three

supervisors are absolutely serious persons on supervision, giving me detailed advice

that many of my fellow PhD candidates are unable to acquire from their supervisors. I

feel so fortunate to have them as supervisors during my PhD research. I appreciate

your all very much indeed!

Moreover, I’m also feeling so grateful to my examiners – Dr. Thoralf Klein and Dr.

Iarfhlaith Watson, who have offered me strong support and understanding during my

revision. Their patience allows me to produce a better thesis.

Finally, I would like to give my specially thanks to all my family members, who have

supported my study in the UK over nine years. You are always supporting me

wholeheartedly throughout my life, I owe you all so much! Accomplishment of this

PhD thesis is not the end of my study. Rather, it will be a new beginning of my

thinking and reasoning.

Abstract

China as a unity community, has stood the test of time for more than 2000 years,

despite its periodical collapse, chaos and reunification over time. Not only has a united

Chinese community survived the massive nation-building movements in the late

nineteenth and the twentieth century, but it has also retained its unity after the fall of

Communism in Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the final

decades of the twentieth century.

By conducting a historiographic research on the first-ever true unification of China in

211 BC, it has been found that war had been the key trigger of China’s unification and

the genesis of its pre-modern ethnic foundation in the third century BC. Not only had

warfare helped establishing a truly united Chinese community for the first time in

history, but it had also fostered tremendous social transformation in the Qin state (770

– 221 BC), which formed the basis for the later Qin dynasty (221 – 207 BC) – the first

Chinese empire that succeeded in uniting all Chinese under a single, centralized

Chinese state. Although the Qin’s wars of unification (230 – 221 BC) were the direct

cause of China’s first temporary unification, Qin’s success in its attempt to unify

China actually has much broader historical implications. Qin’s unification of China

had been deeply rooted in the Legalist reforms by Lord Shang, which fostered Qin’s
advancement in the social, political and economic spheres and had in turn resulted in

Qin’s strong military competence over its six rival Chinese states. This subsequently

led to Qin’s military success during its unification of China, which provides a basis

for the genesis of China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation later on.

However, even though the Reforms of Lord Shang, which introduced the Legalist

doctrine to the Qin society, had facilitated Qin’s unification of China in the third

century BC, it was unable to sustain the unity in the post-unification era. The Qin

Empire only lasted for fifteen years before it fell into oblivion. This shows the

fragility of Qin’ unity and the difficulty of sustaining a united but also contested

Chinese community. Nevertheless, Qin’s socio-political heritage, namely the

centralized socio-political system, the standardized written Chinese characters and

and the Legalist doctrine, which played a key role in Qin’s unification of China, had

all been inherited by succeeding Chinese dynasties and therefore facilitated the

emergence of China’ pre-modern ethnic foundation in the ancient time.

Table of Contents

Introduction………………………………………………………………………….1

Statement of Aims…………………………………………………………… 1
Studying China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation: Why does this research
focus on the chosen time period (230 – 221 BC) ? …………………........2
Theoretical framework………………………………………………………..7
Intended contribution of thesis………………………………………………..9
Methodology………………………………………………………………….11
Sources………………………………………………………………………..13
Outline of this thesis…………………………………………………………..20

Part One Literature Review…………………………………………………... 25

Chapter 1 Nationalism, Proto-nationalism, and the Ethnie as the Historical

Foundation of Nationalism and Collective Identity Formation
……………...………………………………………………………. 25

1.1 Theoretical discussion about the historical roots and development of

nations and nationalism: modernism, proto-nationalism and critiques
of modernism……………………………………………………….. 27
1.2 Ethno-symbolism as a main theoretical framework…………………41
1.3 The emergence and development of a Chinese identity from ancient
Chinese society to the modern period……………………………….58
1.4 Conclusion to Chapter 1……………………………………………..73

Chapter 2 Ancient Chinese Society and the Qin Dynasty: From Principalities
to Centralised Empire………………………………………………75

2.1 The Warring-States era: wars, conquests and intellectual development

……………………………………….76
2.2 The rise and decline of the Qin state…..……………………………..92
2.3 The nature of Chinese Society – What is China?................................105
2.4 Conclusion to Chapter 2……………………………………………..117
Chapter 3 Wars and Collective Violence: Impacts on
Nation/State Formation and Social Change………………………120

3.1 War and modern nation-states………………………………………121

3.2 War, social integration and social change……………………….….135
3.3 Geopolitics: the pre-condition for historical development………….142
3.4 Conclusion to Chapter 3…………………………………….............154

Conclusion to the Literature Review………………………………....…………..156

Part Two Findings………………………………………………………….…..159

Chapter 4 China’s Pre-Modern Ethnic Foundation: War and the

Establishment of a Territorial Basis …………………………….161

4.1 War and the Chinese statehood ……………………………………..162

4.2 Impact of warfare on the Qin state and its relation with ethnic
communities ………………………………………………………..174
4.3 Qin’s strategic planning for territorial expansion ………………..…182
4.4 Conclusion: the role of wars and military power in the formation of
China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation ……………………………..197

Chapter 5 China’s Pre-Modern Ethnic Foundation: Reforms of Lord Shang

and China’s Ideological Basis for Unity …………………………201

5.1 Qin’s thirst for strength and the Reforms of Lord Shang
– implanting Legalism into the Chinese society …………………...203
5.2 A Legalist China..……………………………………………………211
5.3 Social and political reforms in the other six states in ancient
China………………….…………………………………………….241
5.4 Conclusion: Reforms of Lord Shang and the Legalist
ideological basis for a United Chinese Community ………………..249

Chapter 6 China’s Pre-Modern Ethnic Foundation: An Attempt at Social

Solidarity under an Increasingly Diverse New Empire ……..….252

6.1 Qin’s openness and incorporation of foreign people during the

Warring States period ……………………………....……………..253
 6.2 Control over territory: social penetration of political insitutions in
the post-unificaiton Qin dynasty………………………………260
6.3 The role of migration, mixed residency and marriage for social
integration in the Qin Empire ………………..……..…………275
6.4 Collapse of the Qin Empire and the revival of regional
identities ………………………………………………………285
6.5 Conclusion: the role of government during the formation of
China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation ………………………..291

Part Three Discussion……………………………………………………….…294

Chapter 7 Qin’s Wars of Unification and the Formation of China’s

Pre-modern Ethnic Foundation ………………………………………………. 294

7.1 How did China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation take shape? …...296
7.2 In what ways did war influenced the emergence and development
of a Chinese ethnie in ancient China?...........................................307
7.3 What are the distinctive features of the Chinese ethnie ? ……….320
7.4 Conclusion: Qin’s wars of unification and the emergence
of China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation ………………………324

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………… 328

Research Outcomes……………………………………………………..329
Contribution of this thesis……………………………………………....331
Evaluation of this research……………………………………………...335

Bibliography…………………………………………………………………….337

Primary Sources…………………………………………………….…337
Secondary Sources…………………………………………………….339
Introduction

Statement of Aims

This thesis aims to explore the genesis of China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation in the

third century BC. As a long-lasting community, China has periodically collapsed and

reunited throughout its 2,133-year imperial history (nine major imperial dynasties, from

221 BC to 1912 AD) and its 109-year history as a republic (Republic of China 1912 –

1949, People’s Republic of China 1949 – present). Not only has it survived the massive

nation-building movements in the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, but it has

also retained its unity following the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the

collapse of the Soviet Union in the final decades of the twentieth 20th century. A sense

of unity amongst the Chinese community has stood the test of time for more than two

millennia. Therefore, in order to determine how China has sustained its unity over the

past two thousand years, this thesis aims to explore the emergence of its pre-modern

ethnic foundation in ancient times, analysing how the first temporary unification of the

China by the kingdom of Qin1 in 221 BC contributed to the social genesis of a united

Chinese community and a sense of collective identity. To fulfil the aims of this research,

the three following research questions have been set:

1 In this thesis, “Qin” refers to the pre-unification state, and “the Qin” refers to the post-unification imperial
dynasty.
1
1) How did China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation take shape?

2) In what ways did war influence the emergence and development of a Chinese

ethnie in ancient China?

3) What are the distinctive features of this ethnie in the pre-modern Chinese

community?

Studying China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation:

Why does this research focus on the chosen period 230 – 221 BC?

There are two main reasons why this thesis focuses on Chinese social evolution between

230 and 221 BC. First and foremost, the period (230 – 221 BC) is more relevant to the

study of China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation. Different from European nation-states,

which mostly emerged in late modernity, it was Qin’s wars of unification (230 – 221

BC) that established the first centralised Chinese state, namely the Qin dynasty, and,

for the first time in history, turned the imagined Huaxia community (which only existed

as a shared culture and a common myth before 221 BC) into a real, united pre-modern

Chinese state under the rule of the Qin Empire (Leibold 2006; Cooper, 2015). As a

result, 221 BC is considered “a critical turning point in China’s cultural history, [as

Qin’s unification of China] brought about cultural communication and integration

amongst Chinese ethnicities,” thus splitting the nation’s socio-political evolution from

2
other places around the world (Li, 2007: 294; Hui, 2001). Hence, 230 – 221 BC was a

time more typically and prominently associated with the genesis of China’s pre-modern

ethnic foundation – it has been argued that China had, in this period, developed a pre-

modern ethnic foundation that has lasted until the present day without a complete

breakdown despite experiencing several transitions, regime declines and external

invasions (Sima.Q, 1999; Qian, 2010; Huang, 1997; Li, 2007). Though China’s history

is politically divided into nine major imperial dynasties and two republics, all of them

have followed the centralised socio-political system set up by the Qin Empire (Liang,

1923; Wen, 2019; Stavrianos, 1990).

In comparison, the development of Europe, from where modern nations and

nationalism originate, has followed a different historical route – a number of nation-

states have emerged and developed across the continent. Consequently, two different

socio-political development paths have appeared on either side of the Eurasian

continent (i.e. the European model and the Chinese model), each essentially following

two different logics (Hui, 2001; Stavrianos, 1990). The Westphalian European nation-

state system followed the logic of balance, in that no country could gain an absolute

advantage over others (Hui, 2001). Consequently, all nation-states are willing to accept

the concept of an egalitarian sovereignty (Hui, 2001). The Chinese model, on the

contrary, followed the logic of domination, which accepts a prevailing power

conquering and ruling other Chinese states (Hui, 2001). Hui (2001) acknowledges that

both Europe and China did indeed follow the logic of balance until 221 BC, when the

3
kingdom of Qin conquered other Chinese states and established the Qin Empire,

following the aforementioned logic of domination. It was only after Qin’s wars of

unification that China became a truly united collective community, further reinforced

and sustained by its centralised socio-political system for most of its ensuing history

(Hui, 2001).

For this reason, Qin’s wars of unification can be understood as a decisive event in the

history of China, as they formed the foundation for and set the direction of the Chinese

community for the following two millennia (Stavrianos, 1990; Wen, 2019). It can be

imagined that without Qin’s wars of unification, China would have followed a much

more similar historical path to Europe, becoming a region consisting of numerous

nation-states rather than today’s highly integrated state, as the social fabric of pre-221

BC Chinese society had been similar to the situation in Europe, consisting of a number

of independent regimes and elites, different dialects across the imagined Chinese border

and a vague consciousness of the Huaxia community (Wen, 2019; Pagden, 2002;

Delanty, 1995). Due to this contrast, it would be interesting to investigate what exactly

happened in Chinese society before, during and after Qin’s wars of unification, and to

examine how this series of wars transformed the Chinese community and fostered

China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation.

Second, due to the different historical paths in social evolution, the nineteenth century

– a vital time for the genesis of nation and nationalism in European society – is less

4
meaningful in terms of understanding nationalism and nation-formation in Chinese

society. The year 221 BC marks the starting point of a united Chinese community

(Sima.Q, 1999; Li, 2007), not the late nineteenth century, during which the European-

born idea of nation was introduced to Chinese society. The nineteenth century was a

period during which the concept of modern nation was introduced to the Chinese people

from the West (Liang, 2006[1902]). However, it was not at this time that a Chinese

collective social identity emerged; instead, the national identity of China evolved over

a much longer period of time according to Fei (1988) and Wen (2019), originating from

the ancient Chinese community and later incorporating elements of modern European

nationalism on its way to becoming a modern national identity. Just as Gellner and

Smith (1996) concluded during the Warwick Debates on nationalism, some nations do

have a ‘navel’ (pre-modern ethnic origin), and some do not. Anthony Smith (1996b:

447), founder of the Ethno-Symbolist approach, defined ethnie as “a named human

population of alleged common ancestry, shared memories and elements of common

culture with a link to a specific territory and a measure of solidarity”. It can be argued

that China, regarding the continuation of its civilisation and evolution of society before

the nineteenth century, did have a pre-modern ethnic ‘navel’, i.e. an earlier collective

identity based on a shared Chinese civilisation, which engendered a sense of Chinese

national consciousness and became the foundation for the emergence of China’s

national identity in modernity (Jacques, 2009; Zhang, 2012; Zhao, 2015). This thesis

illustrates how this pre-modern ethnie makes a key contribution to the later

institutionalisation the Chinese nation and its national identity during the nineteenth

5
century under the impact of Western nationalism. As a result, when studying Chinese

identity, it would be unfeasible, from a historically reflexive perspective, to simply

focus on the role of Chinese collective identity in the nineteenth century without

noticing the ground-breaking socio-political transformation that took place in China

two thousand years ago.

Human history suggests that the paths of human societies vary considerably. The case

of China could suggest that while the correlation between modernity and the

development of national identity is apparent in European history, it is less evident in the

history of China. The reasons for the spread of national identity in Europe in the context

of modernity are complex and have been extensively discussed in studies on nation and

nationalism (Gellner, 1964 & 2006; Anderson, 1991; Hobsbawm, 1962, 1975, 1987,

1994; Hobsbawm, 1990). One of the key reasons, as argued, is that, until late modernity,

European elites were not able to enhance the national consciousness of the commons

with the support of sufficient material wealth and technical solutions from

industrialisation (Gellner, 1964 & 2006; Anderson, 1991). For China, however, after

Qin's wars of unification in 221 BC, policies on standardising universal written

language, measurements and all other standards were all implemented through the

centralised socio-political system across the country (Sima.Q, 1999; McPherson, 2003).

Considering China adopted a centralised state system 2,000 years ahead of European

states (Fukuyama, 2012), it could be possible that the genesis of a pre-modern ethnic

foundation happened much earlier than the late nineteenth century in Europe, therefore

6
generating the following hypothesis: Was it possible for China, 2000 years ago, as an

agrarian society, to form a pre-modern ethnic foundation and its corresponding

collective social identity, which would later transform into a modern nation and its

corresponding national identity under the influence of European nationalism following

late modernity?

Theoretical framework

The main objective of this research is to explore the role of war in the formation of

China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation, analysing its implications for the genesis of a

Chinese collective social identity. This thesis employs the ethno-symbolist approach as

the main theoretical framework to discuss the above research objective. By comparing

and contrasting both modernist and ethno-symbolist theories on identity formation with

the historical development of the pre-modern Chinese community, this thesis aims to

gain a deeper understanding of the correlation between modernity and identity

formation and explore the role of ethnie in pre-modern collective identity formation in

ancient China. The thesis aims to answer the following three main research questions:

(1) How did China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation take shape? (2) In what ways did

war influence the emergence and development of a Chinese ethnie in ancient China? (3)

What are the major distinctive features of the ethnie in the pre-modern Chinese

community?

7
In addition, this thesis critically reflects on elements of imperialist politics in the first

temporary unification of China. Prior to the massive emergence of nations in the late

eighteenth century, empires were one of the most common forms of political structure

(Howe, 2002). Empires are polities that “extend relations of power across territorial

spaces over which they have no prior or given legal sovereignty, and where, in one or

more of the domains of economics, politics, and culture, they gain some measures of

extensive hegemony over those spaces for the purpose of extracting or accruing value”

(James & Nairn, 2006: xxiii). Hassig (2006) argues that an imperial political structure

can be established and maintained in two ways – either as a territorial empire based on

direct conquest and control through force, or as a coercive hegemonic empire based on

indirect conquest and control with power. The former approach offers strong and

straightforward political control across an empire and limits its further expansion due

to the difficulty in expanding military troops (Hassig, 2006). The latter approach, for

its part, leads to indirect, looser control over the empire, but allows for further

expansion by freeing military forces from garrisons (Hassig, 2006). Both approaches

played a considerable role in the expansion and consolidation of the first centralised

Chinese empire, namely the Qin dynasty, which in turn facilitated the genesis of a pre-

modern ethnic foundation of China (Sima.Q, 1999; Wen, 2019).

8
 Intended contribution of the thesis

This study aims at extending scholarly understanding of China’s socio-historical

development, and in particular the historical significance of the Qin dynasty in the

formation of the Chinese nation. By probing into the formation of the pre-modern ethnic

foundation of the Chinese nation around 221 BC, this thesis hopes to expand existing

scholarly understanding on nation and nationalism, especially the ethno-symbolist

school of thought, hence making an original and historically grounded contribution to

the wider academic discussion in the field of nation and nationalism, collective identity

formation and social integration, and the sociology of war. This thesis makes two

original contributions in this regard:

First of all, this thesis attempts to explore the genesis of a pre-modern ethnic foundation

of the Chinese nation by referring to the theories of nation and nationalism and

reflecting on broader scholarly debates on national identity and imperialism (Gellner,

2006; Hobsbawm 1987; Hobsbawm, 1994; Anderson, 1991; Smith, 2001; Guibernau

& Hutchinson, 2004). This research examines the formation of China’s pre-modern

ethnic foundation on the basis of the under-researched historical case of ancient China

and uses this case to further enhance existing conceptual discussions on the socio-

historical study of nation and nationalism, identifying major patterns in the genesis of

a pre-modern ethnic foundation in ancient China that predated the rise of modern

nation-states in Europe. Jacques (2009) and Zhang (2012) have argued that China is not

9
a nation-state, but is rather a civilization state constituted around a shared civilisation

rather than based on nationalism. Therefore, this research, through its historiographic

focus on ancient government documents (bamboo slips) and ancient literature

containing information about Qin’s various activities and policies during its attempt to

unify China, aims at making an original attempt to explore how ancient Chinese

civilisation and schools of thought contributed to the establishment of a pre-modern

ethnic foundation of China and the social integration of Chinese society.

Second, this research also intends to make an original contribution to the sociology of

war by examining the ways through which ancient warfare, especially Qin’s wars of

unification (230 – 221 BC), influenced the formation of an integrated Chinese

community and its corresponding collective identity. China was highly culturally

diverse before the founding of the Qin dynasty in 221 BC in the form of the Huaxia

community, akin to Anderson’s (1991: 6) idea of an “imagined political community”,

in that it did not exist per se, although nominally all Chinese states belonged to the Zhou

Empire. Nonetheless, all Chinese states regarded themselves as members of the Huaxia

community, though each of them had its own culture, dialect and forms of written

Chinese characters (Gernet, 1996; Bodde, 1986). As a result, there was limited

awareness of the imagined Huaxia community apart from the differentiation between

Huaxia and its peripheral ethnic communities (Zhang, 2007; Sima.Q, 1999). It was the

kingdom of Qin that had, for the first time in Chinese history, united China through a

series of wars that turned the imagined Chinese community Huaxia into reality.

10
Following the founding of the Qin Empire, a truly united China was achieved under a

centralised state following unification and the subsequent homogenisation of laws,

currency, written Chinese characters and units of measurement, which in turn fostered

the emergence of a pre-modern ethnic foundation. As a result, war can be conceived as

being of great socio-historical significance during Qin’s successful unification of China

in 221 BC, and therefore an important research subject worth exploring.

Methodology

This research explores the social genesis of the first truly united ancient Chinese empire

– the Qin dynasty (221 – 207 BC), and examines the genesis of China’s pre-modern

ethnic foundation by conducting a historiographic sociological research study based on

primary sources from ancient historical literature and government documents from the

fourth century BC to the first century AD. “Historiography reminded readers that

historical writing has fashions in its method and approaches and attempted to provide

as comprehensive an account as possible of the writings of previous historians”

(Bentley, 1997: xi-xii). The historiographic approach taken herein refers to

“investigations into history as representation, into how and why these accounts are

constructed, what interests direct them, what narrative models shape them and so on”

(Hearn, 2006: 36). Historiography has been popular in the study of nationalism,

especially when concerning primordialist and modernist approaches, as well as those

11
in between (Hearn, 2006). Therefore, it is a suitable research method for this thesis

which takes an in-depth exploration into the genesis of China’s pre-modern ethnic

foundation.

This research employs thematic analysis to analyse data and to identify implicit and

explicit ideas within the text (Guest, MacQueen & Namey, 2012; Bryman, 2012).

Thematic analysis refers to “a method of qualitative inquiry in which researchers

develop inductive theoretical analyses from their collected data” (Silverman, 2011: 67).

As one of the most common forms of data analysis in qualitative research, thematic

analysis focuses on “identifying, analyzing, organizing, describing and reporting

themes” from qualitative data (Nowell et al., 2017: 2). The distinctive feature is its

ability to “describe patterns across qualitative data” (Braun & Clarke, 2006: 80), and

by moving beyond simply counting words or phrases, it identifies and describes

reoccurring themes from raw data, in an attempt to interpret underlying meanings and

patterns in the recurring themes (Braun & Clarke, 2006). By asking “historiographic

questions about supposedly ‘objective’ histories,” this thesis employs thematic analysis

to identify recurring themes and historical patterns in ancient government documents

and historical literature, exploring not only what is expressed in the content, but also

the underlying meanings and reasons behind the historical process during which the

kingdom of Qin united China by mobilising all of its resources to conquer its rival states

(Hearn, 2006: 36).

12
By employing thematic analysis in interpreting ancient historical sources, this thesis

aims to examine the critical historical patterns of how China’s pre-modern ethnic

foundation emerged and then gradually developed during Qin’s wars of unification

between 230 and 221 BC, at which time it conquered six rival states and accommodated

the Huaxia community within a single, definite territorial domain by establishing the

first unified, centralised Chinese empire – the Qin dynasty. This research examines

policies and implementations established before, during and after this series of wars,

analysing the intentions, actions and actual outcomes of those policies in the context of

the genesis of a united Chinese community displaying elements of nationalism and

imperialism.

Sources

The primary sources of this thesis originate from ancient historical records, consisting

of both ancient historical monographs and biographies as well as edited collections of

government documents from the Qin state and the Qin dynasty (bamboo slips). These

ancient historical sources, dating from the fourth century BC to the first century AD,

constitute a valuable historical record written right at the time of the Warring State era,

during which Chinese states fought against each other and the kingdom of Qin

eventually succeeded in annexing all of its rivals. Therefore, these sources, in theory,

are closer to reality than any other sources because they are the closest historical

13
recordings of a time when the historical events – Qin’s wars of unification, were

happening. Although the use of these ancient historical records is common in the study

of Chinese history, they are barely used in the study of nation and nationalism. This

thesis has the opportunity to produce an original account connecting the development

of China’s collective identity with its pre-modern ethnic foundation. Secondary sources,

i.e. other scholars’ research findings, comments and opinions on these bamboo slips,

are also used to demonstrate the relevant socio-historical context and make a

comparison with the findings of this research.

Nevertheless, the shortcomings of these historical sources are also evident. First and

foremost, there is limited availability of surviving historical sources, especially primary

ones, relating to the history of the Qin and Han dynasties: “independent archival

material for Ch'in (Qin) and Han was almost entirely limited to fragments of documents

prepared in the course of the civil and military administration of the defense lines” in

the form of wooden and bamboo slips (Loewe, 1986a: 6), as most historical records

from the Qin and pre-Qin era were lost in the Qin’s destruction of ancient literature in

213 BC and its subsequent collapse in 207 BC (Bodde, 1986). Second, key themes and

questions in Chinese history are unevenly distributed across available historical sources,

making the interpretation of historical reality even more difficult (Loewe, 1986a). Third,

Loewe (1986a) also believes that the Standard Histories [of China] provide incomplete

representation of historical figures, i.e. men and women, and political matters within

the capital city and local events outside the capital city, which may therefore blur

14
causality in historical events.

As Loewe (1986: 3) argues, “the historian of this period has perforce to rely almost

exclusively on sources compiled in the peculiarly Chinese form of the Standard History,”

thus making it difficult to “check the accuracy of their statements of fact, to examine

questions of authenticity, or to balance their opinions and judgments.” The two types

of sources used in this research – political-philosophical texts from ancient China and

government documents in the form of preserved bamboo slips, both represent an official,

government perspective. All those available historical sources may present one-sided

opinions, as they would only have been written by literary elites in ancient China

(Gernet, 1996; Loewe, 1986a). For this reason, the attitudes and opinions of the vast

majority of illiterate people, most of whom were peasants, are unlikely to be reflected

in these ancient historical sources, thus posing a specific problem of objectivity in this

research when engaging with the issue of the pre-modern identity of the Chinese

community.

For this reason, it is important to read against the grain when raising and analysing

supporting evidence from these ancient historical sources. For instance, it is necessary

to consider the perspectives of the ruled when referring to historical sources written by

the ruling elites – those measures and policies implemented by Qin’s central

government might have had unfavourable impacts on the masses, even though they

might also have made a great contribution to the unification and integration of the

15
Chinese community. However, Loewe (1986: 3) also acknowledges that “the very size

and nature of the […] Standard Histories […] may allow some scope for alleviating

these difficulties” as a result of their vigorous and incisive literary qualities. The

reliability of Shiji, according to Bodde (1986), is much higher than other historical

sources from the same period, due to its remarkably high critical standards and

substantial detail.

Bamboo slips

For thousands of years, China has maintained a tradition of recording history, both

officially and unofficially (Huo, 2014). Every dynasty would recruit official historians

to record important events and discourses of their time in detailed reports which were

later gathered together and written into books by the succeeding dynasty, known as

“official history” (Huo, 2014); at the same time, academic and popular historians also

recorded their own history based on their own experience and legends (Dai, 2002).

These historical records were mostly written on bamboo or wooden slips before the

invention of paper as writing material (Fu, 2007). Therefore, this research will use these

ancient historical records as primary sources in order to analyse the discourses, actions,

policies and motives behind the unification wars and in turn understand the role of war

in the founding of the Qin Empire, thus helping to investigate the role of wars in the

genesis of a pre-modern ethnic foundation of China. According to Loewe (1997),

16
bamboo and wooden slips were the major writing materials in ancient China before the

invention of paper around the fourth century AD. The long, narrow strips, made of

bamboo or wood, typically carried a single column of written text, with space for

dozens of Chinese characters. These slips were usually bound together by strings to

become a book-like roll, as shown below.

These bamboo texts are chosen as the primary sources of this research, as they deliver

previously under-researched information about social circumstances between 230 and

221 BC. Before the invention of paper, bamboo and wooden slips had been the

dominant writing material for recording important events and issues, widely used in

Chinese society. The earliest surviving bamboo slips can be dated back to the Warring

States period in ancient China, around the fifth century BC. Therefore, regarding their

position as the most reliable writing material at the time (fifth century BC to the fourth

century AD), which subsequently made bamboo slips the key vehicle of historical

recordings, they can be considered a highly valuable and reliable source for the studying

of ancient Chinese social development and human activities during this period.

17
On the basis of relevance, two major bamboo slip collections were selected for this

research, namely the Liye Qin Bamboo Slips (Chen et al., 2012) and the Corpus of Qin

Bamboo Slips (Chen et al., 2016), which are the most relevant and available sources to

this research concerning Qin’s unification of China because these are official document

archives of the Qin Empire. The Liye Qin Bamboo Slips consist of 200,000 words on

36,000 slices of bamboo slips discovered in 2002 in the town of Liye, Hunan province.

The collection is regarded as the most prominent archaeological discovery of Qin

history in the past century, because historical records from that time are extremely

limited (Chen et al., 2012). The Qin, as the first centralised Chinese empire, lasted only

fifteen years (221-207 BC), and its collapse led to serious chaos and wars across China,

during which many of the historical records were burnt and scholars killed. The

collection of Liye Qin Bamboo Slips consists of several official documents from the

Qin Empire, recording complex social, political, economic and cultural information

from the time (Chen et al., 2012).

The second bamboo source, Corpus of Qin Bamboo Slips, is a collection of six out of

twelve different series of Qin bamboo slips that have been found, edited and published,

including:

1. Shuihudi Qin Bamboo Slips: it contains 1,155 bamboo slips that were found in

southern China's Hubei province in 1975. They reflect the change of font in the

18
 Qin Empire and recorded a significant amount of information on political, legal,

economic, cultural and medical development during that period.

2. Zhoujiatai Qin Bamboo Slips: 381 pieces of bamboo slips were found in

southern China's Hubei province in 1993. They reveal a significant evolution

in the font and writing styles of the Chinese language, thereby holding an

important position in the research into the Chinese language.

3. Longgang Qin Bamboo Slips: 293 pieces of bamboo slips and 138 pieces of

fragments were found in southern China’s Hubei province in 1989. The

Longgang Qin Bamboo Slips record part of Qin’s legal systems and legal

provisions.

4. Yueshan Qin Bamboo Slips: two pieces found in southern China’s Hubei

province in 1986. The content is rishu – guidelines for people’s ordinary life.

5. Haojiaping Qin Bamboo Slips: these slices were found in south-western

China’s Sichuan province in 1980, and they record Qin’s amendment of laws

during the late Warring State period.

6. Fangmatan Qin Bamboo Slips: more than 400 pieces were found in north-

western China’s Gansu province in 1986. Similar to the Yueshan Qin Bamboo

19
 Slips, the content is rishu – guidelines for people’s ordinary life.

Outline of this thesis

This thesis consists of three main parts:

Part One of this thesis is the literature review (Chapters 1, 2 and 3) section. As this

thesis aims at exploring the pre-modern ethnic foundation of the Chinese community,

the first three chapters provide a systematic review of the relevant literature in relation

to the three main research questions raised in the Introduction chapter, demonstrating

how previous academic studies discussed the emergence and development of nation

and nationalism, the historical development of China from antiquity to Qin’s unification

in 221 BC and how warfare generated social transformations and led to the formation

of European nation-states in modernity.

Chapter One offers a brief summary of relevant previous studies in the field of nation

and nationalism. It starts with an overview of both the modernist and ethno-symbolist

schools of thought, explaining their similarities and differences in the understanding of

nation and nationalism, with a particular focus on their corresponding perspectives on

the pre-modern ethnic roots of modern nations. This chapter then thoroughly reviews

previous studies on the historical development of China’s national identity,

20
demonstrating both the traditional understanding of the Chinese community and the

modern form of Chinese national identity under Western influence.

Chapter Two illustrates the historical background of this thesis, introducing how the

Chinese community developed gradually from antiquity to the end of the Qin Empire

(207 BC). It starts with a historical overview of Chinese society from antiquity to the

Warring States era, showing how the pre-modern foundation of the Chinese community

gradually emerged. It then explores the rise and decline of the Qin state, demonstrating

the historical legacy left to the Chinese community. Finally, this chapter also examines

scholarly debates on the nature of Chinese society, which is closely constituted around

a commonly recognised notion of civilisation based on Confucianism and Legalism.

Chapter Three provides an overview of previous theoretical accounts of how warfare

has been closely associated with the formation of states and nations. By drawing on

various classical and modern theorists in the sociology of war, this chapter reviews how

warfare gives rise to modern nation-states through the means of coercion, i.e. warfare.

Following this, it demonstrates how wars can promote social change, as well as how

nation-states are heavily affected by external geopolitical influences.

Part Two of this thesis presents the findings of the empirical research (Chapters 4, 5

and 6). These three chapters present major findings from my analysis of ancient

historical records (ancient monographs & biographies) and edited collections of

21
government documents (bamboo slips) from the Qin Empire. By summarising the

findings of this empirical research, the findings chapters demonstrate how Qin’s

unification of China, through a series of plans and warfare, led to the emergence of a

truly unified Chinese community from 221 BC onwards, and its subsequent

development of this community’s pre-modern ethnic foundation. The first true

unification of China under a single, united state, was achieved through Qin’s wars of

unification (230 – 221 BC), during which the Qin eliminated all its rival Chinese states

through conquest. Nevertheless, it is also found that Qin’s unification of China in 221

BC was an outcome of a much longer historical process stretching back over seven

generations of Qin monarchs 140 years (361 – 221 BC) previously. There was social,

political and economic advancement, as a result of the Reforms of Lord Shang, that

backed up the success of the Qin kingdom in the unification and integration of Chinese

society.

Chapter Four explores the role of war and military power in the unification of China,

demonstrating in this context the formation of a united Chinese state in the third century

BC. It examines in this context how the Qin adopted a more pragmatic and inclusive

approach towards surrounding ethnic groups that had previously been regarded by other

Chinese states, from a Sino-centric perspective, as inferior and barbaric. It also

addresses the significance of a suitable strategic and military master plan in Qin’s

unification of China.

22
Chapter Five tracks back to the reforms of Lord Shang in the fourth century BC, which

took place before the beginning of Qin’s wars of unification, illustrating how the Qin

was socially transformed by a centralised socio-political order and the implementation

of the rule by law during the reforms of Lord Shang. This section then assesses the

extent to which this series of reforms developed the Qin into a more advanced society

(socially, politically, militarily and materially) than its rival Chinese states at that time,

hence strengthening Qin’s capacity to bring the country together, which, for the first

time in history, established a truly united Chinese state with a dedicated boundary, thus

providing the foundation for the subsequent genesis of the pre-modern ethnic

foundation of China.

Chapter Six examines how the kingdom of Qin dealt with increasing ethnic diversity

during its territorial expansion, explaining how it sought to promote social integration

by implementing inclusive policies to attract foreigners, how its legal system fostered

the cultural assimilation of rival states and the surrounding ethnic tribes it conquered

and how it pursued complete social integration through encouraging planned migration,

mixed residency and inter-ethnic marriage among its citizens. Nonetheless, the Qin’s

attempt at socially integrating the Chinese community was not overly successful, as it

only lasted for fifteen years and collapsed at a rapid pace following the death of the

First Emperor Zheng, after which former kingdoms quickly revived.

Part Three of this thesis offers an in-depth Discussion section (Chapter 7) on the topic

23
of this research. Chapter Seven compares the findings of the empirical research with

perspectives from previous studies, answering the three research questions and

illustrating how the findings herein contribute to the existing literature on nation and

nationalism, as well as the sociology of war.

This is followed by a Conclusion chapter for the whole thesis. By summarising the key

themes herein, the chapter revisits the major findings and contributions of this study,

stating that the current united Chinese society, originating from the Qin’s pre-modern

foundation, is both similar and different to the emergence and development of modern

nation-states in the West. The thesis argues that due to its divergent historical paths from

Europe, the Chinese community has undergone a different social evolution, hence

developing a few features distinct from typical European nations. Finally, this thesis

concludes by evaluating the entire research study, i.e. choices relating to the field of

research and background, the methodology, the scale and scope of the chosen topic and

the generalisability of the research outcomes.

24
Literature Review

Chapter One

Nationalism, Proto-nationalism, and the Ethnie as the

Historical Foundation of Nationalism and Collective Identity
Formation

Nation and nationalism are enduring concepts in modern society. As David McCrone

(1998: vii) acknowledges, “we inhabit a late twentieth-century world in which many of

the old nostrums and doctrines have withered. Socialism has gone; fascism has gone.

Nationalism has survived and prospers”. Prior to discussing the pre-modern ethnic

foundation of China, this chapter provides an overview of theoretical debates between

two preeminent schools of thought on nation and nationalism – modernism and ethno-

symbolism, demonstrating the similarities and differences between these two

approaches. The chapter consists of three main parts. Section 1.1 introduces modernist

perspectives on the nation-building process, arguing that nation and nationalism are

undoubtedly modern and suggesting that the connection between proto-nationalism and

modern nationalism is uncertain; Section 1.2 offers a systematic review of ethno-

symbolism, paying particular attention to the pre-modern ethnic foundation of modern

25
nations; following this, Section 1.3 takes a glance at the emergence and development

of Chinese identity in the modern age. Finally, it concludes by comparing both

approaches.

Definitions relating to nation, ethnicity and ethnic group shall be made clear before

moving on to further discussion, as this thesis involves intertwining concepts of nation,

nationalism, state and ethnicity. The concept of state, as defined by Max Weber (1946:

78), refers to “a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the

legitimate use of physical force within a given territory”. A modern state, as Weber

(1946: 82) acknowledges, is “a compulsory association which organizes domination”,

i.e. the only social institution that can legally use force and violence in governing people

within its territorial boundaries. However, although the modern global order is based

primarily on the nation-state system that originates from the Westphalian idea of

sovereignty (Osiander, 2001), not all nations have a state – even though states can exist

without fitting themselves into a nation (Hearn, 2006). In terms of ethnicity, Weber

(1978: 389) conceives it as “those human groups that entertain a subjective belief in

their common descent because of similarities of physical type or of customs of both, or

because of memories of colonization or migration”. According to Guibernau (2007: 60),

what differentiates an ethnicity in relation to a nation is “the absence of claim to self-

determination”, in that an ethnic group does not normally have this assertion. Moreover,

ethnicity is always based on common descent, whereas nations may or may not have a

common ancestry or historical foundation (Weber, 1978; Gellner, 1996), which is

26
another major difference between ethnicity and a nation.

1.1 Theoretical discussion about the historical roots and

development of nations and nationalism: modernism, proto-

nationalism and critiques of modernism

As its name suggests, modernism stresses that the emergence of nations and nationalism,

together with the founding of nation-states, is an entirely modern social construct

beginning in Europe in late modernity (Gellner, 2006; Anderson, 1991; Hobsbawm,

1983 & 1990; Breuilly, 1982). Nationalism, according to modernist thinkers, is “a

cultural and political ideology of modernity” that has been particularly important during

the transformation from a traditional agrarian society into a modern industrial society,

which in turn has played an important role in setting up the modern nation-state system

(McCrone, 1998: 10). Modernists believe that the concept of nation is derived from

nationalism, rather than the other way round: “nationalism is not the awakening of

nations to self-consciousness; it invents nations where they do not exist” (Gellner, 1964:

168; Hobsbawm, 1990). As for the concept of nation, it refers to “an imagined political

community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign”, since the

majority of people in a national community have limited awareness of and interactions

with their fellow nationals despite there being a horizontal comradeship to unite a

27
national with fellow nationals (Anderson, 1991: 6). In addition, modernists widely

agree that nations and nationalism are historically novel – modern nations have little

connection with pre-modern ethnic communities, even though “admittedly, nationalism

uses the pre-existing, historical inherited proliferation of cultures or cultural wealth,

though it uses them very selectively, and it most often transforms them radically”

(Gellner, 2006: 54; Day & Thompson, 2004; Hearn, 2006). In what follows, section

1.1.1 introduces the primary principles of modernism, following which section 1.1.2

illustrates the notion of proto-nationalism, discussing the possibility of pre-modern

nationalism, and 1.1.3 critiques the modernist approach are presented.

1.1.1 Modernist school of thought – the dominant tradition of thought in nation

and nationalism

Modernism holds a relatively materialist point of view, exploring the nation-building

process by examining the objective transformations in social structure. According to

modernist thinkers, the emergence of nation and nationalism results from three modern

transformations: economic, political and social/cultural (Hearn, 2006; Özkirimli, 2010).

Economic transformation: a result of modern industrialism and capitalism

28
Modernist thinkers emphasise that the development of nations and nationalism, as a

mass phenomenon in Europe, is closely linked to the rise of modern industrial

capitalism (Gellner, 1964 & 2006; Hobsbawm, 1975; Giddens, 1987). One of the key

features in modernity is that human society experienced a fundamental structural

transformation from a pre-modern agrarian to a modern industrial form of capitalist

society (Gellner, 1964 & 2006). During this transition, these highly diverse and

segmented local communities were integrated into a larger, united community, which

then eased the free flow of economic factors through a much wider socio-political

sphere and finally gave rise to industrialisation (Gellner, 1995). As Gellner (2006)

argues, it is only after industrialisation that the mass population can interact with their

distant fellow nationals, thus allowing national consciousness to emerge. Nevertheless,

this view is opposed by Mann (1992 & 1995), who believes that there is no inextricable

connection between the progression of nationalism and the level of industrial

development. Mann (1992) strongly believes that industrialisation came too late and

was spread unevenly, so it could not generate a considerable impact on nations and

nationalism. Instead, modern fiscal-military pressure during massive warfare could be

an important factor in the rise of nation and nationalism in modernity (Mann, 1992).

Nonetheless, Gellner (2006) responds that multiple factors are linked to the rise of

nationalism, i.e. other factors besides industrialisation may also engender this new

social phenomenon.

29
Different from Gellner, who focuses on industrialisation, Nairn (1981) and Hobsbawm

(1975, 1987 & 1990) provide a different observation – it was social inequality as a

result of modern capitalism, rather than industrialisation, that fostered nationalism and

nation-building movements. They argue that from the eighteenth century onwards, the

rapid development of modern capitalism has exacerbated social inequality across

Europe, threatening social solidarity and the legitimacy of the state (Nairn, 1981;

Hobsbawm, 1975, 1987 & 1990). From this perspective, nationalism is perceived as an

ideological construct in the context of growing social conflicts and class antagonism,

intended to generate social cohesion across class boundaries and safeguard the social

solidarity of modern capitalist society during the expansion of modern capitalism and

imperialism (Hobsbawm, 1975, 1983 & 1987).

Political Transformation: establishing a modern bureaucratic state

Modernist thinkers believe that “nationalism is primarily a political principle” (Gellner,

2006: 1). Nation and nationalism are the products of bureaucratisation, and it is only

after the establishment of modern state bureaucracy and the involvement of the mass

population in political life that modern nations begin to emerge and prosper (Breuilly,

2001; Mann, 1992; Brass, 1979; Hobsbawm, 1984). Breuilly (1982: 1 & 2001) regards

nationalism as a political ideology trying to justify the exercise of state power under the

framework of nationalist narratives, which “in the modern world, is principally about

control of state”. The significance of nationalism lies in the fact that it serves as an

30
intermediary connecting state bureaucracy to popular society – it binds the public

domain of the state with the private domain of individuals (Breuilly, 1982 & 1996).

That is why nationalism is so important in the politics of the modern state.

Moreover, Brass (1979) and Hobsbawm (1983) acknowledge the instrumental nature

of ethnicity and nationality as tools of competing elites to obtain popular support:

“[T]he study of ethnicity and nationality is in large part the study of politically

induced cultural change. More precisely, it is the study of the process by which elites

and counter-elites within ethnic groups select aspects of the group’s culture, attach

new value and meaning to them, and use them as symbols to mobilize the group, to

defend its interests, and to compete with other groups.”

(Brass, 1979: 40-41)

According to Brass (1991), the process of ethnic identity formation, and its subsequent

transformation into nationalism, moves in an irreversible direction – cultural makers

always selectively use ethnic differences to differentiate and politicise their collective

identity, so as to demand greater social, political and economic interests. However, on

the other hand, nationalism would not emerge without the support of the masses. A

collective ethnic identity across social class, according to Brass (1991), is thus a

necessary condition for the beginning of ethnic transformation towards nationalism,

which itself requires three preconditions: namely growth in the literacy rate, media as

31
a means of mass communication, and the standardisation of local language. That is why

nation-building is conceived as a social engineering project (Hobsbawm, 1983). The

engineers, in Brass’s (1991) view, are the elites who intensively manipulate the minds

of the masses through nationalist movement in order to compete for state and group

interests.

Social/Cultural transformation: the birth of mass culture

For modernist thinkers, cultural homogeneity cannot exist in a pre-modern society

(Gellner, 2006; Anderson, 1991; Hobsbawm, 1983 & 1990). A standardised mass

culture, on which nationalism is based, cannot be spread without the support of modern

industrial capitalism (Gellner, 2006; Anderson, 1991). The public education system is

so vast and expensive that only a powerful, centralised territorial state in the modern

industrial age can afford it (Hobsbawm, 1990; Gellner, 2006). As Anderson (1991)

acknowledges, it is only after the Industrial Revolution that printing firms and modern

mass education systems were set up, which then promoted the standardisation and

popularisation of universal language, especially the written language, which in turn

formed the basis for a solid national foundation. Moreover, most national symbols and

semi-ritual practices, such as flags, images, ceremonies and music, are also historically

novel, which did not exist before modernity (Hobsbawm, 1983). Nonetheless,

Guibernau (1996) contends that, at least in Britain, the mass education system did not

come about until the 1870s, thereby making it difficult to be linked with generalising a

32
national language. This standard culture schema might not fit some European nations

(Özkirimli, 2010).

Furthermore, religious transformation, namely the divorce between church and state,

also forms an important part in the development of modern nations (Hearn, 2006).

“Nationalism is a contingent, artificial, ideological invention” that intends to deliver the

idea of national self-determination to nationals, to portray that all nations have the right

to rule themselves on behalf of their national citizens (Gellner, 2006: 55). New churches

under the control of monarchs, as a result of the Reformation and the divorce between

church and state, led to the rising significance of the bureaucratic state and the declining

influence of the Catholic Church (Llobera, 1994; Greenfeld, 1992). This in turn caused

the secularisation of society and empowered the monarchs and aristocracy as a

legitimate ruling power, hence giving rise to the emergence of the nation-state system

across Europe (Llobera, 1994; Greenfeld 1992). Henry VIII’s split with papal authority

in 1532, which engendered the independent new religion of Protestantism in England

as the national church, is an example of how the separation of church and state helped

the spread of literacy (through the spread of English vernacular Bibles) and a more

uniform religious ideology, which subsequently strengthened the English vernacular as

the cultural and ideological foundation for the mass culture of the English nation

(Greenfeld, 1992). As a consequence of the separation of church and state, a vibrant

civil society, i.e. “the ensemble of social institutions, associations and organisations,

distinct from kinship and the state, through which values, desires and demands are

33
articulated and which often serves to channel these demands toward the state”, was thus

founded upon a shared national social, cultural and political background (Hearn, 2000:

19; Breuilly, 1982; Mann, 1988; Gellner, 1995).

1.1.2 Proto-nationalism: the existence of pre-modern nationalism?

According to Hobsbawm (1990), proto-nationalism is a deliberate social construct that

aims at establishing a connection between a group of people and their collective

communities – no matter real, lost or imagined. He suggests that proto-nationalism is

an emotional bond “to fill the emotional void left by the retreat or disintegration, or the

unavailability of real human communities and networks” (Hobsbawm, 1990: 46). These

bonds could help “states and national movements…[to] mobilize certain variants of

feelings of collective belonging which already existed and which could operate, as it

were, potentially on the macro-political scale which could fit in with modern states and

nations” (Hobsbawm, 1990: 46). Regarding the notion of proto-nations, Eriksen (1993:

14) defines them as “nations without a state”. Based on the idea of national self-

determination, these culturally- and territorially-based proto-nations, namely groups of

ethno-nationalist movements, claim that they should not be ruled by the existing

government and would rather have a nation-state of their own (Eriksen, 1993). Typical

proto-nations include Euzkadi or the Basque country in Spain (Heiberg, 1989), Brittany

in France (McDonald, 1989) and Québec in Canada (Handler, 1988). Eriksen (1993)

notices that there has been a growing number of proto-nations around the world since

34
the 1990s, such as Kurds, Sikhs, Palestinians and Sri Lankan Tamils.

Although modernism tends to deny the existence of nations and nationalism in the pre-

modern era, some modernist thinkers have seriously discussed the possibility of proto-

nationalism – a pre-mature form of nationalism that existed before the emergence of

nation and nationalism in the late eighteenth century (Gellner, 1996 & 2006;

Hobsbawm, 1983 & 1990; Mann, 1992 & 1995; Eriksen, 1993). First and foremost, a

major difficulty in confirming a proto-nation is how to define and verify whether those

people in pre-modern communities were or were not conscious of a collective identity?

Modernists insist that national consciousness would not come into being without the

spread of literacy, which is impossible in the pre-modern society (Gellner, 2006;

Hobsbawm, 1983 & 1990; Anderson, 1991; Brass, 1991). Hobsbawm (1990: 48)

believes that it is fairly difficult to identify the elements of proto-nationalism, as

“discovering the sentiments of the illiterate who formed the overwhelming majority of

the world's population before the twentieth century” is an unachievable task – most

references we have nowadays are debates held by the literate and elites, whose ideas

cannot represent the vast majority of an illiterate population in antiquity. Smith (1986:

70), who has challenged the modernist perspective, expresses a similar view in arguing

that searching for a pre-modern nation always faces the problem of “social penetration”

– it is extremely difficult to know whether a sense of nationalist-sounding discourse or

communal sentiment would have penetrated down to ordinary people in antiquity, most

of whom were illiterate peasants. Just as Mann (1995) points out, even though there

35
were indeed some proto-national elements in Europe before the eighteenth century,

universal literacy, which stands at the centre of nation-formation, was far from

accomplished. Most scholars in the field, however, have reached a consensus that

nations and nationalism could never exist without support from the masses (Gellner,

2006; Hobsbawm, 1987 & 1990; Mann, 1995; Brass, 1991; Smith, 1991 & 1998;

Hutchinson, 2001 & 2005).

Moreover, the lack of a territorial state is also a key problem for identifying a proto-

nation. These proto-national elements did not turn into fully-fledged national sentiment

until the late eighteenth century, when military, industrial and modernist

transformations began to turn pre-modern ethnic communities into modern nation-

states (Mann, 1995; Breuilly, 1982 & 2001). As a result of the endless eighteenth-

century wars, increasing centralisation of the states and their ability to mobilise

resources from individuals led to increasing demands for political status in the form of

citizenship. Thereafter, the development of industrial capitalism led to more extensive

and instrumental power of state institutions in terms of infrastructure, communications

and the public education system, all of which enhanced connections within a collective

community ruled by the state. Finally, the modernist transformation after WWI

destroyed most of the authoritarian regimes across Europe, thereby handing the over

tools of institutional control to the masses through parliamentarianism – it was at this

point that the masses in western Europe really began to see themselves as members of

a particular nation (Mann, 1995). Hobsbawm (1990) also identifies two types of proto-

36
national bonds: one is supra-local popular identification, which goes beyond the range

in which people spend most of their lives, while the other is the political bond linking

people with the state and other socio-political institutions. However, neither of these

two types has a legitimate relationship with modern nationalism, due to the absence of

a “necessary relation with the unit of territorial political organization which is a crucial

criterion of what we understand as a ‘nation’ today” (Hobsbawm, 1990: 47).

Furthermore, Hobsbawm (1990) argues that the linear relation between the proto-nation

and the modern nation is dubious. The author identifies five possible elements in

forming proto-nationalism: language, ethnicity, religion, holy icons and symbols, and

finally the consciousness of belonging. However, he suggests that none of these is

sufficient to foster proto-nationalism with a linear relation to modern nationalism, as

the masses’ consciousness is difficult to prove. Hobsbawm (1990: 73) goes on to

acknowledge that the consciousness of the masses is a necessary prerequisite for

modern nations and nationalism, but in the pre-modern era there can only be

“nationalism of the nobility” due to the level of literacy. As a result, it is difficult to

draw a linear relation between the pre-modern elite consciousness and modern nations

(Hobsbawm, 1990). For most pre-modern communities, their proto-nationalism can be

truly factitious (Hobsbawm, 1990).

Consequently, Hobsbawm (1990: 77-78) summarises that for most pre-modern

collective communities, “it is evident that proto-nationalism alone is clearly not enough

37
to form nationalities, nations, let alone states”, and “the mere setting up of a state is not

sufficient in itself to create a nation”. The relation between proto-nationalism and

modern nations thus remains obscure, as it is difficult to determine whether the masses

in pre-modern society, most of whom were illiterate, had a sense of belonging to a

proto-nation (Hobsbawm, 1990; Gellner, 2006; Smith, 1986).

1.1.3 Critique of the modernist approach

Above all, ethno-symbolists suggest that modernism tends to marginalise or even

completely ignore the significance of the pre-modern descent of modern nations (Smith,

2008: 32; Hutchinson, 2000). Ethno-symbolists contend that the modernist theoretical

framework employs a reductionist approach, explaining the modern nation-building

process by simply attributing to modern economic, political and social/cultural

transformations, marking a great rupture between pre-modern society and the modern

world – “without the resources of language, history, religion and customs, it is doubtful

whether a strong state could have been built up and persisted through all the natural

disasters, civil strife and foreign wars in which these kingdoms were embroiled since

the Middle Ages” (Smith, 2008: 32).

Second, Smith (1995: 40) argues that modernists “concentrate, for the most part, on

elite manipulation of ‘the masses’ rather than on the dynamics of mass mobilization per

se”. Ethno-symbolists believe that the modernist approach cannot explain the passion

38
behind the modern nationalist movement – why should people sacrifice for a modern

nation that is completely invented and to which they have no attachment with them?

(Özkirimli, 2010; Smith, 1996b). This problem, however, has been addressed by some

modernist thinkers. While Hobsbawm (1990) criticises that many theories on nation

and nationalism barely mention the role of the lower classes, Breuilly (1982) also asks

the following question: if nationalism is merely a political instrument of the elites, then

how can we explain the reasons why those people who do not even have any material

interest are willing to support? For this reason, Smith (1996a) argues that modernists

only tell half the story when they suggest that nations and nationalism are entirely

modern and novel: the other half of the story would actually be that nations and

nationalism are also inextricably related to pre-modern traditions and heritages.

Third, modernism may have focused too much on Western Europe, where civic

nationalism arises (Smith, 1998 & 2010). McClintock (1993), Parekh (1995) and

Chatterjee (1996) have all suggested that a universal template does not fit the rest of

the world. Plurality does exist in nations and nationalism, even in Europe. According

to Kohn (1944), there are two different types of nationalism – civic (Western) and ethnic

(Eastern), which are geographically divided by the Rhine. The Western form of civic

nationalism, locates in Britain, France and North America, is a modern form of practice

based on shared social values and political reality with limited connection to the past,

associating its nationals by common laws and a shared territorial basis (Kohn, 1944;

Shulman, 2002; Smith, 2010). The Eastern form of nationalism, found in Central and

39
Eastern Europe as well as in Asia, however, is closely associated with an

overemphasised belief in a common historical ethnic origin that could have limited

roots in present socio-political reality (Kohn, 1944; Smith, 2010). For instance,

Germany had never been an integrated nation before its unification in 1871, but German

nationalism obtained popular support by connecting its ambition to this pre-modern

ethnic memory – although there had never been a German state before, there was a

region called Germania in Roman times, where the German language was widely used

among the population (Katzenstein, 1997).

1.1.4 Summary: the modernist perspective and critiques

To summarise Section 1.1, the modernist approach has offered a modernity-centred

materialist explanation for the rise and development of nation and nationalism.

Modernist thinkers regard the emergence of nations as the result of three modern

transformations: economic transformation from an agrarian society to a modern

industrial and capitalist society, the political transformation that established the modern

bureaucratic state and the social/cultural transformation that engendered mass public

culture. For this reason, modernists tend to deny the possibility of proto-nation or proto-

nationalism before modernity, because universal literacy, a necessary prerequisite for

national consciousness, could not be achieved in the pre-modern era. This is why

modernism believes that nation and nationalism are novel phenomena that were non-

existent before modernity.

40
 1.2 Ethno-symbolism as a main theoretical framework

Different from the modernist school, which examines the nation-building process from

a modernity-focused perspective and shows how nations and nationalism in Western

history are linked to broader transformations of social structure across various

dimensions of human society in modernity, ethno-symbolism develops a different

perspective and critiques the modernist position. Smith, as the founder of the ethno-

symbolist perspective, has emphasised the significance of agency in the development

of nationalist movements and shown how popular cultures and beliefs set limits on

elites’ understanding and strategy in the nation-building process (Smith, 1991 & 2001;

Guibernau, 2004; Özkirimli, 2010). On the other hand, ethno-symbolism shares some

ideas with modernism on the significance of a definite territorial boundary and shared

culture (especially a common language) in the emergence of nation and nationalism. As

its name indicates, ethno-symbolism pays particular attention to the role of ethnic

cultures and symbols in the nation-building process, trying to “establish relations

between the different kinds of collective cultural identity by focusing on elements of

myth, memory, value, symbol, and tradition that tended to change more slowly, and

were more flexible in meaning, than the processes in other domains” (Smith, 2004: 196).

For ethno-symbolists, the concept of nation refers to “a named and self-defined

community whose members cultivate common myths, memories, symbols and values,

possess and disseminate a distinctive public culture, reside in and identify with a

41
historic homeland, and create and disseminate common laws and shared customs”

(Smith, 2005: 98). Nationalism, on the other hand, according to Smith (1991: 73), is

“an ideological movement for attaining and maintaining autonomy, unity and identity

on behalf of a population deemed by some of its members to constitute an actual or

potential ‘nation’”. Additionally for Smith (2010), nationalism is an ideology aiming at

attaining and maintaining the autonomy, unity and identity of a particular group of

people with reference to the traditional symbols, myths and values of that group.

Section 1.2.1 illustrates the longue durée approach of ethno-symbolism, following

which the concept of ethnie as the pre-modern ethnic core will be thoroughly discussed

in 1.2.2. Section 1.2.3 then examines the emotional power of pre-modern ethnic

sentiment, critiques of ethno-symbolism are presented in 1.2.4 and finally, section 1.2.5

addresses recent scholarly debates on ethno-symbolism.

1.2.1 The ethno-symbolist school of thought – collective identity over la longue

durée

In the ethno-symbolist theoretical framework, the nation is an enduring form of human

organisation that has evolved over a long period of time (la longue durée) (Smith, 1991;

Armstrong, 1982; Hutchinson, 2005). According to Hutchinson (2005: 9), nations are

“zones of conflicts” in which various social, cultural and political actors fiercely

compete against each other, and survivors then form the basis of these evolving ethnic

communities: “the enduring character of nations based on a sense of being embedded

42
in much older (ethnic) communities that have survived centuries of vicissitudes”

(Hutchinson, 2005: 4-5). Nation formation, therefore, is an unfinished process that is

still continuing (Hutchinson, 2000). Throughout human history, pre-modern ethnic

communities have endlessly faced periodic challenges in social, cultural and political

spheres, which in turn generate “dynamic, long-term historical processes that structure

the forms of modernity”, the result of which have fostered the emergence of modern

nations (Hutchinson, 2005: 5). The identity of modern nations, therefore, becomes a

consequence of dynamic cultural conflicts across history, a synthesis of cultural

plurality from pre-modern ethnic cultures (Hutchinson, 2000). As a result, Özkirimli

(2010: 166) summarises that “the ethno-symbolist story is about ‘continuity’,

‘recurrence’ and ‘appropriation’”.

The major debate between ethno-symbolism and modernism lies in their disagreement

on the importance of pre-modern ethnic roots in the formation of modern nations.

Ethno-symbolism emphasises the role of pre-modern ethnic myths, symbols, memories,

values and traditions in the formation, persistence and transformation of ethnicity and

nationalism (Day & Thompson, 2004). Ethno-symbolists have argued that nations are

not simply invented in the process of modernisation but rather are the outcome of far

longer historical development (Smith, 1991; Armstrong, 1982; Hutchinson, 2005).

Although Smith (1991), as a key ethno-symbolist thinker, agrees with modernists that

nations and nationalism appear to thrive during the period of modernity, and especially

the eighteenth century onwards, he insists that a pre-modern historical ethnic

43
foundation is necessary for the continuation of nation, nationalism and corresponding

cultures – “most nations, including the earliest, were based on ethnic ties and sentiments

and on popular ethnic traditions, which have provided the cultural resources for later

nation-formation” (Smith, 1998: 12).

For ethno-symbolists, the idea that nations and nationalisms are entirely products of the

modernisation process is dubious. Smith (1998: 190; 1996b) acknowledges that “it was

possible to find examples of social formations in pre-modern periods, even in antiquity”

– ancient Greeks, Armenians, Jews and Persians, Medieval Japanese and Koreans, as

well as Chinese from at least the Han dynasty could all be seen as examples of ethnic

continuity. “Despite massive cultural changes over the centuries, certain key identifying

components – name, language, customs, religious community and territorial association

– were broadly maintained and reproduced for millennia” (Smith, 1998: 191). As a

result, Smith (1991: 52) is convinced that “how and why nations emerged must start

from the ethnic ties and identities that have commonly formed their cultural bases and

that have played an important part in the formation of the first and subsequent nations”.

Owing to China’s long history of ethnic continuity, this thesis thus explores the

emergence of its ethnie by referring to the ethno-symbolist framework, analysing how

the pre-modern Chinese community has evolved over time and then facilitated the

genesis of China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation under the first centralised Chinese

state in the third century BC, even though this unification only lasted fifteen years.

44
 1.2.2 Ethnie – the pre-modern ethnic foundation of modern nations

Ethno-symbolists strongly believe that although nations and nationalisms themselves

are modern phenomena dating back not much further than the late eighteenth century,

the pre-modern ethnic core of modern nations, namely the ethnie, existed long before

this time (Smith, 1991, 1995 & 1998; Hutchinson, 2001 & 2005; Armstrong, 1982).

According to Smith (2004), his idea of ethnie originates from Armstrong’s view on the

evolving character of pre-modern ethnic groups. Based on his understanding of

Eurasian history, Armstrong (1982) suggests that national consciousness is not a

modern social construct but rather an evolving feature of the collective organisation of

human beings that has lasted for a long time (a la longue durée) and can actually be

traced back to as early as ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. For Smith (2004) and

Armstrong (1982), modern nationalism is not the genesis of a new collective identity

but instead the latest stage in the evolution of ethnic consciousness. Whereas for nations,

Smith and Armstrong regard them as “dynamic, long-term historical processes that

structure the forms of modernity” (Hutchinson, 2005: 5), in his later work, Armstrong

(1995 & 2001) takes a relatively modernist view but nevertheless still insists that

although national identity could be a social invention, like any other collective identities

in human society, modern inventors can only draw upon it if there has been repertory

form the antiquity.

Ethno-symbolism insists that modern nations have pre-modern roots in ancient ethnic

45
communities, which Smith (1995: 57) called the ethnie – “named units of population

with common ancestry myths and historical memories, elements of shared culture,

some link with a historic territory and some measure of solidarity, at least among their

elites”. According to Smith, (1991: 38-39), an ethnie is a “cohesive and self-consciously

distinctive” ethnic core, which finally evolves into a modern nation after a long

historical development. “The primary difference between Smith’s definitions of ethnie

and nation lies in the addition of pervasive legal, political and economic institutions in

the definition of nations” (Hearn, 2006: 46). Smith (2005: 99) also recognises that

nations differ from ethnies in three ways: “firstly, the residence of many members of

the community in a particular historic territory or homeland; secondly, the

dissemination of a public culture to the members (as opposed to elements of common

culture); and thirdly, the spread of standard laws and customs among the members”.

Nonetheless, by suggesting that nations and ethnies are different, ethno-symbolism has

identified three linkages between pre-modern ethnies and modern nations: first,

particular modern nations do have continuity during ethnic transition in modernity,

even though not all nations have a clear pre-modern ethnic core; second, the recurrence

of pre-modern ethnic communities in the form of modern nations is not an isolated and

unjustifiable event, as the revival of ethnic communities has been common throughout

human history; , and third, modern nationalists tend to re-discover and appropriate pre-

modern history for their nation-building movements to prove the authenticity of their

nation, although they often use those pre-modern myths and symbols in a selective way

(Smith, 2000 & 2005). Smith (1991: 21) summarises six attributes in relation to what

46
he refers to as the ethnie – the pre-modern ethnic core:

(1) a collective proper name;

(2) a myth of common ancestry;

(3) shared historical memories;

(4) one or more differentiating elements of a common culture;

(5) an association with a specific homeland;

(6) a sense of solidarity for significant sectors of the population.

As evident from the six attributes listed above, what really differentiates ethno-

symbolism from modernism are the myth of common ancestry and shared historical

memories – ethno-symbolism pays particular attention to the emotional sentiment of

modern nations, emphasising the significance of the emotional power of myths and

symbols and examining the pre-modern ethnic ties of modern nations.

Lateral and vertical ethnie

Smith (1991) acknowledges that there are two types of ethnie – lateral and vertical.

Lateral ethnie is an aristocratic type of pre-modern ethnic community, and this type of

pre-modern ethnic core only consists of people from the upper stratum, such as

aristocrats, higher clergy, bureaucrats, high-ranking military officials and wealthy

merchants (Smith, 1991). As Smith (1991) suggests, the lateral approach of ethnie

47
formation has wide coverage but shallow penetration into ethnic communities – it does

not have enough social depth, due to a lack of roots among the vast majority of ordinary

people. The lateral form of ethnie formation follows a top-down approach through

bureaucratic incorporation. Following the emergence of bureaucratic states, dominant

ethnic culture from the ruling class has been passed down the bureaucratic hierarchy,

spreading its influence to people of other social classes (Smith, 1991). Consequently,

this has generated transformations in political, economic and social spheres, absorbing

increasing numbers of people into a common ethnic community built upon an elite

culture. This type of ethnie, in Smith’s (1991) opinion, is most successful across

Western Europe, generating civic-territorial nations such as England, France and Spain.

In this lateral process of ethnic integration, expansion in the market economy and the

decline of ecclesiastical authority are the two key factors in this regard, together with

the important role performed by intellectuals and professionals (Smith, 1991).

The vertical ethnie, on the other hand, represents a parallel route of social formation.

Vertical ethnies tend to rise out of demotic communities in pre-modern society, which

is therefore a bottom-up approach (Smith, 1991). As Smith (1991) suggests, the key to

sustaining ethnic persistence in this approach is to establish an organised religion

around chosen myths and symbols, sacred texts and scripts, and clergies who protect

communal traditions. In this process, the traditional ethnic culture of the collective

community is often intertwined with religious culture among the public (Smith, 1991).

There is certainly consciousness of a collective national community, but it lacks a

48
proper political roof such as a state (Smith, 1991). In this circumstance, the

intelligentsia have to moderate relations between national and religious identity,

differentiating the secular ethnic community from a wider religious community (Smith,

1991). There are three ways in which to achieve this aim: firstly, try to return to pre-

modern tradition in a modern way (traditionalism); secondly, assimilate the ethnic

community to Western modernity (assimilationism); thirdly, synthesise Western

modernity with traditions from the heyday of its own ethnic history (reformist

revivalism) (Smith, 1991). No matter which way is chosen, it is intelligentsia’s role to

“mobilize a formerly passive community into forming a nation around the new

vernacular historical culture it has rediscovered” (Smith, 1991: 64). This shall be

achieved either by constructing a historic home in people’s memories or by reviving

the culture of its golden ages (Smith, 1991). This ethnie formation, according to Smith

(1991), would lead to an ethnic-genealogical type of modern nation that covers much

of what lies beyond Western Europe.

Smith (1995 & 1998) also identified a third way of forming ethnie – the immigrant

nations. He explains that countries like the USA, Canada and Australia, which were

born out of former colonial empires, were mostly formed by overseas immigrants of

various ethnies. As a result, these nations have to deal with plurality in their nations by

accepting and embracing “ethnic and cultural diversity within an overarching political,

legal, and linguistic national identity” (Smith, 1998: 194). For instance, even an

ethnically diverse settler society such as the USA has had to construct its ethnic core

49
with myths and symbols, in order to legitimise the existence of the American nation:

“the United States draws on certain legitimating myths, as a pioneering entrepreneurial

people, with a special historical mission to promote religious freedom and democracy,

unified through purifying crises such as the American Civil War in which the stain of

slavery was cleansed (albeit very imperfectly)” (Özkirimli, 2010: 174).

The cultural contents of ethnic identity may evolve over time and under certain

circumstances, such as war and conquest, exile and enslavement, as well as the influx

of immigrants and religious conversion (Smith, 1991). This kind of ethnic self-renewal,

according to Smith (1991), has four different mechanisms. First, it can happen through

religious reform, where people give up their old religious beliefs and switch to other

ideologies that help them achieve their goals. Second, renewal may also be achieved

through cultural borrowing whereby an ethnic community can selectively adopt cultural

characters of other ethnic communities. Third, ethnic self-renewal can be carried out

through popular participation in a political system, which in turn can generate a sacred

mission for the masses. Fourth, a pre-modern ethnie may renew itself through what

Smith (1991: 36) called “the myths of ethnic election” – those ethnies that do not have

a myth could be incorporated into other ethnies after losing their independence in

contests. Nevertheless, the persistence of ethnic identity itself can be much more

enduring. As Smith (1986: 16) acknowledges, “ethnies, once formed, tend to be

exceptionally durable”. The continuity of ethnic identity, therefore, is mostly ensured

by three external factors: state-making, military mobilisation and organised religion

50
(Smith, 1991). These three factors, along with many other factors, sustain the continuity

and persistence of ethnic identity under even the most radical social transformations

(Smith, 1991). As shown later in the empirical part of this thesis, the ancient Chinese

community underwent ethnic self-renewal over five centuries of incessant wars, after

which convergence began to take place across the Chinese community and then

generated a basis for the genesis of a Chinese ethnie in the third century BC.

1.2.3 Myths, symbols and memories: the emotional power of nationalism

Compared to the modernist approach, ethno-symbolism has made more efforts to

explain why nations and nationalism can emerge and prosper. In ethno-symbolism, the

power of emotion is the key reason why nations and nationalism can be socially

constructed and sustained (Smith, 1986 & 1991; Guibernau, 2007 & 2013; Hutchinson,

1987, 2000 & 2005). Ethno-symbolists are convinced that national cultures are not

simply invented or socially constructed by elites in modernity but rather have deep

historical roots in pre-modern ethnic cultures. These ethnic myths, symbols and

memories, such as “rituals, commemorations, festivals, monuments, sacred places,

emblems, flags, coins, hymns and so on” (Hearn, 2006: 177-178), are not simply

instruments of the elites by which the ruling class try to manipulate social order, but

they also “potent signs and explanations… [which] have capacities for generating

emotion in successive generations” (Smith, 1986: 201). Historical ethnic sentiment, as

stated by Smith (2001), does not simply become a social and political instrument of

51
elites, but also sets restrictions and limits to elites’ understanding of society and their

choice of strategy. While insisting on the pre-modern historical roots of modern

nationalism, ethno-symbolism does not deny the fact that many pre-modern ethnic

myths, symbols and memories have been continuously overlain by re-developed, new

ethnic cultures (Hutchinson, 1987).

The power of emotional attachment

For ethno-symbolists, nationalism is not only a political ideology, but also “a sentiment

of love and identification with the nation as a community with a shared name, culture,

history, territory and fate” (Guibernau, 2013: 142). This emotional sentiment is attached

to pre-modern ethnic myths, symbols and memories that act as a vehicle for ethnic

culture (Smith, 1991; Guibernau, 2013; Hutchinson, 2005 & 2008). “A symbol was

originally an object, a sign or a word used for mutual recognition and with an

understood meaning that could only be grasped by the initiated” (Guibernau, 2013: 37).

When a symbol is attached to collective identities of ethnicity or nation, it will burst

into substantial emotional power such as nationalism.

According to Guibernau (2013: 3), belonging is a critical component of self-

identification, and it involves “various degrees of emotional attachment to a range of

communities and groups”. The strength of this emotional attachment depends heavily

on an individual’s willingness to conform, which can therefore become an instrument

52
not only in identity formation, but also in political mobilisation – deemed crucial by

elites (Guibernau, 2013). As Guibernau (2013: 142) argues, the significance of emotion

lies in its potential to be a powerful trigger for political mobilisation, which can reshape

the power structure in the social and political arena: “The nation relies on the emotional

attachment of its citizens as a source of their loyalty, solidarity and readiness to self-

sacrifice”, which is why emotional power can be so important in the modern nation-

building process. However, ethno-symbolists are also highly cautious about the danger

of manipulating nationalist emotions, suggesting that “evoking an heroic past is like

playing with fire, as the history of all too many ethnie and nations locked in conflict

today can tell” (Smith, 1986: 201). Pre-modern myths, symbols and memories can thus

“possess explosive power that goes far beyond the ‘rational’ uses which elites and social

scientists deem appropriate” (Smith, 1986: 201).

1.2.4 Critiques of ethno-symbolism

First of all, modernist critiques of ethno-symbolism largely focus on the connection of

modern nations with pre-modern ethnic foundations (Day & Thompson, 2004; Hearn,

2006). Modernists contend that Smith’s focus on cultural continuity has been deceived

by the manifestation of nationalist discourse, arguing that most modern nations have no

or limited pre-modern ethnic roots, even though a small number of nations might have

the roots, albeit to a questionable extent (Gellner, 1996; Breuilly, 1996). Both Gellner

(1996) and Breuilly (1996) argue that discontinuity in cultural ties is much more salient

53
than continuity in the development of modern nations, conceiving the modern nation-

building process as political mobilisation aiming at achieving statehood and attaining

social power. For instance, Gellner (1996) raises the example of Estonia, which does

not have any pre-modern ethnic foundation or cultural traditions but has nevertheless

developed into a vibrant national community.

Second, Brass (1991) suggests that the study of nations and ethnicities should focus on

the intentions of elites rather than on the collective movements of national communities.

The development of nations, nationalism, and national symbols and myths should be

entirely attributed to the contention for power between elites, i.e. “it is […] the process

by which elites and counter-elites within ethnic groups select aspects of the group’s

culture, attach new value and meaning to them, and use them as symbols to mobilize

the group, to defend its interests, and to compete with other groups” (Brass, 1991: 75).

For many modernists, the primary role of elites in the nation-building process is

prominent – nationalism is an instrument through which elites manipulate and mobilise

the majority of people to achieve their own goals and interests (Brass, 1991; Gellner,

2006; Breuilly, 1996; Hobsbawm, 1987 & 1990).

Third, ethno-symbolist accounts on myths, symbols and emotional power have also

been challenged. Eller and Coughlan (1993) suggest that ethno-symbolism has

incorrectly regarded pre-modern ethnic foundations as an essential part of the origin of

modern nations, hence overlooking the significance of the social construction process

54
during the formation of nations in late modernity. Although pre-modern ethnic

foundations might bring about irresistible collective uniformity during the modern

nation-building process, what really matters during this process is material interests –

symbols, traditions, and connections with pre-modern ethnic foundations of modern

nations can all be invented or drawn upon whenever necessary, even if modern nations

do not have one (Eller and Coughlan, 1993; Hearn, 2006; Gellner, 1964 & 1996;

Hobsbawm, 1983). Considering the scale of modern nations in comparison to pre-

modern ethnic foundations, the issues surrounding “emotional bonds” and “historical

depth” of national roots do indeed matter in relation to the formation of nations, but

they may not be as necessary as ethno-symbolists think them to be (Hearn, 2006: 45).

1.2.5 Ethno-symbolism in contemporary scholarly debate

Recent studies of nationalism, including the ethno-symbolist approach, have paid

increasing attention to the new wave of nationalism around the world, and particularly

in Europe, where it is rising in many established nation-states, including “Scotland and

Wales in the United Kingdom, Catalonia and the Basque Country in Spain, Quebec in

Canada, Brittany in France and the Flemish in Belgium” (Hearn, 2006: 18; Guibernau,

2013; Flere, Lavric & Djordjevic, 2016; Whigham, 2019; Triandafyllidou, 2020). In the

Middle East, the Arab Spring also represents the rising emphasis on the history and

myths of the Arabian community along with Islamic religious identity in the region

55
(Guibernau, 2007 & 2013). “The rise of Islamism in recent decades clearly articulates

with many nationalist projects, but has a distinctive transnational religious and

ideological agenda” (Hearn, 2006: 19). Various types of neo-nationalist movements

tend to draw on their long-standing ethno-cultural identities, myths and symbols to

emphasise the social, political, economic and religious divisions between themselves

and the nation-states to which they belong (Guibernau, 2013). However, although these

scholarly debates offer an interesting account of rising ethno-nationalism, those

accounts have limited relevance to this thesis, and so they will not be discussed further

in detail.

What is closely related to this thesis, however, according to Hutchinson (2018), is

Malesevic’s (2017 & 2018) attempt to join the ethno-symbolist longue durée approach

with modernism. By criticising modernism’s ignorance in terms of the evolving feature

of pre-modern ethnic ties, and accepting the ethno-symbolist longue durée approach,

Malesevic (2017 & 2018) contends that the two ideal types of statehood – empire and

nation-state, have much more in common than most scholars believe. First and foremost,

both empires and nation-states require the organisational capacity of coercive power,

which is often achieved through continuous expansion and conquest, as in the case of

the Roman, the Chinese and the German (Prussia) empires (Malesevic, 2017 & 2018).

By referring to “the potent system of centralized officialdom” in the Chinese empire

(Malesevic, 2017: 151) and the “potent military organization” of the German empire

(Malesevic, 2018: 295), Malesevic suggests that it is these pre-modern legacies that

56
later provide the foundation for their eventual transformation from empires to modern

nation-states. Second, ideological power, which goes hand-in-hand with coercive

power, offers essential justification for the legitimacy of either empires or nation-states.

While pre-modern empires may use “mythological, religious or civilizational idioms to

justify their right to govern”, modern nation-states may draw on new ideological

principles such as “individual liberty, human rights, social equality and popular

sovereignty” (Malesevic, 2017: 152-153). Nonetheless, as Malesevic (2017) concedes,

these ideas of modern nations “can be traced back to several intellectual movements

from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment and Romanticism”, and have shown strong

organisational and cultural continuity even a century after the French Revolution. Third,

a major difference between empire and nation is the ability to establish social

penetration in society (Malesevic, 2018). Though agreeing with ethno-symbolists that

the development of modern nations and nationalism is a long historical process, he

nevertheless points out that what cannot be achieved by empires in neither the pre-

modern nor the modern age is establishing a connection between the rule of top

authority and the ordinary lives of the masses. While the ability of pre-modern empires

to establish social penetration was constrained by technology as a means of

communication, that of modern empires is instead hindered by their inability to

accommodate cultural diversity (Malesevic, 2017).

By summarising that both modern nation states and pre-modern empires require the

organisational capacity of coercive power, ideological power and social penetration,

57
Malesevic (2017 & 2018) argues that modernism portrays nations and nationalism in

an ahistorical way, which is therefore less convincing than the ethno-symbolist longue

durée approach. Nevertheless, he still insists that only modern nations can penetrate

and bring national consciousness to the masses, which is a major difference between a

nation and an empire in either the pre-modern or the modern age.

1.2.6 Summary: ethno-symbolism – its contribution and critique

To sum up, by suggesting that modernism only tells half of the story regarding nations

and nationalism as a specifically modern phenomenon, ethno-symbolism formulates

the other half of the story from a comparatively ideational perspective. In contrast to

the modernist approach, ethno-symbolism not only insists on the continuity, persistence

and appropriation of the pre-modern ethnic foundation, i.e. the ethnie, but it also

demonstrates that the masses are motivated (or, to some extent, manipulated) in nation-

building movements through the emotional power generated by the persistence of pre-

modern ethnic myths, symbols and memories.

1.3 The emergence and development of a Chinese identity from

ancient Chinese society to the modern period

Though China is an enduring community with a recorded history of a few millennia,

58
the concept of a Chinese nation is believed to be a rather recent phenomenon according

to previous scholarly discussions. This section takes a glance at previous studies on the

Chinese nation and nationalism, demonstrating how the nation emerged and developed

in modernity as a response to foreign influence. Section 1.3.1 illustrates traditional

collective identity in ancient Chinese culture, following which section 1.3.2 explores

the emergence of modern Chinese identity in the nineteenth century, followed by

section 1.3.3 which examines the consolidation of modern Chinese identity in the

twentieth century.

1.3.1 Traditional Chinese understandings of nation and national identity

The modern nation and national identity are not part of traditional Chinese concepts.

Basu (2014), referring to Fairbank (1968), recognises that international society tends to

describe the ancient Chinese world order – the tribute system, as a Sino-centric world

order. Fairbank (1968) suggests that having been the geographic centre of East Asia,

surrounded by natural geographical boundaries (such as mountains and deserts),

China’s geopolitical advantage has kept it away from other major civilisations for most

of its history, consequently leading to a feeling of its own superiority over other people

before modernity.

Traditionally, Chinese people have tended to refer to themselves as the nation 2 of

2Which, in fact, should be seen as a form of pre-modern ethnie under the ethno-symbolist framework, or as
proto-nationalism under the modernist framework.
59
Huaxia (see Cooper’s quotation below), but in the modern era the name Zhonghua

(which also comes from ancient times but is slightly more recent than Huaxia) is used

more often, since it sounds more inclusive than Huaxia – because the name Huaxia

refers to the indigenous tribes of ancient Chinese ethnicity (Cooper, 2015). Compared

to Huaxia, which has greater emphasis on ethnic origins, Zhonghua emphasises more

on the Chinese state (Cooper, 2015). Cooper (2015: 487) demonstrates that “the notions

of Hua and Huaxia […] are often mistakenly translated as pre-modern variants of the

term China”:

“Huaxia originally referred to the tribal regions of the Yellow River, but, overtime,

it came to define the ‘illustrious’ (hua) and ‘grand’ (xia) imperial order at the centre

of the world. The term ‘all under heaven’ (tianxia) referred not to the entire world

but the world ‘that counted’, that is, those Asian societies for whom huaxia was the

centre.”

(Cooper 2015: 488).

As a result of this notion, ancient Chinese people believed that they sat at the centre of

the world, and their leader – Tianzi (Son of the Heaven), was thus the leader of the

world – Tianxia (All under Heaven), even though ancient Chinese elites were already

aware of the existence of other civilised societies elsewhere as early as in the first

century BC (Cooper 2015). As a result, this ideology generates the notion of open

sovereignty, which described the leader of China, Tianzi, as the universal leader of the

60
entire world, rather than recognising the respective ruling positions of other

communities. As a result, Basu (2014) argues that in the ancient age, China's attitude

towards foreign communities has been rather “hierarchic and non-egalitarian, in

contrast to the European international order”, presuming Chinese superiority over all

other communities (Basu, 2014: 928).

Economic and cultural dominance

Even though the Sino-centric worldview is simply Chinese hubris (Cohen, 1991), it is

also related to solid material and cultural support. Cohen (2005) notes that the Chinese

economy was far more advanced than its surrounding communities throughout its

ancient and dynastic ages, having obvious economic dominance over its rivals. The

agrarian model of the Chinese economy was far more productive than the slash-and-

burn and nomadic models on the fringes of Chinese civilisation (Cohen, 2005).

Moreover, the entrepreneurial tradition rooted in traditional Chinese family culture also

stimulated the economic development of ethnic Chinese (generally referred to as Han

Chinese), providing the basis for the rise of Han local elites, representing the most

advanced productive force at the time and who transformed the local economic

structure through their far more advanced prolificacy (Cohen, 2005).

Following the expansion and unification of China, these elites were able to extend their

influence even further via the common market across the empire, thus getting involved

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in the wider extra-local relationships that would further strengthen people’s Chinese

national consciousness (Cohen 1991). Furthermore, the economic dominance of the

ethnic Chinese also led to their demographic dominance in ancient China (Cohen, 2005).

The more productive agrarian model enabled the Han Chinese to feed a larger

population whilst also facilitating their migration to distant destinations, thereby

leading to the expansion of the Chinese community and territory (Cohen, 2005). As a

consequence, China also achieved cultural dominance. Just as Cohen (2005) notices,

China moved towards increasing uniformity in the pre-modern historical period. By the

end of the pre-modern era, even though it had not achieved a state of complete

homogeneity, the commonness of Chinese cultures across the empire was considerable

compared to other empires worldwide, let alone the size of successive Chinese empires

and the number of ethnic communities within them (Cohen, 2005).

One of the most prominent features of Chinese culture is that it successfully achieved

cultural diversity alongside cultural consistency between national and local cultures

after its unification in 221 BC, as demonstrated by its linguistic tradition (Cohen, 1991).

According to Anderson (1991), a standard language is the key to the formation of

nations and national identity, and he uses Chinese Mandarin as an example of attaining

national unity through a universal written vernacular. China has always been a vast

country with a considerable number of ethnic cultures, and there are even more variants

amongst the ethnic majority – the Han Chinese themselves. Therefore, spreading a

homogenous national identity across the country is not an easy task. There is an old

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Chinese saying: customs are different, even within a few miles. In addition to the vast

territory, the number of local dialects and accents are also uncountably significant, even

in today’s China, making it hard, if not impossible, for people to understand each other

when speaking local dialects. To deal with this issue, Chinese empires started to unify

and disseminate the official Chinese language (which Cohen refers to as Mandarin) as

the universal written and spoken language across their territory (Cohen, 1991).

Moreover, Cohen (1991) notes that the popularisation of the official Chinese language

should be attributed to the state examination system adopted by Chinese empires. In

ancient China, state examination was considered the only way to become a national

bureaucrat and achieve a higher social status for themselves and their families (Cohen

1991). Cohen (1991) addresses the notion that state examinations not only spread the

official Chinese language to every corner of the empire, but they also boosted cultural

integration in ancient China, which in turn established an integrated society and a

common market, thus supporting the extra-local communication of people through the

large-scale circulation of merchants and commodities and ultimately disseminating the

official Chinese language across its territory. “While China's unity is often described as

having been achieved in spite of its pronounced linguistic diversity, I am more

impressed by the fact that in late imperial times perhaps two-thirds or even more of the

Han Chinese population had as their native tongue a variant of Mandarin” (Cohen, 1991:

115). The official Chinese language is used nowadays in all formal situations, while

using local dialects in ordinary life has never been prohibited and may even be

encouraged sometimes.

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Chinese identity – Huaxia defined by li (cultural etiquette), not blood

Even though the Sino-centric ideology generated the divide between Huaxia and Yi

(Chinese and barbarians), the actual categorisation of what it means to be ‘Chinese’

does not necessarily tie in with the concept of lineage or blood (Confucius, 2007).

Rather, whether a person belongs to the Huaxia community has more to do with his/her

choice of civilisation or, more specifically, the li (etiquette) (Confucius, 2007). In

Confucianism, the Zhou Li (etiquette of the Zhou dynasty) is a symbol of civilisation

and is in itself a civilising force (Nivison, 1999). It is both a ritual and associated with

a code of conduct on proper behaviour (Confucius, 2007). According to Cohen (1991),

the idea of li had already influenced the minds of ordinary people throughout ancient

China, reflected in their vocabularies and behaviours, whilst it also had a significant

influence on lifestyle. Cohen (1991) hence suggests that even though most people in

ancient China were not well-educated elites, most people treated li as a ritual and

carefully followed it in their daily routines.

As a result of categorisation by etiquette rather than by blood, Cohen (1991 & 2005)

suggests that this perception of Chinese collective identity actually represents a special

kind of cosmopolitanism with Chinese characteristics – a civic collective social identity

based on shared values of Chinese civilisation. Cohen (1991) explains that the Chinese

identity does indeed accept a certain degree of localism, so long as it does not threaten

64
the uniformity of national identity. It is acceptable in Chinese nationalism that people

can glorify their place of origin rather than cover it up, thus allowing local elites to

become better incorporated into the Chinese national family. Based on this fact,

Harrison (2000) argues that traditional Chinese identity follows a culturalist approach,

which is comparatively different from the European nation-state approach, in which

multiple ethnic cultures can survive under a common national identity (albeit Harrison

believes that peripheral, non-Han ethnic groups actually expect to be assimilated to the

dominant Han Chinese culture) without interrupting the political order of national

uniformity. In addition, for Harrison (2000), modern nationalism, which emerged in

China from the 1860s onwards, was very different from the earlier forms of Chinese

collective identity in both its emphasis on the idea of competition between states and in

its rejection of much of what previously constituted Chinese collective identity.

An identity different from the European Westphalian system

According to Matten (2011), Hui (2001) and Shen (2006), modern Chinese national

identity is hugely different from the European model. Hui (2001) argues that the

Chinese model and the European model follow two completely different logics. The

Westphalian European nation-state system follows the logic of balance, which has

arisen from massive wars across the European continent (Hui, 2001). Since no country

has absolute power over others, all nation-states are willing to survive under an

egalitarian principle in order to maintain a balanced international order. The Chinese

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model, on the contrary, follows the logic of domination – competing for a dominant

position and then allowing the winner to take all (Hui, 2001). According to Hui (2001),

the Chinese once adopted the same logic of balance before unification by the Qin in

221 BC, following which Chinese society moved to the logic of domination (Hui, 2001).

While Hui (2001) is critical of the Chinese logic of domination, her finding is

nevertheless inspirational to my research, as it not only identifies a key character of

Chinese social formation, but also affirms the unification of China by the Qin as a key

turning point of China’s historical path. This will be further elaborated in the empirical

chapters of this thesis.

Moreover, Matten (2011) notes that the Chinese identity has a closer connection with

the notion of state, unlike European national identities, which emphasise more the

concept of nation. For example, Shen (2006) argues that the Chinese word Guomin,

which is usually translated as ‘national’ or ‘citizen’, equates to neither of its English-

language alternatives, each of which has a strong linkage to a nation or the nation-state.

Guomin, however, actually means ‘people of the state’, not ‘people of the nation’.

Matten (2011) believes that nationalism demands nation and state to be ideally

congruent, in order to form a nation-state. This, however, is unrealisable in the case of

a multi-ethnic empire or state. Matten (2011) insists that the nation-state model is only

applicable to European countries and those who have adopted the European model. For

multi-ethnic states like China, the inclusion/exclusion criterion of nation-state is

therefore unfeasible; otherwise, it could easily exclude vast numbers of non-Han ethnic

66
groups (Matten, 2011).

1.3.2 The rise of modern Chinese identity in the late nineteenth century

This thesis argues that although the Chinese community has an enduring history and

has taken on various forms of collective social identity since ancient times, the Chinese

nation did not take shape until later modernity. Modern Chinese nationalism and

national identity are widely believed to be a reaction to external threats in the late

nineteenth century, albeit they also reflect the internal dilemma with which the long-

lasting empire struggled (Atanassova-Cornelis 2012; Harrison 2000; Cooper 2015;

Larsen 2011; Braudel, 1993). Though China faced severe challenges from surrounding

regimes and ethnic groups at different times of history, it ultimately vanquished all of

its enemies through incorporation, eviction and elimination (Wen, 2019). The

conquerors themselves were always assimilated into the Chinese civilisation, regarding

themselves eventually as members of the Chinese community. For instance, in the case

of the Mongols, the Chinese part of the Mongol Empire – the Yuan dynasty, adopted

Chinese traditions and bureaucracy, taking its name Yuan from Zhouyi, a divination

manual of the Zhou dynasty from the 10th to the fourth century BC (Wen, 2019; Kublai

Emperor, 2011[1271]). This is the fundamental reason why Sino-centrism exists in

ancient China (Basu, 2014; Wen, 2019). However, the collective self-confidence of

Chinese society was seriously challenged, and defeated, by Western powers in the late

nineteenth century.

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The Opium Wars – a crisis of self-identification

The Opium Wars, during 1839-43 (first) and 1856-60 (second), mark the beginning of

China’s downturn. Before the conflict, all invaders and conquerors throughout the

history of China had been considered less civilised and competitive than the Chinese

(Basu, 2014; Cooper, 2015). The Opium Wars, however, were the first time that

invaders were not only stronger in military strength, but they also represented a more

advanced civilisation (industrial society vs. agrarian society) (Jin, 2017), which is why

senior Chinese officials at the time regarded this situation as “a transformation in three

thousand years” (Jiang, 2016). Indeed, the Opium Wars indicate a significant turn in

Chinese history. For China, this meant not only failing against foreign invaders, but

also the collapse of traditional Sino-centric self-identification (Cooper, 2015). Just as

Fairbank (1968) argues, the Opium Wars mark the collapse of China’s traditional

concentric world order and the Confucian claim of universal overlordship. Chinese

bureaucratic and scholarly elites suddenly found that their country was no longer a great,

undefeatable empire, which thus caused the collapse of traditional Chinese self-identity

(Cooper, 2015). The old imperial identity disintegrated, and a quest for a new Chinese

identity began.

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Insecurity, ‘shame politics’ and the rise of modern Chinese identity

China’s defeat in the Opium Wars revealed to Western powers the weakness of the Qing

Empire and subsequently brought more Western powers’ attention to China. This

formed the major site of geostrategic conflicts in the late nineteenth century, leading to

the scramble for concessions and the beginning of China’s ‘century of humiliation’

(Jacques, 2009; Braudel, 1993). Nevertheless, according to Cooper (2015: 482), this

bitter experience of China has actually “created the ‘whip of necessity’, sociological

foundations, and cultural influences, crucial to the rise of a national subjectivity”.

Cooper (2015) argues that Chinese national identity is a unique product of the

development of Chinese polity itself, together with the nineteenth-century colonial

capitalism. This is a convincing argument insofar as it was only after the late nineteenth

century that a modern Chinese nation began to emerge. According to Cohen (1991:

126), today’s political slogan, namely that China shall become “prosperous and strong”

is actually associated with its defeat by British troops in the Opium Wars. Moreover,

the modern national name of China, i.e. Zhonghua, which replaces the traditional name

Huaxia as the new name of the Chinese nation, also emerged in the same period

(Leibold, 2006). Leibold (2006: 211) recognises that the new name Zhonghua is a

modern, up-to-date concept of national identity that “rejected the attempts by the racial

nationalists to erase all traces of ethnic and cultural diversity in China, contending that

only the truth of the Zhonghua nation’s shared history and common plight could spur

the continued development of national sentiment”. Zhonghua, according to Leibold

69
(2006), organically incorporates a variety of national citizens rather than including

nationals on the basis of racial ideas or cultural tradition.

1.3.3 The consolidation of Chinese identity in the twentieth century

Modern Chinese nationalism started in the late nineteenth century, but the consolidation

of Chinese national identity was not accomplished until the mid-twentieth century.

After China’s defeat in the Opium Wars, the sense of Sino-superiority, which had lasted

for millennia, had been smashed, following which the Qing dynasty was shattered and

went into steep decline (Basu, 2014; Cooper, 2015). In 1904, the Russo-Japanese War

broke out on Chinese territory, but China was unable to stop it; in 1911, the Qing

dynasty was replaced by the Republic of China, albeit the new republic still lost

Shandong province even though it was namely a winner in WWI; from 1931 onwards,

China began fighting against Japanese invasion, but its victory in WWII in 1945 could

not stop the USSR from splitting Mongolia away from its territory. All of these events,

according to Cooper (2015) and Braudel (1993), fostered the modern national

transformation of China’s collective identity.

Significance of the Japanese Invasion

According to Atanassova-Cornelis (2012) and Leibold (2006), Japan was the most

prominent trigger in consolidating China’s national identity throughout the twentieth

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century, due to a number of conflicts (Atanassova-Cornelis, 2012). Japan is the most

obvious “victimising other” for China, outweighing all other threats (Atanassova-

Cornelis, 2012: 100). The Japanese invasion of China highlights the critical need to

transform the former empire into a modern Chinese nation-state, turning the imperial

population into modern nationals (Leibold, 2006). This urgency rose as Japan began to

annex an increasing amount of Chinese territory. Facing “the loss of the state and

extermination of the race” (wangguo miezhong), Chinese intellectuals began to imagine

a Chinese nation in a way similar to Anderson’s approach, conceiving both themselves

and other former subjects of the Qing empire as an organic whole, and incorporating

the variety of ethnic groups of the new republic into a single national community called

the ‘Chinese nation’ (Leibold, 2006: 186). In that sense, Japan played the role of a

catalyst for the nation-building and transformation of modern China.

The US impact

The USA, according to Atanassova-Cornelis (2012), is the second most significant

trigger for modern Chinese identity. The Korean War (1950 – 1953) marks another

important stage in the development of Chinese identity (Jin, 2013; Chen, 2019). Even

though Communists founded the new People’s Republic in 1949, popular confidence

in the Chinese community and the new authority was in its infancy (Chen, 2019). The

Korean War, during which the whole of Chinese society was mobilised to fight against

the Americans and its allies, offered the Chinese government a chance to spread

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national awareness and patriotic discourses, thereby generating the narrative of a united

community fighting against the American threat (Chen, 2019). Finally, China’s success

in expelling American forces from the Sino-Korean border during the Korean War

enhanced the credibility and legitimacy of the new Communist government, as well as

the re-establishment of Chinese social solidarity and integrity after a chaotic century

since the Opium Wars, especially the revival of China’s national pride (Jin, 2013).

While the Chinese nationalist movement came to a rest after the Korean War ended in

1953, the USA continued to be a significant trigger of Chinese nationalism in the post-

Cold War era, thus helping to strengthen the unity and national consciousness of the

modern Chinese national community and therefore enhancing overall national identity

of China (Atanassova-Cornelis, 2012: 103):

“Indeed, US-China tensions […] which resulted from the 1995-1996 Taiwan Strait

Crisis, the 1999 accidental bombing of the PRC Embassy in Belgrade and the 2001

mid-air collision near Hainan Island, led to a sharp rise in Chinese anti-American

sentiment.”

1.3.4 Summary: the Chinese nation – its modern genesis

In summary, it is widely argued in contemporary scholarship that China did not

transform into a modern nation-state until it was challenged by Western powers in the

late nineteenth century, notably its defeat by Britons during the Opium Wars (Basu,

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2014; Leibold 2006). Western invasion in the nineteenth century shattered China’s long-

standing Sino-centric perspective on the global order and triggered the collapse of its

traditional self-identification (Basu, 2014). The subsequent rise of modern Chinese

nationality, therefore, replaced traditional Chinese collective identity in the modern era

(Cooper, 2015). This novel concept of the Chinese nation was then reinforced in the

twentieth century by the Japanese during the WWII and later the Americans during the

Korean War in the early 1950s (Atanassova-Cornelis, 2012; Leibold, 2006; Chen, 2019).

1.4 Conclusion to Chapter One

In conclusion, modernism and ethno-symbolism offer competing definitions and a

distinct understanding of nations and nationalism. Modernists are convinced that

modern nations are historically novel, and they either have little historical roots in pre-

modern history or, in many cases, these pre-modern ethnic ties cannot form a linear

relation with modern national culture. On the contrary, ethno-symbolists insist that

modern nations are built up around pre-modern ethnic cores – the ethnies, which

ultimately evolve into modern nations after continuous ethnic renewal. This

disagreement over the emergence and development of nations and nationalism,

however, may not be a matter of historical reality but rather a problem of how to define

the concepts of nation and ethnicity (Hearn, 2006).

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Just as Smith (2009) concedes, modernism and ethno-symbolism are not substitutes for

each other but rather act as complementary approaches in the study of nation and

nationalism. As Özkirimli (2010) argues, modernism has formulated a set of

explanations on how the process of nation-building takes place (economic, political and

social/cultural transformations), but it is not clear why this process happens; ethno-

symbolism, on the other hand, has demonstrated which ethnic community becomes a

nation and why the nation-building process took place (the emotional power of myths,

symbols and memories). Nevertheless, both schools agree that a popular basis –

national consciousness among the masses, is a primary prerequisite for the emergence

and development of nations in modernity. As a result, the opinion of the masses in pre-

modern society, most of whom were illiterate peasants, has thus become a key obstacle

to determining the existence of pre-modern nationalism or a proto-nation. Therefore,

modernism and ethno-symbolism each tell half of the story, and it would be a wiser

choice to bring elements from both theories together in my own discussion on the pre-

modern ethnic foundation of modern Chinese society, exploring why, when and how

the Chinese ethnie was established in antiquity.

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Chapter 2 Ancient Chinese Society and the Qin Dynasty:
From Principalities to a Centralised Empire

In order to discuss the pre-modern ethnic foundation of China, it is necessary to

understand ancient Chinese history and the founding of the Qin Empire in the first place.

Hence, this chapter provides a historical overview of Chinese society, in order to

establish a preliminary understanding of China’s historical development, before

discussing its pre-modern ethnic foundation. This chapter consists of three sections:

section 2.1 systematically addresses the socio-historical and intellectual development

of Chinese society from antiquity to the age of Warring States, during which time the

pre-modern ethnic foundation of China gradually emerged. Next, section 2.2 explores

the rise and decline of the Qin state (which later became an empire), demonstrating its

historical legacy left to Chinese society. Following this, section 2.3 examines scholarly

debates on the nature of Chinese society, analysing the essence of Chinese civilisation.

In proposing this thesis, I have employed Fukuyama’s chronological classification of

Chinese history, in which “Ancient China refers to the period from prehistory up to the

beginning of the Qin dynasty”, which marks the unification of China as a unified empire;

Dynastic China, on the other hand, refers to the imperial age, from the formation of the

Qin dynasty (221 BC) to the end of the Qing dynasty (1912 AD), when China’s imperial

era ended following the founding of the Republic of China; in addition, the post-1912

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era up to today is then defined as ‘Modern China’ (Fukuyama, 2012: 98 & 2015).

2.1 The Warring States era: wars, conquests and intellectual

development

This section illustrates the broader historical background of this thesis – from antiquity

to the Warring States period (475 – 221 BC) in ancient China, during which time ancient

Chinese society gradually achieved its first temporary unification under a centralised

state – the Qin Empire. Section 2.1.1 briefly introduces China’s history, from antiquity

to the Zhou dynasty, after which section 2.1.2 demonstrates the development of Chinese

society during the Spring and Autumn period (770 – 476 BC), which serves as a prelude

to the incessant Warring States era. Following this, section 2.1.3 addresses the Warring

States period as a time of major socio-political transformation in Chinese history, and

finally, section 2.1.4 demonstrates the boom in intellectual development in the Warring

States era, which generated drastic social, political and ideological conflicts and

development in the spiritual sphere of Chinese civilisation.

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 2.1.1 The evolving statehood - from antiquity to the Zhou dynasty

It has been widely suggested that pre-modern Chinese statehood started during the Xia

dynasty (2070 – 1600 BC), followed by the Shang dynasty (1600 – 1046 BC) and then

the Zhou dynasty (1046 – 256 BC). However, it has been debated across academia

whether the Xia dynasty ever really existed. Though it has been recorded in many

ancient Chinese historical archives and biographies as the first named Chinese

hereditary dynasty after the mythological pre-history, there is a lack of straightforward

evidence indicating a linear relation between archaeological cultural relics and a

definite Xia culture, even though “an assemblage of characteristics […] renders very

probable the existence of this dynasty” (Gernet, 1996: 39).

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A more recognised history of Chinese antiquity starts with the Shang dynasty (ca.1600

– 1046 BC), the first Chinese dynasty with written historical sources (Keightley, 1999).

Archaeological evidence shows limited support for centrality or cultural unity during

the Shang dynasty; rather, there were a number of civilised societies spread across

China at the time, many of which were geographically remote and culturally distinct,

having apparent differences from the monarchy of the Shang (Bagley, 1999; Keightley,

1999). The power network of Shang society, according to Gernet (1996: 44), was made

up of a fief system by empowering members of the royal clan with noble titles and

corresponding fief, and in some cases also to its allied clans as well.

At the beginning of the first millennium BC, the house of Zhou replaced the ruling

position of the Shang after the Battle of Muye in 1046 BC, which is historically known

as the Western Zhou (1046 – 771 BC) (Keightley, 1999; Shaughnessy, 1999). A typical

socio-political transition during the Zhou dynasty was the combination of kinship rule

with an improved fief system (Gernet, 1996). On the one hand, the Zhou inherited the

Shang’s kinship rule. The Zhou dynasty was set up via an enormous number of

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principalities and hinterlands connected through kinship ties and religious rites (Lewis,

1999). According to Mencius (2007), the Zhou had set 71 new principalities – 53 of

which belonged to the Ji’s clan and constituted the royal house of Zhou. Besides, there

were also around 800 vassal states recognising Zhou’s rule and presenting regular

tribute to the Zhou emperor (Lü, 2007). Therefore, there were about nine hundred to a

thousand states across China at the beginning of the Zhou dynasty, which is why Gernet

(1996: 51) calls this period “the age of the principalities”. On the other hand, the Zhou

also improved the fief system by gaining a much tighter grip of power over the

principalities, which was obviously different from the Shang dynasty, which only had

limited control over its affiliated states and tribes (Bodde, 1986; Gernet, 1996).

Meanwhile, identity formation during Zhou China already showed signs of

differentiation – a division between Zhou and non-Zhou people (Hsu, 1999). The Zhou

and its affiliations were formed by a mixture of various ethnic groups, i.e. although “the

people who inhabited these areas belonged to both Zhou and non-Zhou groups, the

latter were often labelled as ‘barbarians’” (Hsu, 1999: 547). According to Hsu (1999:

549), early texts describe the Zhou people as “people in the state” (国人), in contrast to

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non-Zhou people, who are described as “people of the field” (野人), which literally has

negative, inferior connotations.

2.1.2 The age of the Spring and Autumn: towards a multistate system

The Western Zhou dynasty lasted for over two centuries until it was invaded by the

Rong ethnic group (a non-Zhou community) in 771 BC, at which point Zhou’s capital

city, Haojing, fell to the Rong’s occupation. This led to the re-location of Zhou’s capital

eastwards to the city of Luoyi, after which the dynasty was historically known as the

Eastern Zhou (770 – 221 BC). The Eastern Zhou is chronologically divided into two

parts: the first 295 years are known as the Spring and Autumn period (770 – 476 BC),

and the later 255 year period is known as the Warring States period (475 – 221 BC)

(Gernet, 1996; Bodde, 1986). The house of Zhou lost most of its prestige and power

during this crisis, as it significantly shrunk in terms of territory and population, which

consequently shattered the ruling position of the Zhou monarch across China and left a

political vacuum for its 170 principalities (Bodde, 1986; Fairbank & Goldman, 2006).
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As a result, Zhou’s principalities began to fight against each other, to an increasing

extent, until five centuries later, when the Qin unified China in 221 BC. As Gernet

(1996) acknowledges, principalities began to gain growing autonomy during the

Eastern Zhou dynasty, albeit still accepting the house of Zhou as a common leadership.

This indicates a gradual transition from principalities to semi-autonomous kingdoms,

which is when the era of Spring and Autumn began.

The Spring and Autumn period, according to Hui (2005) and Hsu (1999), marks an

important transition from the age of principality to a multistate system, when all states

became involved in incessant wars aiming at gaining dominance and leadership in inter-

state relations. It is a key characteristic of the Spring and Autumn period that states

were less inclined to expand in terms of territory but instead had a stronger motivation

to acquire recognition and acceptance of their hegemonic status by the Zhou emperor

and fellow principalities (Hsu, 1999). Therefore, a multistate system based on the

balance of power amongst the contending states emerged in China in the sixth century

BC. The succeeding hegemonic principalities were collectively known as the Five

Hegemons: Qi, Jin, Qin, Chu and Wu (Hsu, 1999), and they achieved domination over

the Chinese community from 685 to 591 BC, with their hegemonic status established

under the slogan ‘revere the Zhou emperor, expel the barbarians’ (zunwang-rangyi 尊

王 攘 夷) (Tillman, 1982; Poo, 2005). This slogan clearly indicates a degree of

inclusion/exclusion criterion between the Huaxia and non-Huaxia ethnic communities.

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One point worth noting is the persistent ethnic and cultural assimilation and

incorporation occurring during the Spring and Autumn period. Many of those

contending states, which themselves were deemed as Zhou people, incorporated a

certain amount of non-Zhou groups into their communities – “for example, the Jin had

expanded to include Rong and Di lands, while Chu gained several satellites that were

former Zhou states, such as Cai and Sui” (Hsu, 1999: 562). Thereafter, the traditional

Zhou and non-Zhou distinction criteria gradually blurred. This multistate era lasted for

nearly four centuries (656 – 284 BC) before the kingdom of Qin achieved its dominance

across the Chinese community in the third century BC (Hui, 2005). The rising

autonomy of individual states led to the continuous decline of Zhou’s authority and

ruling status, and the traditional fief system gradually collapsed.

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 2.1.3 The Warring States: an era of transformation

The Warring States period (475 – 221 BC), on which this thesis focuses, came after the

Spring and Autumn period. After nearly three centuries of incessant wars across China,

only seven major kingdoms – Qi, Chu, Yan, Han, Zhao, Wei and Qin, together with a

few smaller kingdoms, survived the fierce inter-state contests and started a second-

round competition in social, political, economic, cultural and military spheres. In

contrast to the Spring and Autumn period, which involved a number of contending

principalities, the Warring States period was instead dominated by only seven major

kingdoms, “involved in constant diplomatic manoeuvring and intermittent but frequent

large-scale military conflagrations” (Lewis, 1999: 616). Nevertheless, Bodde (1986: 24)

suggests that the Warring States period, in fact, was less contentious than the Spring

and Autumn period – “the 259-year span of 722-464 [Spring and Autumn] witnessed

only 38 years without war, whereas the 242-year span of 463-222 [Warring States] had

83
no less than 89 such years”.

The Warring States period, according to Gernet (1996) and Lewis (1999), was an age

of transformation from feudal China towards imperial China, which generated dramatic

changes in various aspects of society, leading to a new socio-political order:

“The age of the Warring States, from the end of the fifth century to the imperial

unification of 221 b.c., is one of those exceptional periods when successive and

concomitant changes, provoking and reinforcing each other, speed up the course of

history and cause a complete transformation of society, manners, economics, and

thought”.

(Gernet, 1996: 62)

There were three major transformations during this period: changes in the nature of war,

socio-political transition towards a centralised state, and intellectual development

amongst hundreds of schools of thought.

The changing nature of war – towards territorial states

As mentioned in the previous section (2.1.2), the major goal of Chinese states in the

Spring and Autumn period was to achieve hegemony under the nominal leadership of

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the Zhou emperor rather than territorial expansion. Nonetheless, this changed in the

Warring States period – states no longer aimed at achieving hegemonic status while

keeping their reverence over the Zhou monarch. Instead, they focused increasingly on

establishing their territorial dominance across China, trying to weaken and get rid of

the influence of the Zhou monarch: “It was no longer a matter of winning fame by

giving proof of bravery and, if need be, of generosity, but of winning and conquering

territory” (Gernet, 1996: 65). The driving force behind this transformation, according

to Gernet (1996) and Lewis (1999), comes from the wars among these contending

Chinese states: incessant wars during this period led to the absorption and assimilation

of small principalities and non-Zhou people into larger, more competitive kingdoms,

which in turn created seven major territorial states across China (Lewis, 1999).

Evolving political structure – towards a centralised state

As Gernet (1996) notes, this transformation of the socio-political structure was driven

by the strong motivation to succeed in wars. On the one hand, there was an important

economic reason for the transition towards a centralised state – a traditional aristocratic

society based on the fief system had become a key obstacle to military expansion during

the Warring States period (Gernet, 1996). As power divided down through the noble

hierarchy, the state had limited control over the mobilisation of resources, as it relied

on enfeoffed nobilities to govern its people – the state, therefore, had no direct control

over society. Just as Gernet (1996: 67) suggests, “victory belonged to the man who had

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at his disposal the largest number of men and the most extensive resources and reserves

of grain”. Therefore, centralisation of power became a common and an inevitable

choice for those contending Chinese states trying to maximise the mobilisation of

resources.

On the other hand, the socio-political reasons for this transformation are also important.

Even though both jun (commandery) and xian (county) were invented during the Spring

and Autumn period as a form of the direct administrative unit of the monarch, the mass

institutionalisation of this organisational format did not prosper until the Warring States

period, when monarchs tried to keep the newly annexed territory under their own

control (Lewis, 1999). As Lewis (1999: 614) notes, jun and xian were not simply a new

form of administrative unit, but also “the basic units of recruitment” that had critical

military functions. This commandery-county system of a centralised state not only

enabled the mobilisation of peasants into troops, but it also made it possible for the state

to have sufficient land that could be re-distributed as a reward to these mobilised

peasants for their military contribution on the battlefield. This transition towards a

centralised state strengthened the potential of the state to mobilize human resources for

military operations by rewarding them with both material wealth and social status.

Because of this, Gernet (1996) strongly emphasises the significance of the Warring

States period in the historical development of Chinese society – it was internal problems

and external wars that became the ultimate motivating forces driving one of the most

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dramatic socio-political transformations in Chinese history. He points out that “it was

military dynamism that forced the Chinese nations of the end of antiquity on to the road

to the centralized state” (Gernet, 1996: 63).

2.1.4 Intellectual development from the eighth to the third century BC

The age of Warring States not only boosted technical innovations at the time, but also

stimulated intellectual development. The Warring States period was seen as one of the

most prosperous periods of intellectual development in Chinese history, during which

various schools of thought developed and applied their thoughts and ideologies to the

competing Chinese states, each trying to outperform their rivals (Gernet, 1996; Lewis,

1999; Nivison, 1999). Just as Nivison (1999: 746) states, the Warring States period was

the “age of philosophers” – a period of intellectual prosperity that would later be known

as the ‘contention of a hundred schools of thought’ (baijia-zhengming 百家争鸣).

These schools of thought include Daoism, Confucianism, Legalism, Mohism, the

School of Yin-yang, the School of Diplomacy, Agriculturalism, the School of Military,

the School of Physician, etc. (Nivison, 1999). Nevertheless, most schools of thought

have disappeared over the past two millennia, while Confucianism, Legalism and

Daoism have become the dominant philosophical and ideological forces in Chinese

society (Gernet, 1996; Nivison, 1999).

Confucianism is arguably the most enduring philosophy in Chinese history. While its

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legacy comes from the ideas of Confucius during the Spring and Autumn period, its

socio-political ideal can be traced back to the early days of the Zhou dynasty. To a great

extent, Confucianism in its early days had a strong insistence on the tradition of Zhou

Li (etiquette of the Zhou dynasty) and a wish to return to early Zhou’s socio-political

system, which is therefore seen as a conservative force during the Warring States period

(Nivison, 1999). Legalism, on the contrary, was rather realistic and progressive

compared to Confucianism (Nivison, 1999). For instance, in contrast to Confucianist

belief in the rule of the best man, Legalism suggests it would be more reliable to employ

the rule by law to avoid subjectivity in governance (Shang, 2009). By identifying the

fundamental conflicts of the Warring States period as surviving the clashes of states,

Legalists thought it impossible to return to the ideal society of the early Zhou dynasty,

where the traditional fief system could run smoothly, as desired by Confucianists. As a

result, Legalism emphasises instead the essentiality of gaining sufficient power to

succeed in wars during the chaotic Warring States period. For Legalist thinkers, the

reward-and-punishment approach is the best way to mobilise individuals, most of

whom pursue private interests. Daoism is comparatively more passive than

Confucianism and Legalism (Nivison, 1999). Even though its leading principle, wu-wei,

constitutes an ambiguous idea, the Daoist philosophy believes that human beings

should avoid intentional, deliberate actions and instead accept the reality of society.

Moreover, it proposes that the universe has unique ways of sustaining the harmony and

stability of society, so human beings should not disrupt the path along which the world

evolves. Non-action is therefore the best choice in order to respect the natural law of

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the world. This idea was promoted as the guiding principle in the early Han dynasty

(Ban, 1962). Finally, there is Mohism, a comparably influential philosophical school of

thought developed during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods,

originated by Mozi (Nivison, 1999). Just like Legalism, Mohism has a comparatively

materialist perspective. The doctrine of Mohism contains three consequential and

interrelated factors: social order, material wealth and reproduction of the population:

“More basic wealth, then more reproduction; more people, then more production and

wealth” (Nivison, 1999: 761). In Mohist thought, conflicts in human society are

basically the result of insufficient material wealth – “whereas if people have plenty,

they will be good, filial, kind, and so on unproblematic” (Nivison, 1999: 761).

Signs of intellectual convergence appeared at the end of the Warring States period,

when the Qin chancellor Lü Buwei edited the book Lüshi-chunqiu3 around 239 BC,

which would later be known as Syncretism or the School of Miscellany, indicating the

integration of various schools of thought into a single philosophical and socio-political

theory (Nivison, 1999; Carlson & Loewe, 1993). This book is one of the longest ancient

Chinese texts, comprising a comprehensive repository of thoughts and knowledge from

various ancient Chinese schools. It focuses on Confucianism, Mohism and Daoism in

particular (Carlson & Loewe, 1993). The comprehensive nature of materials and the

systematic presentation of sources have not only made Lüshi-chunqiu an encyclopaedia

of the time, but they also demonstrate a trend of intellectual convergence in ancient

3 Mr. Lü's Spring and Autumn annals.

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China after centuries of intense competition in the intellectual and ideological sphere

(Lewis, 1999; Carlson & Loewe, 1993). However, Nivison (1999) questions the authors

of several ancient Chinese philosophical and socio-political writings, suggesting that

many of these texts were not written by the authors themselves; instead, a significant

proportion could have been written by successive scholars of each school of thought.

An additional impact of unprecedented intellectual development at this time was the

rise of a literate class in Chinese society – the literati, or the scholar-gentry class,

otherwise known as shi in the Chinese language (Fairbank and Goldman, 2006: 101).

Not only did many intellectuals serve as government officials in those contending

Chinese states, but they also made a significant impact as “cultural carriers who

interpreted the meaning of life and ideals of society” (Hsu, 1999: 545). Starting from

the Spring and Autumn period, various schools of thought competed against each other

in the intellectual arena, trying to convince the contending Chinese states with their

respective opinions (Hsu, 1999). This intellectual competition in both the social and the

political spheres of the Chinese community, according to Hsu (1999), achieved a

breakthrough towards a persistent collective identity of the Chinese community, namely

the Chinese civilisation. According to Bodde (1986), the literati class was a critical

force for socio-political transformation in the pre-Qin period. Intellectual contributions

fostered tremendous and urgent transformations in the social, political and ideological

spheres of ancient Chinese society. Firstly, switching away from the supernatural and

mythological explanations of the universe, and embracing the non-anthropomorphic

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natural forces and tendencies instead; secondly, emphasising the need for rulership to

be complemented positively by intellectual and moral qualifications; thirdly, stressing

the importance of having a group of educated, non-hereditary officials to serve the state

bureaucracy under the hereditary rulership; fourthly, emphasising the significance of

social harmony under a structured hierarchical society; fifthly, a strong emphasis on the

universalism of social, political and cultural unity as an indispensable basis for peace,

good governance and social wellbeing (Bodde, 1986).

To sum up, China’s history shows evidence of continuity under the ethno-symbolist

framework. Starting from antiquity, the Chinese community emerged and developed

from a tribal society into a feudal society under the fief system across the Shang and

the Zhou dynasties. Due to the massive warfare during the Spring and Autumn and

Warring States eras, Chinese society gradually transformed from a group of

principalities to a collection of centralised states. As many previous studies demonstrate,

the Warring States period was a time of considerable transformation, during which

Chinese society underwent severe military, social, political and intellectual contests. It

was only after these contests in various aspects of society that a sense of cultural and

social convergence began to take shape across the Chinese community, potentially

serving as the social basis for a united Chinese society and the later emergence of

China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation.

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 2.2 The rise and decline of the Qin state

The rise of the Qin state (770 – 221 BC), and later the Qin Empire (221 – 207 BC), is

an important historical event in Chinese history. Starting as horse breeders, the Ying

clan increased in stature, from government officials to nobility (conferred as Qin) and

later to a principality. It survived the incessant wars throughout the Spring and Autumn

period and then became the most competitive state during the Warring States period. It

was not until 221 BC that the Qin succeeded in unifying China and established the first

centralised Chinese empire – the Qin dynasty, which dramatically collapsed after fifteen

years. In order to discuss the pre-modern foundation of the Chinese nation, it is essential

to explore the history of Qin’s development, which provided the earliest foundation for

a united Chinese community. Section 2.2.1 illustrates how Qin became one of Zhou’s

principalities; then section 2.2.2 thoroughly describes the process through which the

Qin reached its peak by unifying China in 221 BC; following this, section 2.2.3 explains

how the Qin quickly collapsed after the death of the First Emperor; and finally, section

2.2.4 summarises the Qin’s heritage, discussing how the founding of the Qin Empire

established the foundation for a united Chinese community.

2.2.1 The rise

According to Bodde (1986), even though Qin’s history can be traced back to as early

as the legendary ruler Zhuan’xü in the third millennium BC, the Ying clan did not get

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its noble title ‘Qin’ until 897 BC, when the Zhou emperor granted the Ying’s clan as an

attached appanage titled ‘Qin’. Different from most principalities that were established

under enfeoffment4 at the beginning of the Zhou dynasty (1046 - 771 BC, 770 – 256

BC), the establishment of the Qin state happened much later. It was only after rescuing

the house of Zhou during the invasion of the Rong ethnic group (a nomadic tribe west

of Zhou) in 770 BC that Emperor Ping of Zhou dynasty raised Qin’s status from an

attached appanage to a more privileged principality, owing to its contribution in

convoying the house of Zhou during the re-location of Zhou’s capital city eastwards to

the city of Luoyi (Bodde, 1986). However, the piece of land granted by the Zhou

emperor was actually annexed by the Rongs at the time, so the Qin people could not

establish their state before defeating the Rongs (Sima.Q, 1999). It took the Qin people

twelve years to defeat the Rongs and found their own principality of Qin in 757 BC

(Sima.Q, 1999). As Qin was located on the western periphery of the Zhou, surrounded

by groups of non-Zhou ethnic tribes, Bodde (1986: 31) believes that the Qin rulers and

people could have been “culturally, and probably ethnically […] much influenced by

their tribal neighbours”.

Qin began to significantly expand their territorial domain in the seventh century BC,

when Duke Mu (659—621 BC) succeeded the throne (Sima.Q, 1999). Not only did Qin

take everywhere west of the Yellow River, but they also annexed a significant amount

of territory from the Rongs, which thus made it a formidable power on the western

4Enfeoffment refers to the fief system through which the emperor granted a piece of land to certain clans, which
these clans then had the right and responsibility to govern (Guo’yu, 2007; Zhang, 2008),
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periphery of the Zhou dynasty and was therefore recognised by the Zhou emperor as

the “hegemon over the Rong of the West” (Bodde, 1986: 33). However, even though

Qin became an important power from that point, its access to central China was blocked

by the neighbouring state of Jin, which was even more powerful (Sima.Q, 1999). As a

result, Qin’s influence over China was still limited at that time.

Even though Qin was granted the status of principality in 770 BC by the Zhou emperor,

it was not recognised by other Chinese principalities throughout the Spring and Autumn

period. Qin did not gain its prominence until 361 BC, when Duke Xiao became the

monarch of Qin and supported a series of reforms carried out by Gongsun Yang that are

historically known as the Reforms of Lord Shang (361 – 338 BC), an important

milestone in the development of the Qin state and the Chinese community in general.

After convincing Duke Xiao, Shang Yang (awarded his lordship after reforms, titled

Lord Shang) became Qin’s chancellor and implemented a series of reforms based on

the Legalist doctrine, which transformed the Qin society in the social, political,

economic, agricultural and legal spheres, thus making it the most powerful Chinese

state toward the latter part of the Warring States era (Bodde, 1986; Sima.Q, 1999).

Therefore, these series of reforms are seen as the starting point of Qin’s rise. Even

though Lord Shang was later executed by King Huiwen in order to ease the anger of

the aristocracy, his reform was nonetheless retained and had a tremendous impact on

the Qin society, whose power grew steadily from 338 to 250 BC, during which time

most of the smaller kingdoms were eliminated, leaving only seven major kingdoms

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across China (Gernet, 1996; Bodde, 1986; Nivison, 1999).

In addition to the reforms of Lord Shang, two important infrastructure projects are also

seen as having had a major influence on Qins’ eventual success (Bodde, 1986), namely

the Dujiangyan irrigation system (constructed between ca. 250 – 230 B.C.), which set

up a network of irrigation channels by diverting the River Min across two hundred

square miles of farmland in the Chengdu Plain, and the Zheng-guo canal (built in ca.

246 B.C.), which turned 465,000 acres of formerly alkaline land into fertile land

(Needham, 1971). These two water conservation projects enhanced water supply to two

of Qin’s most important plains, turning them into fertile farmland and in turn

strengthening Qin’s material basis for it final triumph (Bodde,1986).

2.2.2 Triumph: the unification of China in 221 BC

Qin’s unification of China, which marks its triumph, began with the succession of King

Zheng, who mounted the throne in 247 BC but was unable to fully exercise his power

until 238 BC (Gernet, 1996; Bodde, 1986). The decisive event began in 230 BC when

the kingdom of Qin started a series of wars aiming to conquer all six of its rival Chinese

states, collectively known as Qin’s wars of unification (230 – 221 BC) (Gernet, 1996;

Bodde, 1986). Qin’s conquest of its rival states started from the annexation of its

weakest rival – the kingdom of Han in 230 BC, then the Zhao in 228 BC, followed by

the annexation of the Wei in 225 BC. Even though Qin suffered an unexpected loss

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during its invasion of the Chu kingdom in 225 BC, it nonetheless made a second attempt

a year later and successfully acquired the Chu in 223 BC. After the conquest of the Chu,

Qin carried on eliminating the Yan in 222 BC, before finally conquering the Qi in 221

BC. Qin’s unification of China and the founding of the Qin Empire in 221 BC marked

the end of the Warring States era and the beginning of China’s 2000-year imperial age,

following which a unified Chinese community began to take shape (Gernet, 1996). This

is why Bodde (1986: 20) argues that “the year 221 B.C., which marks the shift from

state to empire, is consequently by far the most important single date in Chinese history

before the revolutionary changes of the present century”.

After unification of China, Qin’s ruling class made one of the most eventful but

debatable reforms in Chinese history – completely rejecting the traditional fief system

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and embracing instead the novel model of a fully centralised administration (Bodde,

1986; Gernet, 1996). The debate over the socio-political system was fierce following

Qin’s unification of China in 221 BC (Bodde, 1986). Some government officials

believed that Qin should follow the tradition of enfeoffment, which was inherited by

the Zhou from the Shang dynasty and lasted over eight centuries. Others, however,

suggested that this traditional model proved to be disastrous: “once they [feudal lords]

had received their lands, had soon become estranged and gone to war with one another,

while the Son of Heaven [the Zhou emperor] had proved powerless to prevent them”

(Bodde, 1986: 54). Owing to the lessons learned from the Zhou dynasty, Qin’s first

emperor, Zheng, decided to reject the traditional fief system and employ a centralised

administration instead. The whole empire was thus divided into 36 commanderies (jun),

each consisting of several counties (xian) as sub-level administration. Major governors

at the commandery and county levels were appointed by the central government without

hereditary positions, and they were subject to change at any time necessary. Therefore,

Qin’s unification of China in 221 BC was the beginning of an imperial China with a

centralised administration, which lasted for over 2,000 years (Gernet, 1996; Bodde,

1986, Loewe, 1986a and 1986b).

2.2.3 The collapse of the Qin Empire: a sudden change in 210 BC

The collapse of the Qin Empire was closely related to the sudden death of Emperor

Zheng. The first emperor of the Qin dynasty, who made the first attempt and succeeded

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in constituting a united Chinese community, suddenly died of an illness of unstated

cause in 210 BC while travelling and inspecting the empire (Bodde, 1986). His

unexpected demise led to chaos in both the royal family and across the empire in general.

On the one hand, contention for the throne among the royal family and the ruling elites

significantly weakened the royal house and the bureaucracy of the Qin; on the other

hand, what made things even worse were the rising rebellions across the empire

following the death of Emperor Zheng (Sima.Q, 1999).

Two major forces led these uprisings: the revolt of the peasantry and the restoration of

old aristocrats from the formerly defeated states (Bodde, 1986). Although it is widely

believed that the Qin’s harsh legal penalties caused the rebellion of the peasantry –

soldiers would be charged for tardiness if their journey was delayed by heavy rain, and

hence they were forced to revolt. However, this well-known reason has recently been

proven as fake story by a recent archaeological study – it was found that these people

would only be punished with an extra workload for the delay, which is far from the

death penalty (Chen et al., 2016: 105). Another more convincing reason for rebellion is

the restoration of the old aristocracy from the six former kingdoms, who saw the chance

to revive their previous glory (Sima Q, 1999). Different from the historical records that

portray the Qin as tyrannous, the Qin authority was actually kind to the former

aristocracy: for instance, they did not execute former royal houses and aristocrats after

unification of China – they were only required to move and reside in the Qin’s capital

city Xianyang to be overlooked by the authorities, the measure of which intended to

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prevent them from revolting (Sima.Q, 1999). Nevertheless, these former aristocrats

promptly revived their influence following the death of the first emperor Ying Zheng.

The rebellion quickly annexed the Qin’s capital city Xian-yang under the leadership of

Liu Bang in 207 BC by accepting the submission of King Ziying of Qin. The Qin finally

came to an end in 207 BC when Liu Bang’s superior Xiang Yu entered the capital city

Xian-yang in 207 BC, plundered the city, razed the palaces to the ground and executed

King Ziying. Only fifteen years after Qin’s unification of China, the Qin dynasty

vanished into history (Bodde, 1986).

As Loewe (1999b) argues, the collapse of the Qin Empire was not an isolated event but

rather a periodic cycle that kept reoccurring over and over again throughout the

following 2000-year imperial history, which shows the fragility of these imperial

dynasties: “The weakness of emperors, the rivalries of their principal advisors, the

jealousies of their consorts, and competition for the imperial succession played their

part in endangering and disrupting a regime” (Loewe, 1999b: 969). The challenges and

collapse of the Qin Empire also illustrate that unity in Chinese history was not a linear

achievement but remained fragile and contested – periods of unity could be followed

by periods of separation, rivalry and competition for leadership (Gernet, 1996; Bodde,

1986; Sima.Q, 1999). To get a balanced understanding of this history, it is important to

reflect on this element of fragility and contest in the development of a pre-modern

Chinese community and its ethnie.

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 2.2.4 A legacy for Chinese society

Even though the Qin Empire only lasted for fifteen years, previous studies on Chinese

history believe that the Qin left a remarkable legacy to the Chinese community (Gernet,

1996; Loewe, 1986a, 1986b, 1999a & 1999b; Sima.Q, 1999; Ma, 1982), including the

invention of a centralised administration, the development of codified law and

professionalism and the permanence of Legalist institutions.

The centralised administration

One of the most prominent socio-political legacies of the Qin dynasty was its

centralised administration, which the succeeding Han dynasty inherited with a certain

degree of compromise. As Loewe (1986a & 1986b) points out, the invention of a

centralised administration was not idealistic imagination – it was instead an experiment

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based on realist principles. No one believed that “a centralized empire would be

recognized as the ideal norm for governing mankind” before the founding of the Qin

Empire, and it was only at “the end of Han [that] its preservation had become the natural

and accepted aim of every ambitious statesman” (Loewe 1986a: 14). By setting up a

centralised administration across the empire, the Qin authority attempted to develop an

integrated and homogeneous community across China.

The rise of a centralised administration, as Loewe (1986a) and Bodde (1986) note, was

accompanied by a group of the earliest educated people, namely government officials,

who were expected to show a sense of loyalty to the central administration, the primary

objective of which was to achieve “steady consolidation, enrichment, and strengthening

of the body politic” (Loewe 1986a: 14). The importance of educated government

officials was further strengthened during the Han dynasty, as they were educated by

governmental sponsorship that promoted the significance of standard written Chinese

characters and propagated the “ethnical ideals expounded by Confucius and his

disciples” (Loewe 1986a: 15). Governmental dissemination of Confucianism in the Han

dynasty fostered a sense of community across a sophisticated, hierarchical Chinese

society, allowing the state to manage the organisation of expanding the civil service,

binding them together under Confucian lore (Loewe, 1986b). A professional class of

bureaucrats was thus born in ancient China.

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Codified law and professionalism

A second major contribution of the Qin Empire was growing professionalism and

specialisation in social administration. While traditional Chinese society in pre-imperial

history was run on “the traditional and largely unwritten, but tacitly accepted, rules of

customary behaviour known as li (etiquette)”, legal codification became routine after

the reforms of Lord Shang in the middle of the fourth century BC (Bodde, 1986: 26),

thus allowing the bureaucratisation of state administration in imperial Chinese society

(Bodde, 1986).

Following Qin’s conquest of China, this socio-political system was somehow unified

and standardised under a series of unifying measures:

“These measures included the creation of one single type of circular copper coin with a

square hole in the middle, a pattern which remained in use until our own day; the

unification of the measures of length and capacity; the creation of new standard characters

intended to replace the various types of writing hitherto in use in the Chinese lands; and

the standardisation of the gauge of cart-wheels.”

(Gernet, 1996: 106)

Following the spread of written, codified law and standard units of measurement, the

socio-political order was unified and standardised, which in turn gave rise to the

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development of professionalism across the Qin Empire, thereby enabling the entire

Chinese society to run on a homogeneous form of written, codified laws and rules that

would largely avoid the bias of personal subjectivity and regional customs. This in turn

fostered the development of professionalism that remained for the rest of Chinese

history (Loewe, 1986a).

The permanence of Legalist institutions

In addition, a Legalist state is also a significant historical contribution of the Qin to the

Chinese community (Gernet, 1996). Chinese Legalism refers to a traditional school of

thought and political philosophy emphasising the role of intensive state power, effected

through the utilisation of rewards and punishments, in social governance to reinforce

the economic and military power of the state (Fairbank & Goldman, 2006; Zhao, 2015;

Gernet, 1996). Starting from the mid-fourth century BC as a result of the reforms of

Lord Shang, the Qin developed a Legalist socio-political system with a faceless

administration and military organisation, which established a straightforward

connection between the state and the vast majority of the peasantry, thereby enabling

the effective mobilisation of resources across the Qin society. This, according to Gernet

(1996), is an essential character of a Legalist social pattern and a key reason why Qin

would become the ultimate winner during the Warring States period.

Gernet (1996) further acknowledges that the foundation of the Han dynasty was no

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different to that of the Qin. Even though the Han rulers made a few compromises and

regressions compared to the Qin’s Legalist institutions, such as softening the harshness

of penal laws and allowing the co-existence of fiefs with the centralised state

administration, Han’s socio-political and administrative organisation had little

difference from that of the Qin. Legalist features – the system of rewards and

punishments, and the breaking down of large human groupings into smaller units of

individuals were all inherited by the Han. Just as Emperor Xuan of the Han said to his

crown prince in the first century BC:

“Our Han dynasty has its own system that simultaneously employs a mixture of

coercion (Legalism) and moral principles (Confucianism). How can you solely rely

on moral principles like the Zhou dynasty? Those mediocre Confucianists have

untimely opinions, criticizing existing circumstances by sticking to ancient

experiences. They make the masses confused between extrinsic appearance and

intrinsic reality, so how can they take important responsibilities?”

(Ban, 1962: 277)

In summary, the emergence and development of the Qin state were accompanied by

large-scale war and conflict. After being formally enfeoffed as a feudal lordship by the

Zhou emperor, the Qin state became involved in a number of wars and military

operations throughout the Spring and Autumn and Warring States eras. It was only after

the reforms of Lord Shang that Qin finally became a competitive player amongst the

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Chinese states, which then set up the foundation for its unification of China in 221 BC.

Even though this united Chinese community only lasted for fifteen years, the Qin left

three important legacies to the Chinese society: a centralised administration, codified

law and professionalism, and the permanence of Legalist institutions. These would have

been significant factors in fostering the pre-modern ethnic foundation of the Chinese

nation, and they will therefore be thoroughly discussed in the empirical part of this

thesis.

2.3 The Nature of Chinese Society – What is China?

Following the two previous sections outlining the historical background of this thesis,

this section focuses on the essence of Chinese society, demonstrating its unique and

fundamental nature of Chinese society as an enduring community constituted around a

common civilisation. Section 2.3.1 introduces the civilisational character of the Chinese

community, followed by section 2.3.2, which explains that at the core of Chinese

civilisation lies the Confucian-Legalist doctrine.

2.3.1 China as a civilisation state?

Even though the notions of nation, nationalism and nation-state are European

inventions, nation-states have become the fundamental unit of contemporary global

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society owing to massive nation-building movements in the past two centuries. China,

too, experienced a vigorous transition after the collapse of its last imperial dynasty in

1912. Nevertheless, some scholars believe that is a civilisation rather than a nation-state

(Pye, 1990; Huntington, 1996; Braudel, 1993). Pye (1990: 58), for instance, argues that

China does not belong to the family of nations – rather, it is “a civilisation pretending

to be a state”. According to Pye (1990: 58), modern China can be seen as a story in

which “both Chinese and foreigners […] squeeze a civilization into the arbitrary and

constraining” nation-state framework defined by the West. This argument is agreed by

Jacques (2009) and Zhao (2015). Pye (1990: 58) has also argued that the success of

China’s civilisation, as one of the great civilizations in the world, “has given inordinate

strength and durability to its political culture”, which has then impeded its transition

from a long-lasting ancient civilisation to a modern nation-state. In Pye’s (1990)

opinion, the Chinese people do not identify their state as a nation in the Western sense

– they are bound together due to culture, race and especially their common perception

of civilisation.

Referring to Pye’s perception, Jacques (2009) suggests that China should no longer be

seen as an ancient civilisation existing in the contemporary world, as with its enduring

civilisation it has already transformed into a civilisation-state, i.e. a state built upon its

own ancient civilisational foundation. Jacques (2009: 244) claims that while “Western

societies are constituted on the basis of nation, China is constituted on the basis of

civilization” (Jacques, 2009: 244). A further unique feature about China is that

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“‘civilisation’ and ‘state’ largely coincide (the major exception being western China),

not just over a relatively brief period, but over an extraordinarily long one” (Jacques,

2009: 245). The formation of the Qin dynasty in 221 BC marks the establishment of

China, since when “[it] has been unified for only 1074 years, partially unified for 673

years, and disunited for 470 years” (Jacques, 2009: 249). Jacques (2009) strongly

believes that China should be seen as a civilisation-state – it is only because of the

coincidence between the Chinese civilisation and its corresponding state that the

Chinese community has been able to stand the test of time for more than two millennia,

which no other ancient state or civilisation has achieved.

China’s transformation into a nation-state, as Jacques (2009) has stated convincingly,

is a relatively recent phenomenon (in the late nineteenth century or after the revolution

of 1911), since “China has existed for several Millennia” before it transformed into a

nation-state (Jacques, 2009: 244). Following Jacques’ idea, Zhang (2012) has

developed a similar but slightly different perspective. While agreeing that China has

the world’s longest continuous civilisation with a high degree of internal diversity, he

nonetheless contends that China’s continuous status as a civilisation should not be

regarded as an obstacle to modernisation. The civilisational nature of the Chinese

community, according to Zhang (2012), has incorporated hundreds of states, ethnicities,

cultures and customs throughout China’s long and continuous history into a single state.

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According to Fukuyama (2015: 194), China, as a civilisation-state, could be “perhaps

one of the greatest assimilation stories” in human history, whilst He (Fukuyama, 2015:

192) explains that cultural assimilation means “subordinate populations can adopt

the language and customs of the dominant group, or in some cases intermarry to the

point of eventually disappearing as a distinct minority”. This process can take place

either voluntarily, when non-Han ethnic groups “decide that it is in their self-interest to

conform to the dominant culture”, or violently, when the ethnic majority carry out

“moving or physical elimination of populations to create more homogeneous political

unities” (Fukuyama, 2015: 192 & 194). This has happened in many places around the

world including France and United States, but China seemed to be the most prominent

figure in cultural assimilation (Fukuyama, 2015). China is “indeed among the

extremely rare examples of historic states composed of a population that is ethnically

almost or entirely homogenous” (Hobsbawm, 1990: 66), with the ethnic majority Han

nowadays constituting over 90% of the Chinese population (Fukuyama, 2015), even

though they are in fact a mixture and an amalgamation of numerous ancient ethnicities

that once lived across China (Zhang, 2012). Starting from Qin’s wars of conquest in the

third century BC, China’s cultural assimilation has been going on for over two

millennia, meaning that “almost all of the foreign populations ultimately adopted

Chinese cultural norms and intermarried so extensively with Han Chinese that those

remaining in China were no longer distinguishable as ethnic minorities”, with the

exception of “the Muslim Uighurs in the western province of Xinjiang, the Mongols in

Inner Mongolia, and the Tibetans” (Fukuyama, 2015: 194-195). Meanwhile,

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original cultural diversity has been “preserved in the different forms of spoken Chinese

that exist today”, while the written language has been unified since Qin’s unification of

China in 221 BC, which has “served as the basis of a common elite culture for the entire

empire” (Fukuyama, 2015: 195).

Due to the longevity of the Chinese civilisation, Fei (1988: 167-168) argues that even

though “the Chinese people became a conscious national entity only during the past

century as a result of China’s confrontation with the Western powers, their formation

into a single nation has been the result of a historical process of millennia”. He suggests

that it was after passing through three dynasties, from the seventeenth century BC to

221 BC, that various primitive tribes across the East Asian continent finally integrated

into a nucleus that became the pre-modern ethnic foundation of China, which in

Anthony Smith’s sense can be regarded as a pre-modern ethnie. This nucleus, following

the expansion of the Chinese dynasties, gradually integrated with surrounding ethnic

groups, which later “through a slow historical process […] have grown into a single

nation” (Fei, 1988: 211). Despite their different perspectives on the nature of China,

these insights all recognise the evolving feature of the Chinese community and the

continuity of Chinese civilisation. This is a key reason why this research analyses the

emergence of China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation under the ethno-symbolist

framework. Therefore, it is important to understand the genesis of Chinese ethnie by

tracing it back to the beginning of the first centralised Chinese state in history – the Qin

Empire, although it collapsed only fifteen years after the first temporary unification of

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China.

2.3.2 China – a vast Confucian-Legalist nation

Vast China

Despite their different opinions on the nature of Chinese society, it is widely agreed that

China is vast in terms of both territory and population, as is its social and cultural

influence on the surroundings (Zhang, 2012; Wen, 2019; Liang, 1923; Huntington,

1996; Jacques, 2009; Pye, 1990; Braudel, 1993; Fei, 1988; Kennedy, 1988). Liang

(1923) proposes the idea that China is an ever-growing nation due to its long-lasting

attempt at cultural assimilation and migration, which has made China an incomparably

vast nation in both population and territory. In addition, he acknowledges that by

assimilating peripheral non-Han ethnic groups into the ethnic majority, the Chinese

community has achieved constant population expansion. In recent decades, the

migration of Han Chinese into national border areas has reinforced state control over

the periphery and has hence consolidated the territorial expansion of the Chinese

community. Liang (1923) asserts that China has done this for the past 5,000 years,

through which it has incorporated an enormous amount of ‘other nations’ into the

Chinese nation, hence making it a mega-nation that is still expanding constantly.

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A Confucian China?

Moreover, Chinese society has been deeply influenced by Confucianism throughout its

history, just as the Western world by Christianity. Many scholars agree that although

China as a nation-state is quite a recent phenomenon (Jacques, 2009; Zhang, 2012; Wen,

2019), it is nonetheless an enduring civilisation that has lasted for several millennia

(Jacques, 2009; Zhang, 2012), and whose history can be traced back to at least 1500

BC and most likely even further back (Huntington, 1996; Jacques, 2009; Zhang, 2012;

Zhao, 2015; Wen, 2019; Fei, 1988; Liang, 1923). China’s long history has enabled the

development of its own unique civilisation, on which Confucianism has a strong

influence. Braudel (1993), Pye (1990) and Jacques (2009) regard Confucianism as the

fundamental ideology in Chinese society. For Jacques (2009: 198), Confucianism has

served as the fundamental doctrine of Chinese society since ancient times, which has

then been inherited by all Chinese imperial dynasties, the Republic of China ruled by

the Nationalist Party and today’s People’s Republic governed by the Communist Party.

According to Braudel (1993), the development of Confucianism was closely related to

the prioritisation of state education. In 124 BC, Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty

founded the Great School in the capital city Chang’an, representing the highest

education institution where a “complex body of doctrine” based on Confucian tradition

was taught to leading students selected nationwide (Braudel, 1993: 176). Since then,

the educated class, which was closely linked to Confucianism, built its intimate

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relationship with the state bureaucracy. Students educated according to Confucianism,

which promotes harmony, stability and social order, were promoted to senior official

positions. The result of successive emperors’ enthusiasm for Confucianism, together

with bureaucracy’s belief therein, enabled the philosophy to bloom in Chinese society,

as well as with the educated class – the literati, who “established an ethic and a rule of

life which tended to maintain order and hierarchy in society and the state” (Braudel,

1993: 178).

Pye (1990) notes that the Chinese state-society relationship has been sustained by “a

shared belief in a moral order” of Confucianism rather than the system of law that has

been widely adopted in the West (Pye, 1990: 60). Even though Pye reflects negatively

on the transition of China from an ancient civilisation to a modern nation, he dies

recognise the fact that “the Chinese state was founded on one of the world's great

civilizations has given inordinate strength and durability to its political culture” (Pye,

1990: 58). However, Jacques (2009) suggests that this strong Confucianist state-

oriented relation in Chinese society could be a key reason why China has failed to

develop into a civil society as the same way it has in the West, since there is a lack of

any other independent power centres across Chinese society.

The Confucian-Legalist state

Nonetheless, Zhao (2015) questions some of the above arguments, suggesting that

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Confucianism is responsible for only half of Chinese society and that the whole picture

consists of much more. Zhao (2015) is convinced that China was a Confucian-Legalist

state as a result of both imperial expansion (warfare) and traditional codes of conduct

(Confucianism). According to Zhao (2015), Chinese society is composed of four main

realms: political, ideological, military and economic. Politically, China developed from

hundreds of small city states to a “merit-based bureaucratic agrarian empire (or empires)

with extensive territories” (Zhao, 2015: 6); ideologically, Confucianism, together with

Legalism and Daoism, made up the major Chinese philosophies and codes of conduct;

militarily, massive standing armies, which were equipped with advanced weapons and

trained under sophisticated military strategies, represented the coercive binding power

of the central government, while economically, a vast society has made long-distance

trade and nationwide metropolitan centres possible, thus allowing the flow of currency

across society. These four realms have been key elements in China’s unity, while at

same time China’s integrity has also strengthened these four realms throughout the

2000-year imperial history. The synergy of these four power sources has made up the

framework of Chinese society, out of which a collective Chinese identity emerged

(Zhao, 2015).

Zhao (2015: 13) points out that Confucianism was actually “a loosely defined

philosophical tradition” when it first developed in the late sixth century BC, and so it

did not have any political significance at the time. Instead, it was the Legalist school of

thought that was preferred as the guiding ideology during the Warring States period. As

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a consequence of the rising significance of military power, political power began to

prevail, hence leading to increasing control by the state, large standing armies and the

inability of merchants to turn their wealth into autonomous political power – which,

according to Huang (1988, cited in Zhao, 2015: 7), was a “precocious political

maturation”. Following the unification of China by the Qin, the entire Chinese society

was under control by the large standing army, a highly sophisticated bureaucracy as

well as an advanced transportation and communication system across the empire (Zhao,

2015). However, the Qin did not last long and collapsed only fifteen years after its

unification of China. During the Han dynasty, which succeeded the Qin, Confucianism

finally became more influential and turned into a nationwide state ideology in China

(Sima.Q, 1999; Ban, 1962).

Zhao (2015) suggests that the Confucian-Legalist political system has played two roles

in Chinese society. First and foremost, while Legalism has strong expansionary and

imperialist intentions that led to an unstable society in the Qin dynasty, Confucianism

by contrast, focuses exclusively on stabilising domestic society by establishing state-

society cooperation and normative consensus. Thus, the combination of Confucianism

with Legalism during the Han dynasty generated a Confucian-Legalist state in which

“the emperors accepted Confucian bureaucracy, while Confucian scholars both in and

out of the bureaucracy supported the regime and supplied meritocratically selected

officials who administered the country using an amalgam of Confucian ethics and

Legalist regulations and techniques” (Zhao, 2015: 14). This amalgamation of

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Confucianism and Legalism had successfully steadied Chinese society during the Han

dynasty, something the Legalist Qin dynasty failed to achieve after its unification of

China. Second, Zhao (2015) argues that the Confucian-Legalist ideology was grounded

in quasi-religious values. Chinese rulers found a way to combine political and

ideological power by adopting the Confucian-Legalist ideology, adding some religious

sense and meaning to the secular Chinese culture (Zhao, 2015). Therefore, both political

and ideological powers were in the hands of the Chinese emperor, leaving no space for

religious ideology to challenge the administration.

Furthermore, Hui (2005) has a distinct view on the nature of Chinese society and

China’s unification. She critiques both the Sinocentric perspective, which presumes that

unification in ancient China was inevitable, and the Eurocentric view, which conceives

universal domination by a single country as an impossible task. According to Hui

(2005), the situations in ancient China and Europe were almost similar for nearly three

centuries (475 – 221 BC), with small, fragmented states existing across the continent.

It was only after unification of China by the Qin in 221 BC that ancient Chinese and

European societies started to move in different directions: while China managed to

develop and sustain forms of unity and community (even though contested and fragile

at times), Europe always faced a group of contending states. Interestingly, and in

opposition to other scholars, Hui is convinced that Qin’s unification of China was

accidental rather than inevitable. Although “Qin managed to overcome them with the

shrewd combination of self-strengthening reforms, divide-and-conquer strategies, and

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ruthless stratagems”, it should be noted that Qin’s strategies were by no means superior

to their rivals’ (Hui, 2005:108) – Qin was “a borrower rather than an innovator” during

the Warring States period (Creel, 1970: 144). While arguing that the superiority of Qin’s

strategy was overstated, Hui (2005) suggests that it was in fact leadership competence

that ultimately gave rise to the success of the Qin’s reforms, which in turn resulted in

Qin’s victory against its rivals. “Only when a ruler himself took an active role in the

reform process was it possible to replace proprietary officeholding with something

closer to a proto-modern bureaucracy” (Ertman, 1997: 125).

To summarise, China is a vast civilisation and state based on the development of a long-

standing civilisation and different attempts to create a united Chinese community. The

uniqueness of Chinese society is closely linked to its enduring civilisation. Most

previous studies suggest that Confucianism is deeply rooted in Chinese civilisation and

acts as a guiding philosophy. However, Zhao (2015) argues that Confucianism does not

represent everything in Chinese society, and it has actually been constituted around a

combination of Confucianism and Legalism. It is also acknowledged that China used

to take a similar path to European society but went into the divergent logic of socio-

political development following Qin’s unification of China in 221 BC (Pye, 1990; Hui,

2005).

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 2.4 Conclusion to Chapter Two

In conclusion, this chapter has examined China’s history, from antiquity to the end of

the Qin dynasty (207 BC), and discussed the nature of Chinese society in general. First,

the historical evolution of Chinese society since antiquity has shown a clear path from

the loosely bounded feudal organisation of the Shang dynasty (ca.1600 – 1046 BC) to

the age of principality in the Western Zhou dynasty (1046 – 771 BC), when the states

showed tighter affiliation to the central government, then proceeding to the age of a

multistate system during the Spring and Autumn period (770 – 476 BC), when the Zhou

emperor was no longer respected, and later to the age of transformation – towards the

centralisation of power in the Warring States period (475 – 221 BC), after which the

Chinese community finally achieved its first true unification under the Qin Empire (221

– 207 BC) to form the first centralised imperial dynasty in Chinese history.

Second, the state of Qin as an important figure in Chinese history, and which founded

the first centralised Chinese empire and hence established the foundation for a united

Chinese community, left an important legacy to the Chinese community. Not only did

it invent the centralized administration for the Chinese society, but it also introduced

codified law and professionalism to China’s bureaucracy. Notably, the Qin Empire

adopted and fostered the Legalist school of thought, and institutionalised a set of

Legalist socio-political system that was inherited by Chinese society thereafter.

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Third, China has been regarded as a vast and diverse community with a long-lasting,

unique civilisation of its own. Academic understanding of China has changed

dramatically in the past few decades, especially in recent years, with a few new

perspectives joining the contemporary discussion of China and Chinese society. These

contradictory views have reflected various aspects of Chinese society from different

angles, all of which are intellectually stimulating. In general, Confucianism has been

seen as a core doctrine in the development of society and deeply rooted in Chinese

civilation. However, it is not the sole driving force of the Chinese social fabric –

Legalism, as a more pragmatic and impactful school of thought, was actually of greater

significance during Qin’s unification and therefore will be explored in greater depth in

the empirical chapters of this thesis.

Nevertheless, it is also worth noticing that Chinese unity has not been a permanent

situation; in fact, “China has been unified for only 1074 years, partially unified for 673

years, and disunited for 470 years” (Jacques, 2009: 249). The period of complete

unification actually counts for less than a half of what has transpired since 221 BC,

along with 30% partial unification and 21% disunification. This indicates the severe

difficulty in sustaining unity of China, owing to the various challenges of managing a

vast and diverse community. As Loewe (1999b) suggests, the periodic collapse of

unified Chinese imperial dynasties has been common throughout Chinese history,

which shows the fragility of united Chinese empires under social and political conflicts,

both within the ruling class and across the wider Chinese society. Therefore, when

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analysing Qin’s unification of China and the subsequent emergence of China’s pre-

modern ethnic foundation, it should always be kept in mind that China has not been

constantly unified, and its unity has always been accompanied by conflict.

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Chapter Three Wars and Collective Violence: Impacts on
Nation/State Formation and Social Change

The study of warfare and collective violence has “remained largely at the periphery of

sociological analysis” (Ashworth and Dandeker, 1987: 1), due to the fact that the

“foundational heritage of the Enlightenment, purportedly shared by all major social

theorists, conceptualized modernity in terms of universal rationality, economic growth,

scientific progress and peace”, plus the brutal memories of warfare in the first half of

the twentieth century Europe (Malesevic, 2010: 17-18). Consequently, “war and

violence were largely perceived as irrational, atavistic facets of the primeval era that

were bound to disappear with the arrival and spread of modernity”, resulting in an

academic sanitisation of classical social thoughts, many of which were seen as social

Darwinist, bellicose and aggressive (Malesevic, 2010: 17-18).

As Malesevic (2010: 17) argues, wars and violence should be seen as “a regular and

structurally intrinsic feature of social life” which has accompanied the evolution of

human society from antiquity to the present. Earlier nation-building processes were full

of coercion and violence rather than harmony, as “the world never consisted of compact,

homogeneous ‘nation’ ready to be turned into political units” (Fukuyama, 2015: 195).

Furthermore, “Contemporary outcomes, including high levels of economic

development and liberal democracy, were dependent on earlier histories of violence and

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coercion”, which not only came from states, but also included communities and

individuals (Fukuyama, 2015: 195). Referring to the USA, for instance, Fukuyama

(2015) claims that even though its national identity placed high significance on

principles such as freedom, equality, human rights and democracy, this American

identity could not have been established without it being at the expense of native

Americans, “who had to be exterminated, moved, or driven off their lands into

reservations” to give way to new settlers. Nevertheless, Renan (1996[1882]: 19) did not

view the violence and coercion during nation-building as entirely negative: “Forgetting,

I would even say historical error, is essential to the creation of a nation, which is why

the advance of historical study often poses a threat to nationality”.

Considering the first unification of China by the Qin dynasty in 221 BC, on which this

thesis focuses, it would not have been possible without a series of wars, and so

reviewing the literature on the relationship between warfare and nation-state formation

is therefore necessary. This chapter aims to glance at both classical and contemporary

approaches to the sociology of war, demonstrating the impacts of warfare on the

formation of modern nations and states, and its relation to social change.

3.1 War and Modern Nation-States

Warfare is closely related to the formation of modern nation-states. This section

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explores previous studies on how wars fostered the formation of modern nation-states,

how the state exercised coercive power to implement discipline, and how centralisation

of authority was achieved as a result of violent conflicts.

3.1.1 War and nation-state formation

Warfare has been conceived as the determining factor in shaping modern nation-states,

especially the power structure of Europe since modernity (Weber, 1976; Tilly, 1975;

Treitschke, 1914; Hintze, 1975; Schmitt 1996; Poggi, 2004; Malesevic, 2010;

Kaspersen, Strandsbjerg & Teschke, 2017): “All state organisation was originally

military organisation, organisation for war” (Hintze, 1975: 181). The creation of

primitive states, according to Oppenheimer (2007: 57), started with the needs of settled

peasants to defend against “warlike robbery”, i.e. invasion by nomadic tribes. Since

then, the state as a political organisation began to grow in terms of territory and

population following repeated conquests of land and people over weaker communities

(Oppenheimer 2007; Treitschke 1914). Coming to modernity, warfare continued to be

“the most efficient mechanism of social control, state expansion, capital accumulation

and the extraction of resources” (Malesevic, 2010: 72). Malesevic (2010), referring to

Collins (1981, 1986, 1999), reasons that the ability to succeed in warfare could, to a

great extent, have a decisive role in the longevity of a state – victories in war can not

only secure the domestic legitimacy and prestige of the ruling elites, but also generate

a favourable external geopolitical environment in the international arena; conversely,

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in the case of a defeat, a state will deteriorate both domestically and internationally.

Therefore, “Without war there would be no State at all” (Treitschke 1914: 21).

However, as Clausewitz (1989[1874]: 69) famously argued, “war is nothing but the

continuation of policy by other means”. War does not happen itself – it is instead

generated by political wills that serve the broader socio-political interests of that

particular community (Weber, 1994). The dominant power in modernity, according to

Weber (1994), Tilly (1975), Treitschke (1914), Hintze (1975), Schmitt (1996), Mann

(1993 & 2006) and Malesevic (2010), is the power of the nation-state holding the

ultimate, monopolistic and legitimate right to use violence, especially organised

violence, over a sovereignty territory. As a result, Treitschke (1914: 12) is convinced

that safeguarding its own power is the top priority of the state – “Power is the principle

of the State, as Faith is the principle of the Church, and Love of the family”. The

function of warfare, in this instance, is to make a political differentiation between friend

and enemy, acting as an instrument of inclusion and exclusion (Schmitt, 1996).

Nonetheless, as Malesevic (2010) points out, political norms cannot and should not be

seen in the same way as ethical norms but rather have their own pattern: “The political

enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he need not appear as an economic

competitor… but he is… the other… existentially something different and alien, so that

in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible” (Schmitt 1996: 27).

According to Weber (1976:38), Tilly (1975) and Hintze (1975), the multi-polar socio-

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political power structure of Europe was deeply rooted in pre-modern feudalism, notably

the military power between them: “the ruling class… is dedicated to war or royal

service and is supported by privileged land holdings”. Most European feudal states have

strong military origins, which later constituted the multi-polar power structure amongst

the lords, vassals and fiefs, without any form of common leadership at the top

(Malesevic, 2010). According to Tilly (1975: 42), who asserts that “War made the state,

and the state made war” in his research on nation-state formation in Western Europe,

the formation and consolidation was inextricably linked to military expansion. The

emergence of nation-states began with military as well as commercial competition,

together with economic penetration, in Western Europe around 1500 and then expanded

to other parts of the continent. The nation-state model then spread to non-European

societies following the political and military expansion of European nation-states

between 1650 and 1850. The nation-state system further expanded to the rest of the

world following the independence of colonies and incorporation of regional powers

such as China and Japan around 1800 to 1950.

Tilly (1975) is convinced that coercion was highly necessary for the formation of

European nations. Believing that 1500 was the starting point for the great

transformation towards modern-day Europe, Tilly (1975) suggests that the socio-

political system experienced overwhelming change before and after this time. Although

the modern form of states had already emerged as political units in the thirteenth and

fourteenth centuries, a modern sense of nation had barely existed at the time (Tilly,

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1975; Strayer, 1970). Additionally, even though “the earlier unification of the Roman

Empire produced some convergence of language, law, religion, administrative practice,

agriculture, landholding, and perhaps kinship”, the socio-political system of Europe

was still highly pre-modern in six aspects: (1) the existence of a relatively homogeneous

culture across the Western European population; (2) religious life was held by the

centralised commonwealth, under the auspices of the Roman Catholic Church; (3)

extensive contacts were mostly made via the network of commerce across Europe and

its surroundings, without any large-scale centralised political bureaucracy; (4) the state

emerged as a political unit, albeit of limited universal significance; (5) empires or

political federations existed as the top political units, but they were nonetheless loosely

bounded by the political centre; (6) the pre-modern feudalist socio-political system

persisted, whereby political authority was largely in the hands of interlocking ruling

families and nobilities, originated from landlords – in essence, it was the landlords that

owned and actually ran society (Tilly, 1975).

As a result, even though Europe at that time rivalled China in terms of a similar

geographical scale and cultural homogeneity (Tilly, 1975), it could not do so in terms

of bureaucratic governance – “Those states like France and Spain in the late seventeenth

century that are commonly spoken of as ‘absolutist’ were… considerably weaker in

their power to tax and mobilize their societies than was the state of Qin in the third

century B.C.” (Fukuyama, 2012: 125). Conversely, in the post-1500 era, the European

socio-political system experienced an overwhelming change, during which the state

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became the dominant political unit (Tilly, 1975). The post-1500 European states,

according to Tilly (1975: 27), had four different characteristics compared to the pre-

1500 era: (1) they were able to control a well-defined territory of their own; (2) they

had a much higher degree of centralised authority; (3) they became a dominant political

unit that was differentiated from other forms of social, political or economic

organisations, and (4) coercive force was monopolised by the states within their own

territorial borders.

Tilly examined large-scale structural change in Western Europe, as well as the conflicts

and collective actions taking place during the same period, and established “one of the

most robust, intuitively plausible and significant theories of early modern state-

formations in Europe, which we will refer to as the warfare-paradigm or, alternatively,

the bello-centric theory of state-formation” (Kaspersen, Strandsbjerg & Teschke, 2017:

11-12). For Tilly (1975), warfare has been inextricably linked with nation-state

formation in the modern era, under the historical context of war and capitalism in

Europe. By focusing on the great structural transformation of Europe in the sixteenth

century, Tilly (1975) notices that while Europe was relatively homogeneous in culture,

it did not bring about the formation of a vast empire as elsewhere in the world. Instead,

this cultural homogeneity led to a division of the European continent into a number of

mutually exclusive nation-states: “The national state won out amounts to accounting

for territorial consolidation, centralization, differentiation of the instruments of

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government from other sorts of organization, and monopolization (plus concentration)

of the means of coercion” (Tilly, 1975: 27).

Nation-states not engendered by warfare?

Nonetheless, Sharma (2017), Spruyt (2017) and Gorski (2017) strongly attack the idea

that modern nation-states and European power structures were largely shaped by wars

and conflicts. Gorski (2017) and Sharma (2017) argue that social integration and the

diminishing number of European states between 1300 and 1600 actually resulted from

a switch from the traditional Frankish custom of partible inheritance, i.e. dividing

possessions between sons, to primogeniture – possessions were exclusively passed on

to the eldest son. Following the vanishing of this old Frankish inheritance tradition,

European kingdoms were no longer divided up when the old ruler passed away, as had

happened in the Carolingian Empire. According to Gorski (2017) and Sharma (2017),

the institutionalisation and bureaucratisation of modern European nation-states should

be attributed to the separation between political power and the Catholic Church. Only

after this separation of church and state did a secular bureaucracy begin to emerge as

the instrument of social governance, whereas military power only played a marginal

role in this process (Gorski, 2017; Sharma, 2017). Spruyt (2017) does recognise the

historical influence of war in state-building, but conceives it as an unnecessary factor,

suggesting that warfare would only be influential in state-building if there were

considerable external pressure.

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Moreover, Teschke (2017) and Malesevic (2010) contend that Tilly focused too much

on the internal logic and exclusively attributing formation of nation-states to domestic

driving forces while ignoring that the influences of external factors, such as the broader

geopolitical background, were no less than those of domestic ones. Though the modern

state sustains its authority through its sovereignty over a dedicated territory and the

monopolisation of organised violence, “the modern state does not appear or function in

a geopolitical vacuum” (Malesevic, 2010: 71). According to Teschke (2017) and

Malesevic (2010), the wider geopolitical implications are no less important than the

domestic agency of the nation-state itself.

Furthermore, Tilly may also mistakenly assume that there is a standard path for the

development of nation-states – pre-modern states did create warfare, but these wars did

not necessarily generate states (Teschke, 2017). Although it is doubtful whether

Teschke (2017:45) is right to claim, in complete opposition to Tilly, that “pre-capitalist

states made war and war unmade these states”, it is surely correct to argue that state-

building processes and their rationales do vary, and state-building does not necessarily

follow the same way. As Kaspersen, Strandsbjerg & Teschke (2017) posit, the

emergence, development and transformation of the state could be highly regional-

specific, deeply dependent on the interplay between both external and internal

dynamics. Therefore, generalisation of the relationship between warfare and state

formation should be cautious, even for European states. Nonetheless, Hui (2017)

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suggests that Tilly’s theoretical contribution does match China’s historical development,

which was as fragmented as pre-1500 Europe before the first unification of China by

the Qin in 221 BC. Therefore, the empirical part of this thesis will explore how China

was united and integrated into a unitary community with highly a bureaucratised state

system and centralised socio-political authority.

3.1.2 Coercion and Discipline

Modern states are widely believed to be coercive forces that sustain their political

authority through the legitimate use of violence within the sovereign territory (Tilly,

1992; Weber, 1976; Treitschke, 1914; Mosca, 1939; Mann, 1993 & 2006; Poggi, 2001;

Collins, 1975; Oppenheimer, 2007; Malesevic, 2010). While every individual wants to

maximise his or her own freedom and autonomy, the state thus requires coercive power

to regulate individual practice by acting “against the will of the people”, thus

maximising social interest in general (Treitschke, 1914: 39). This is why Paine (1776,

cited in Ratcliffe, 2016) argues that “Government, even in its best state, is but

a necessary evil”. Consequently, as Poggi (2001: 30) and Collins (1975) point out, the

political authority shall be defined, if not exclusively, by its ability to control organised

violence of the state in the enforcement of policies and disciplines:

“What qualifies the power… as political is the fact that it rests ultimately upon…

the superior’s ability to sanction coercively the subordinate’s failure to comply

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 with commands […]. The state is, above all, the army and the police, and if these

groups did not have weapons we would not have a state in the classical sense.”

(Collins, 1975: 352).

According to Malesevic (2010), the core function of violence is deterrence – through

which the state monitors individuals and social behaviours as well as enforces

obedience.

Following the institutionalisation of disciplinary practice, war also institutionalises the

state apparatus – “war, as realised threat of force, is able to create in the modern political

community pathos and feeling of community and thereby releases an unconditional

community of sacrifice among the combatants” (Weber, 1994: 360). The state,

according to Weber (1994), was born through the legitimate use of violence: “the

modern state can only be defined sociologically in terms of a specific means which is

peculiar to the state, as it is to all other political associations, namely physical violence”

(Weber 1994: 310). The significance of the state lies closely in its monopolistic power

to exert coercive control, whereas military practice is the most prominent and important

form of collective violence, as it controls the most formidable coercive power of death

in human society (Weber, 1994). As a form of organised violence, warfare forcibly

groups individuals into a common community ready to sacrifice themselves for a

common purpose, which also fosters the centralisation of authority towards the state

(Weber, 2004; Malesevic, 2010). As Weber (1994) suggests, the state is simply a

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machine of collective violence, sustaining the social order through three pillars of social

power – legitimacy, trade and coercion. Only in the context of warfare can the state

prove to the outside world its autonomy within the territory and its potential to mobilise

various kinds of resources to achieve a particular goal (Malesevic, 2010). Then, by

showing off its coercive power, the state can sustain its two other pillars of power –

legitimacy and trade (Weber, 1994).

The most common form of coercion in modern society is discipline, the

institutionalisation of which has been closely related to military practice. According to

Weber (1968: 1155), socio-political discipline, which matters significantly to the

economic and technological boom in modernity, is the outcome of the military

mobilisation of society: “military discipline gives birth to all discipline”. Military

discipline promotes the importance of acting by the rules, which in turn strengthens the

rule of law in modern European society and generates an increasingly disciplined social

order (Weber, 1968). Moreover, the military discipline also speeds up the process of

rationalisation and bureaucratisation in human society (Weber, 1968). Citing the

example of modern factories, Weber (1968) suggests that without introducing a similar

disciplinary process to military discipline, factories would not be able to set up a

consistent modern production process.

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 3.1.3 War and centralisation of the state – organisational materialism

Warfare has a direct impact on the centralisation of authority in the modern nation-state

system (Tilly, 1975; Mann, 1986; Collins, 1975; Marx, 1871, cited in Malesevic, 2010;

Spencer, 1971; Malesevic, 2010). Tilly (1975), alongside Kaspersen, Strandsbjerg and

Teschke (2017) and Malesevic (2010), argues that the emergence of nation-state system

and the centralisation of power in modern Europe has a strong material motive, as they

all agree that warfare always means an immense fiscal burden for all states: “violence

is firmly… grounded in economic power” (Malesevic, 2010: 24). In addition, “Most of

the transformations European states accomplished until late in their history [modernity]

were by-products of the consolidation of central control,” i.e. every state across Europe

tried to achieve the centralisation of coercive power, which then led to “unintended

outcomes of the efforts of European state-makers to build their armies, keep taxes

coming in, form effective coalitions against their rivals, hold their nominal subordinates

and allies in line, and fend off the threat of rebellion on the part of ordinary people”

(Tilly, 1975: 633). This impact, according to Tilly (1975), Mann (1986 & 2006) and

Malesevic (2010), happened as a consequence of the intensive mobilisation of social-

wide resources in warfare. Wars are by all means costly, and this therefore requires the

concentration and mobilisation of resources under a common institutional command. It

was this kind of requirement that gave rise to the birth of the modern state apparatus,

which institutionalised an advanced central government with fiscal, legal, financial and

civil administrations, together with a group of top-down regional administrations

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penetrating into wider society (Mann, 1986; Malesevic, 2010). This centralisation of

authority, according to Mann (1986), would also lead to coercive restrictions on

individual freedom, in exchange for the greater collective interests of the national

community and the socio-political protection of individuals by the state. It was under

this centralised socio-political system that military became an inextricable part of a

closely bonded society, making the effective mobilisation of social-wide resource

possible (Spencer, 1971), which in turn made the centralised state “a mighty weapon in

its struggles against feudalism” that successfully transformed Europe states into modern

capitalist societies (Marx, 1871: 55, cited in Malesevic, 2010: 24).

Moreover, as Treitschke (1914), Hintze (1975), Mann (1988) and Schmitt (1996)

suggest, war not only generated the state and the centralisation of authority, but it also

led to the constitutionalisation and democratisation of states in modernity. To mobilise

the mass population into warfare, incentives such as citizenship, political and property

rights, and welfare reform were well necessary (Hintze, 1975: 183-184):

“Wherever the community was sufficiently adaptable, as in Rome, the pressure of

the foreign situation forced a progressive extension of the citizenry with political

rights, because greater masses of soldiers were needed. It was at heart this joint

operation of external pressure and internal flexibility that enabled Rome to progress

from city-state to world empire.”

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In this way, individual social, political and economic status grew significantly,

triggering the democratisation of social governance and the constitutionalisation of the

state, thereby making the state a political community for the masses (Mann, 1988;

Schmitt, 1996).

Nevertheless, Halden (2017) and Strandsbjerg (2017) provide a completely different

angle on the formation of modern states, especially in relation to territorialisation and

centralisation. Halden (2017) argues that the centralisation of power should not be seen

as a political routine in Europe – a polity does not necessarily need to be centralised to

deliver effective socio-political governance. Whereas for the territorialisation of state,

Strandsbjerg (2017) suggests that Tilly over-estimated the impact of agency while

ignoring the wider social environment – the emergence of sovereign states in Europe

during the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries was in fact closely related to the

development of cartographic and spatial technologies, which allowed states to define

precisely their territorial borders. It was the improvement in cartographic technologies

in 1450-1650 that turned states into well-defined spatial entities, allowing the state

apparatus to extend its influence within its territorial border and hence strengthen the

sense of statehood (Strandsbjerg, 2017).

In summary, previous studies widely agree that it was warfare, a form of coercion, that

fostered the rise of nation-states in Europe. In other words, warfare acted as a means of

social transformation through which modern socio-political structure evolved in Europe

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over time. Coercive power, including warfare, could be essential in institutionalising

socio-political disciplines and sustaining social order, which has been fundamental in

the modernisation of human society. Furthermore, wars also offered the chance for the

state to acquire greater authority through the centralisation of power, allowing for the

more intensive mobilisation of resources socially during military confrontations.

3.2 War, social integration and social change

Since it fostered the development of nation-states in Europe, war has thus become an

essential force in triggering social transformation. Therefore, this section investigates

how warfare stimulated social change, by demonstrating how it is produced and

discussing the possibility of terminating warfare in human society. This then provides

a groundwork for my analysis of the Reforms of Lord Shang in the empirical study,

which examines how incessant wars stimulated social change (notably social, political

and military transformations) amongst ancient Chinese states during the Warring States

era.

3.2.1 War and social change

Warfare is widely believed to be a powerful generator of social integration in social,

political, cultural as well as moral dimensions (Durkheim, 1952; Weber, 1976; Marx,

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1871, cited in Malesevic, 2010; Sumner, 1911; Simmel, 1955; Mann, 1986; Malesevic,

2010). Mann (1986; 1988), Weber (1976) and Rustow (1980) are convinced that

warfare is the extension of the power network (social, economic, political and

ideological power) of a particular community beyond its boundaries, with the aim of

restructuring existing power relations. As Rustow (1980: 35) acknowledges, large

civilisations have all been exclusively created through the coercive means of integration,

namely conquest: “Human social groupings that, in their inner structure, were based on

bloodshed and violence”. In this way, the more competitive community can “offer

alternative organizational means of social control” (Mann, 1986: 2), thus establishing

the prestige and superiority of its own social power, especially in cultural terms (high

culture from the conquering group) and through which the whole of society is bounded

together (Weber, 1976; Rustow, 1980). “Cultural prestige and power prestige are

closely associated. Every victorious war enhances the cultural prestige” (Weber, 1968:

926). According to Weber (1963: 86–87) and Simmel (1955), war is an effective way

of eliminating resistance against social change – “a war in the name of God, for the

special purpose of avenging a sacrilege, which entailed putting the enemy under the

ban and destroying him and all his belongings completely”. The entire conquered

society can then be completely transformed in its sense of values, social principles and

human practices (Simmel, 1955), thereby making it culturally assimilated by the

conqueror, and then integrated into the larger, newly constituted homogeneous society.

In addition, Sumner (1911) suggests that while warfare is indeed destructive, it can also

be productive. The course of warfare, as he argues, can be a means of progress for

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human society: “While men were fighting for glory and greed, for revenge and

superstition, they were building human society. They were acquiring discipline and

cohesion; they were learning cooperation, perseverance, fortitude, and patience”

(Sumner, 1911: 212). While it is true that warfare is crude and bloody, it can

nevertheless stimulate the individual initiative of human beings, encouraging all forms

of innovative ideas and practices with which human beings attempt to defeat their

competitors. Despite the possible accusation of social Darwinism, warfare indeed can

be seen as a sociological form of ‘creative destruction’, in line with Schumpeter’s

theory on economics and capitalism, destroying and reconfiguring power networks

across human society through a “rude and imperfect selection” (Sumner, 1911: 222).

The result of this reconfiguration might not be a bad one – rather, it can lead to “a

vibrant civil society” (Malesevic, 2010: 73).

3.2.2 Cultural/civilisational foundations of war

Spengler (1918), Toynbee (1950), Huntington (1993; 1996), Keegan (1994) and Smith

(1991, 1994, 2005, 2008) have offered explanations of war and violence from a cultural

or a civilisational perspective, suggesting that culture is “a prime determinant of the

nature of warfare” (Keegan, 1994: 387). The culturalist approach presumes “human

beings as essentially norm-driven creatures”, which therefore conceives warfare and

collective violence as an outcome of and a solution to cultural conflicts amongst

different cultural communities based on popular will, regardless of the sources of

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violent actions (Malesevic, 2010: 64; Smith, 2005). “War is not just about culture, but

it is all about culture” (Smith, 2005: 4). The culturalist approach focused on “the

differences in religious beliefs, cultural practices or civilizational clashes,” as well as

“symbolism, ritualism and signification as the key features of warfare” (Malesevic,

2010: 64). In this way, it sounds similar to Weber’s (1968) account of warfare as a

result of cultural differences – as a way to establish the prestige of one particular culture

over another. Moreover, culturalist arguments suggest that “all wars require coherent

and believable narratives” to play the role of social inclusion and exclusion, separating

“sacred from the profane, good from evil, and the rational from the irrational”

(Malesevic, 2010: 67). Although culturalist arguments can be questionable for their

cultural determinist stance, this approach has been echoed by “historical sociologists

such as Mosse (1991), Winter (1995), Smith (1999) and Hutchinson (2005),” who

believe in the role of nationalist narratives that back up warfare with a broader socio-

political meaning, thus fostering stronger national consciousness that could in turn

consolidate the ethnic foundation of modern nation-states with unique national cultures

(Malesevic, 2010: 65).

Nevertheless, Malesevic (2010) has identified three major problems with the culturalist

approach. First, the culturalist approach fails to explain “either the origin or the

persistence of violent action”, even though it rightly argues that different cultural

backgrounds might generate collective violence (Malesevic, 2010: 68). Shared cultural

codes across a community would possibly make it easier and more popular to boost

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collective violence, but a shared cultural background itself would not generate war

(Malesevic, 2010). Second, Smith focused too much on the cultural foundation of

warfare while ignoring the wider “geopolitical, material and other factors [that] often

appear more prominent than cultural genres” (Malesevic, 2010: 69). The cultural factor,

as Malesevic (2010) argues, is an important but supplementary factor in politically

organised collective violence. By raising the example of 2003 Iraq War, Malesevic

(2010) demonstrates that media are not independent and do not generate cultural

solidarity on their own – it is the political elites that manipulate media reports through

which shared cultural narratives are delivered to the masses and thus generate popular

support for warfare. Third, Malesevic (2010: 69) points out that almost all culturalists

claim that collective violence originates from culture or civilisation, suggesting an

irreconcilable conflict among cultural differences, regardless of the fact that collective

violence is also “a by-product of mismatched solidarities”. Therefore, the causal

relation between culture and violence may also be the other way round – “culture itself

is a product of violence”. Malesevic (2010) thus believes that any further interpretation

of warfare and culture should focus on the role of social organisation as well as ideology.

3.2.3 Challenges and diminishing of warfare?

Durkheim (1959), alongside Spencer (1971), Sumner (1911) and Oppenheimer (2007),

is optimistic about the diminishing of warfare and violence in human society, regarding

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war and collective violence as unavoidable antagonism of human beings in the pre-

modern agrarian society that was destined to disappear following the modernisation of

the human civilisation: “War… has become more and more intermittent and less

common” (Durkheim 1992: 53). For Durkheim, although wars are destructive to the

natural evolution of human civilisation, it can nonetheless foster national consciousness,

strengthen the authority of the state apparatus and thus ease the nation-building project:

“Wars rouse collective sentiments, stimulate the partisan spirit and patriotism… and

concentrating activity toward a single end… cause a stronger integration of society…

as they force men to close ranks and confront the common danger” (Durkheim, 1952:

208). Oppenheimer (2007), in line with Durkheim, believes that globalisation, which

magnifies economic connections across the planet, could diminish warlike global

conflict to a limited extent. Sumner (1991: 209), in addition, offers his analysis from a

materialist perspective, suggesting that organised violence in human society came from

“the competition of life”. Once material scarcity declines following economic

development, popular struggle for survival is greatly reduced and hence lowers the

degree of material conflicts (Sumner, 1991). Different from Durkheim, Mosca (1939)

is pessimistic about warfare and violence in human society, as he considers human

society a conflict-driven community, where wars and conflicts will never disappear but

rather take place over and over again:

“There will always be conflict of interest, and the will to have one’s own way by brute

force… When that organisation has been dissolved or weakened, what is to prevent

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 small organisations of the strong, the bold, the violent, from again coming to life to

oppress the weak and peaceful? When war has ended on large scale, will it not be

revived on a small scale in quarrels between families, classes or villages?”

(Mosca 1939: 242)

While it is unknown if human society will achieve the state of perpetual peace imagined

by Kant (2003[1795]), wars and collective violence have not yet disappeared in the

contemporary world. In contrast to Durkheim’s prediction that war would vanish

following the development of human society, “the twentieth century was by far the

bloodiest century in recorded human history, with 250 new wars and over 100 million

deaths” (Malesevic, 2010: 46), although the world as a whole has indeed enjoyed long-

standing peace in the post-WWII era. Owing to the legacy of the two global conflicts,

together with the proxy wars that resulted from US-Soviet confrontation during the

Cold War, a firm intention towards rejecting violence is still in the mainstream of

sociological analysis (Joas, 2003; Malesevic, 2010).

To summarise Section 3.2, warfare, as a form of coercive power, can effectively foster

social change, establishing new social order and prestige. Moreover, wars and

collective violence may originate from cultural and civilisational differences among

various national and ethnic communities seeking to establish their power prestige.

Geopolitical, material and other factors might also give rise to wars and violence.

Furthermore, while the socio-biological approach claims that wars and violence are a

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result of the animalistic nature of humankind, most academic literature has argued that

there will be a diminishing likelihood of warfare in the future, as a consequence of

modernisation in human society.

3.3 Geopolitics: The Pre-Condition for Historical Development

According to Kristof (1960), geopolitics refers to the interpretation of political

phenomena concerning space and human geography, which involves investigating the

objective and subjective influences of the natural environment on political affairs.

“Geopolitics… is a derivation of nineteenth century organic political geography, and,

in its essence, is but a shrewd combination of world geography and world politics”

(Gyorgy, 1944: 175). Therefore, this section explores the significance of geopolitical

influence in human history and pays particular attention to the geopolitical characters

of China, thus laying down the groundwork for the analysis of Qin’s military expansion

in the empirical study.

3.3.1 Geopolitics: why does it matter?

According to Fairgrieve (1917), human communities have affected each other

throughout history. The significance of geopolitical studies lies in the fact that the

history of each human community is not solely controlled by reasons of their own, but

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by neighbouring communities, no matter how near or remote: “geographical conditions

of various of kinds have controlled the actual course of history” (Fairgrieve, 1917: 16).

Geopolitics affect nation-states via three major dimensions: social, political and

economic. First, in terms of the social dimension, the state as a basic spatial and

organisational unit of the human community is primarily defined by its geographical

boundaries (Short, 1993). As Cox (2002: 257) acknowledges, national identities tend to

have a place-dependent character, as the concept of nation is always inseparable from

a corresponding geographic expression – “it refers to a country, the ‘motherland’ or

‘fatherland’”. Citing the examples of separatist movements in Quebec and Slovakia,

Cox (2002) suggests that a sense of common national identity has a close relation to the

territorial domain, even though in some other places around the world this relation

might be less clear and straightforward.

Second, on the political dimension, geography also defines the population and its power

networks. Modern nation-states are territorial organisations with delimited boundaries

within which a state can have the unchallengeable sovereign right to enforce its

centralised, infrastructural power across the national community (Mann, 1984; Driver,

1991; Cox, 2002). In the process of nation-building, the occupation of territory by the

state “becomes the basis for a whole set of beliefs about the relationships between

people and their environment” (Short, 1993: 115). It is only after having a definite

territorial domain that the state can popularise a set of common myths and beliefs across

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a unitary community, which then enables it to determine the population of its national

community and the power relations across the nation (Cox, 2002).

Third, on the economic dimension, geopolitical factors also affect the development of

a particular nation-state through resource endowment, size and location (Short, 1993).

Resources, such as oils, minerals and rich soils, are spread unevenly across the globe

and matter to the development of human communities. The size of the state also matters,

as the territorial size of the state may determine the size of the population and economic

output. The location of a state includes both an absolute location and a relative location

(Short, 1993). An absolute location is the objective spatial environment of the state,

whether it sits on the coast or is landlocked by surrounding states; relative location, on

the other hand, refers to the relative spatial relation to neighbouring states, such as

mountains, rivers and seas, and may also include other factors like artificially drawn

international boundaries. These can all make an impact on the strength, strategy and

potential of a state. As a result, Giddens (1985) argues that modern sociology should

not ignore the influence of geopolitics, and in particular that of warfare, during the

process of nation-state formation.

Miller (2007), on the other hand, discusses the regional state-to-nation balance and is

convinced that the situation regarding balance or imbalance has a direct impact on

nationalism that could in turn determine regional peace or violence. Miller identifies

two key factors in the state-to-nation balance – the strength of the state and the degree

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of congruence. First, the extent of state strength, according to Miller (2007: 54), has an

immediate, linear relation to either peace or war. Strong states in most cases have more

efficient and effective governance and institutions, thus making them more capable in

mobilising resources, especially the means of violence, to achieve an ultimate goal such

as expansion. Weaker states, in contrast, are usually short of effective control over all

means of human activity, no matter fiscal, economic, political or technological. In this

way, the existence of both strong and weak states in a particular region can encourage

strong states to annex weak states. Second, Miller (2007: 55) identifies “the degree of

congruence”, which refers to the geopolitical layout as opposed to the national/ethnic

layout in a particular region, as another determining factor of regional peace or war.

When a region is highly congruent, whereby state boundaries mostly match

national/ethnic boundaries, conflicts are less likely to occur, whilst if a region is poorly

congruent – when state boundaries and national/ethnic boundaries intertwine with each

other in a complicated manner, then the potential risk of war is more likely to come to

the fore. According to Miller (2007: 56), “The higher the combined effect of the two

measures, the higher the state-to-nation incongruence in the region”, which would

subsequently lead to the higher risk of confrontation among states in the region. In

addition, Miller (2007: 89) also addresses four forces that could influence the state-to-

nation balance. Internal ethnic congruence and state strength, together with national

strength within the state, could generate great state-to-nation balance and therefore

foster regional peace and harmony; whereas in the case of internal incongruence and a

weak state, as well as revisionist ethnic nationalist challenges that could cause external

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incongruence, this could severely destabilise state-to-nation balance and subsequently

give rise to regional antagonism. Therefore, in line with Miller (2007), where there is

regional state-to-nation imbalance, there is war.

Nonetheless, a considerable number of studies disagree with the connection between

warfare and modern nation-state formation. Kaspersen, Strandsbjerg & Teschke (2017),

for instance, point out that while there has been a revival of bellocentric theories since

the mid-1970s in the USA, social sciences in European academia, particularly in

Germany, have generally conceived wars and violence as negative social phenomena,

due to the paradoxical history of conflicts in the first half of the twentieth century.

Classical theories on war and violence have been widely seen as associated with

“militarism, social Darwinism, imperialism, fascism and racism” (Kaspersen,

Strandsbjerg & Teschke, 2017: 16).

3.3.2 Geopolitics and the nation-state system in Europe

Previous studies reveal two opposing perspectives on the relationship between

nationalism and geopolitics. Collins (1986 & 1999) regards nation-states and

nationalism as the impact of geopolitical contests, which have caused the dissolution of

traditional empires; Wimmer (2013) and Wimmer & Min (2006), on the contrary,

suggest that nationalism has caused the disintegration of empires, the ideology of which

has replaced the imperial principle in the modern era.

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According to Collins (1986 & 1999), geopolitical principles are fundamental factors in

the founding and dissolution of the state, whereas warfare is the principal variable in

determining the geopolitical environment of the state. “States are mobile geographical

entities engaged in military competition with each other… those states with size and

resource advantages over their rivals will tend to expand territorially, as do polities with

geo-positional or marchland advantage” (Hutchinson, 2017: 89). Nevertheless,

marchland states may find themselves overextended in the case of massive military

expansion, causing strain on resources and the possibility of fragmentation in domestic

society, especially in the case of having multiple enemies (Hutchinson, 2017).

For Collins (1999), ethnicity is a social construct as a result of geopolitical separation,

which generates ethnic somatotypes, leading to the creation of various ethnicities by

developing different somatic and linguistic categories that in turn result in the social

superiority or inferiority of particular ethnicities in relation to others. Different states,

according to Collins (1999), have different levels of capacity to promote ethnic

integration, depending on the extent of state penetration into the society. This is why

pre-modern empires and modern nation-states have different levels of capacity in

fostering social integration. Pre-modern empires in the form of layered tribute states are

weak in assimilating the population, due to their indirect rule across the empire, which

thus makes central government less penetrative. Modern nation-states, by contrast, have

much greater capacity to assimilate non-Han ethnic groups into the dominant group, as

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they are more penetrative and therefore have the “capacity to impose the culture of the

dominant group though its public institutions, including education, produces either

assimilation or minority ethnic counter mobilization to achieve a separate state”

(Hutchinson, 2017: 90). According to Collins (1999 & 2012), geopolitical strength

plays a crucial role in determining the strength of a state, such as legitimacy, the ability

to mobilise resources, and the capacity to promote social integration. In the event of

success in a foreign war that creates an advantageous external geopolitical environment,

the state will gain greater prestige and stronger legitimacy and therefore have more

capacity to mobilise state-wide resources in assimilating non-Han ethnic groups into

the dominant group under a common fate. However, in the event of failure in war, the

state might suffer not only a decline in prestige and legitimacy, but also an internal

administrative and fiscal crisis, due to a deteriorating external geopolitical environment,

which could then lead to intra-elite conflicts that might in turn cause the breakdown of

the state and the fragmentation of inter-ethnic relations (e.g. Balkanisation) (Collins,

1999 & 2012).

In contrast, Wimmer (2013) argues that nationalism is the driving force behind

reshaping international order and the actual cause of imperial collapse. The strength of

nationalist movements, according to Wimmer (2013), is closely related to the socio-

political transition from empire to nation-state. Nationalist movements foster national

consciousness, and those who are successful then encourage the rest of the empire to

follow the same route, which subsequently causes the dissolution of empires and the

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formation of new nation-states (Wimmer, 2013). Based on their analysis of the

Habsburg and the Ottoman empires, Hiers and Wimmer (2013) strongly believe that

war and geopolitical forces boost the transition from an empire to a nation-state, albeit

these factors do not generate nationalism: “At best it triggered, accelerated, or delayed

the triumph of a new principle of political legitimacy” (Hutchinson, 2017: 91). In

addition, the great-power wars fought within the empires themselves is also an

important factor in the transition of the Ottoman and Habsburg empires into modern

nation-states after the First World War, although that would be a secondary reason

(Hiers and Wimmer, 2013).

According to Hutchinson (2017), both Collins and Wimmer fail to recognise the

significance of geopolitical impacts on nation and nationalism. First and foremost, a

favourable geopolitical environment was essential to the rise of nation-states in the

nineteenth century. Though nationalism has the capacity to mobilise resources from the

mass population, power transformation will not happen without imperial overstretching

amongst geopolitical rivals. For instance, German unification was only possible due to

geopolitical unrest in Britain and other continental powers across Europe, which

generated a space for the rise of a powerful, new German state sitting at the very centre

of the continent (Hutchinson, 2017). Second, Hutchinson also believes that the

existence of nation-states and empires is closely related to their external geopolitical

environment. For Hutchinson (2017: 92), nation-states and empires are the two sides of

the same coin – “The dominant nation-states were themselves empires, and there were

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attempts at re-imperialization in each period, some of which obtained a measure of

success at the time”. Successful empires, then, are not only centralised and assimilative,

but they may also employ the divide-and-rule strategy by offering various forms of

decentralisation to subordinate ethnicities. However, this is subject to the extent of their

ethno-historical heritage, as well as the geopolitical and economic context (Hutchinson,

2017). The empirical part of this thesis will demonstrate how Qin’s external geopolitical

environment eased its survival and facilitated its expansion during the Warring States

era.

3.3.3 The geopolitical environment of China

According to Fairgrieve (1917), Lattimore (1962) and Gernet (1996), geopolitical

impacts have controlled the history of China over the past four thousand years.

Therefore, it is necessary to examine the geopolitical character of China before

analysing Qin’s military expansion across China in the empirical part of this thesis.

Fairgrieve (1917: 243) suggests that although the spread of ideographic writings had an

impact in promoting mutual understanding amongst the Chinese community, language

does not have a decisive position in the formation of nations: “Unity of language, of

speech even, has not prevented Germany and Italy from breaking up into independent

states; it has not prevented the separation of Norway and Denmark, nor that of Britain

and the United States of America. Geographical conditions have been the stronger

[factor]” (Fairgrieve, 1917: 243). As Gernet (1996) acknowledges, the geopolitical

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situation in China is one of the most complex typologies – its vast territorial span covers

an enormous land mass, from Siberia in the north to the Equator at the south, from the

shores of the Pacific Ocean at the east to the central Asia at the heart of the Eurasian

continent.

Zhang (2013a, 2013b & 2013c) systematically examines China’s geopolitical

characteristics. As the author (2013a) demonstrates, China’s geographical layout can be

split into three tiers, from west to east: the first tier is the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and its

surrounding mountains, with an average altitude of 4500m; the second tier comprises

numerous plateaus, mountains and basins, with an average altitude between 1000 –

2000m; and the third tier, with an average altitude below 500m, sits at the eastern end

of China’s territory, across which most of China’s plains and hills are spread. This thesis

focuses on the geographical characteristics of the second and third tiers, where ancient

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Chinese states fought against each other in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States

periods. The Guanzhong Plain and the Sichuan Basin, where the core territory of the

Qin kingdom was located, sit on the second tier; Qin’s six rival states, on the other hand,

were located mostly across the Central Plain on the third tier.

Zhang (2013b) is convinced that the Central Plain located in the Yellow River region,

where ancient Chinese society originated, is heavily influenced by geopolitical forces

from surroundings. He regards the Mongolia Plateau, the Guanzhong Plain and the

North-eastern China Plain as the three most influential geopolitical power centres that

have a decisive impact on the Central Plain. Zhang (2013b) demonstrates that the

Central Plain, surrounded by mountains to the west, the sea to the east and hills to the

south, is a place that is easy to attack but difficult to defend. As a result, its external

geopolitical environment places great reliance on its surrounding geopolitical blocks.

As the sea to the east and hills to the south could not foster strong geopolitical power,

and the North-eastern China Plain was not developed into an influential geopolitical

power centre until the Tang dynasty, the Guanzhong Plain therefore became the only

effective geopolitical power centre in the pre-Qin age (before 221 BC) that has a

determining impact on the Central Plain (Zhang, 2013b). Since the Guanzhong Plain is

a piece of fertile land enclosed by mountains, it was not only a solid material basis for

continuous warfare, but also an advantageous location in the event of defence. For this

reason, although the Guanzhong Plain is significantly smaller than the Central Plain, it

offered a great geopolitical advantage against the states on the Central Plain (Sima.Q,

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1999). This advantage may possibly have facilitated Qin’s final success in the

unification of China.

3.3.4 A theoretical critique of the geopolitical perspective

Nonetheless, not all scholars recognise geopolitics as an effective approach in academic

research. As Dodds et al. (2013: 1) note, “Geopolitics, as an intellectual field, enjoys a

mixed reputation”. Some academics regard the study of the subject as intellectually

problematic, for the reason that its genesis is closely intertwined with social Darwinism

and late nineteenth-century fin-de-siècle Europe, which is therefore also related to

authoritarianism and Nazism (Hartshorne, 1954; Parker, 1985; Heffernan, 2000; Dodds

et al., 2013). Moreover, some scholars also conceive classical geopolitics as an

environmental determinist approach (Dodds et al., 2013).

Despite these critiques, the development of geopolitical studies has brought about a

range of influential insights into the modern global political system, such as the works

of Friedrich Ratzel, Halford Mackinder, Alfred Mahan, Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew

Brzezinski (Dodds et al., 2013). As Dodds et al. (2013: 3) suggest, “Geopolitics… is

the study of statecraft and the divination of patterns of global politics… [whose]

intellectual value… lies in a capacity to uncover the challenges facing the state and

empire and display a willingness to use force if necessary to protect vital interests”.

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To sum up Section 3.3, geopolitical influence can have social, political and economic

impacts on nation-states (Short, 1993; Cox, 2002). The regional state-to-nation balance,

which includes the strength of a state and the degree of congruence, has a strong

influence on determining the likelihood of regional peace or war (Miller, 2007). While

Collins (1986 & 1999) regards geopolitical contests as the driving force behind the

emergence and development of nationalism and nation-states, Wimmer (2013)

contends that, in contrast, it was the rise of nation and nationalism that caused

geopolitical conflict, leading to the dissolution of empires in the modern era. Owing to

its complicated geography, the three-tier layout of China’s territory could have

generated interesting impacts on the geopolitical environment amongst ancient Chinese

states, and possibly given the Qin state an advantage during the incessant wars.

3.4 Conclusion to Chapter Three

In conclusion, this section has widely reviewed a number of theories and thoughts on

how warfare influences the formation of nation and state, and how wars have triggered

social change in human history. Numerous scholars are convinced that a close relation

exists between warfare as a form of organised collective violence and the formation of

nation-states as a dominant form of collective community in modern society. War as an

extension of political orientation is believed to have had a determining role in

overthrowing European feudalism and empires, leading to the formation of modern

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nation-states using coercive power in the form of military force. Disciplines, the

bureaucratisation of governance and the centralisation of authority have all been

institutionalised in conjunction with the military mobilisation of society. Moreover,

while war has sometimes become the ultimate solution in triggering social change and

resolving cultural/civilisational antagonism, organised violence has become

decreasingly popular in human society for both materialist reasons and unfavourable

memories. Nevertheless, not all scholars are convinced by the bellocentric argument

that warfare leads to the formation of modern nation-states or the bureaucratisation and

centralisation of the state apparatus. Besides states and military forces, many more

influential factors may have contributed to the emergence of nation-states. Geopolitics,

with its unique understanding of human society, from analysing geographical

characteristics, has the potential to expand our understanding of nation-formation.

Though some scholars believe geopolitical studies are intellectually problematic, it is

undeniable that this approach offers a distinctive way to interpret socio-political

phenomena by examining the objective and subjective influences of geography on

political affairs. This in turn provides a different angle in the analysis of Qin’s

unification of China herein, regarding the complex geographical features scattered

across Chinese territory.

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Conclusion to the Literature Review

The three literature review chapters have thoroughly reviewed previous studies on

nation and nationalism, the emergence and development of Chinese society from

antiquity to the Qin Empire and the role warfare plays in nation-state formation. It has

been widely believed that nations and nationalism arose out of the massive nation-

building movements across Europe in modernity, which had much wider socio-political

influence across the world thereafter, including China, which has been a long-standing

unique civilisation-based collective community. Given that China already had a

universal written language and formed a united community more than 2,000 years ago,

it would be highly interesting to explore the emergence and development of its pre-

modern ethnic foundation around 221 BC, i.e. the time at which a universal written

language emerged as a result of the first united, centralised Chinese empire – the Qin

dynasty.

Moreover, China is a vast state with a long-standing civilisation based on the doctrines

of Confucianism and Legalism. While Confucianism was not fully accepted as the

official guiding principle until 134 BC, the adoption of Legalism was much earlier, in

356 BC, in the kingdom of Qin and successfully made it the most competent Chinese

kingdom shortly after that. Thus, this thesis probes into the role of these traditional

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Chinese doctrines and focuses especially on Legalism, identifying how it helped the

kingdom of Qin conquer every rival state across China and establish a united Chinese

society that, despite being challenged and overthrown only fifteen years after Qin’s

unification of China, would later form what Smith (1995) has described as an ethnie,

namely a pre-modern ethnic foundation for modern Chinese society.

Finally, many previous studies have shown that warfare has played a significant role in

triggering the formation of nation-states in modern European history, whereas other

studies have emphasised the importance of not overestimating its significance.

Interestingly, the first unification of Chinese society was inextricable from the series of

wars called Qin’s wars of unification that took place between 230 and 221 BC. In this

period, the kingdom of Qin conquered six rival Chinese states and successfully unified

the Chinese community for the first time in history. Hence, my research explores to

what extent this series of wars triggered the genesis of a pre-modern ethnic foundation

for the Chinese nation – an important question well worth investigating.

Therefore, this research thesis attempts to understand the emergence and development

of China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation by exploring the reasons for the three

questions raised in the introduction chapter, aiming at answering these research

questions by carrying out an empirical study through a historiographic approach,

investigating how the foundation for a united but contested Chinese community were

created through a series of wars between 230 and 221 BC, and how this historical

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transformation helped foster a pre-modern ethnic foundation of China in the form of a

united Chinese territorial basis and shared Chinese civilisation, as well as standardised

written Chinese characters, trading currency, units of measurement and the gauge of

cartwheels (Gernet, 1996). In addition, the findings also reflect on the Qin’s difficulty

in sustaining this unity, demonstrating how this unity was debated amongst the Qin’s

ruling elites after unification and then challenged, contested and compromised in

Chinese history and subject to power struggles (Bodde, 1986; Sima.Q, 1999; Sima.G,

2007).

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Findings

The three chapters in this part present major findings from my analysis of ancient

historical literature and edited collections of government documents. By employing the

ethno-symbolist theoretical framework on nation and nationalism, I shall demonstrate

how Qin’s unification of China, through a series of plans and warfare, led to the

emergence of a unified Chinese community in 221 BC. Despite this lasting for only

fifteen years, due to the fragility of the unity itself and the contests throughout post-

unification Chinese society, Qin’s unification of China has made a contribution to the

emergence of China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation, upon which the modern Chinese

nation is based. By tracing back to the historical moments through which the kingdom

of Qin united China by conquering all other rival Chinese states, this chapter tries to

answer the three research questions: (1) How did China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation

take shape? (2) In what ways did war influence the emergence and development of a

Chinese ethnie in ancient China? (3) What were the distinctive features of the ethnie in

the pre-modern Chinese community?

Ethno-symbolists regard the ethnie as “named units of population with common

ancestry myths and historical memories, elements of shared culture, some link with a

historic territory and some measure of solidarity, at least among their elites” (Smith,

1995: 57). While the theoretical chapters in this thesis show that the Chinese

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community did have vague common ancestry myths and historical memories, the

following three empirical chapters intend to demonstrate how the Qin established a

historical territory, constructed a shared Chinese culture and fostered a sense of social

solidarity across the Chinese community after its unification of China in 221 BC. By

closely and critically examining historical sources from ancient historical literature and

edited collections of government documents, the findings in this thesis reflect and argue

that Qin’s wars of unification played an important role in the socio-political unification

of China, which in turn facilitated the emergence of a Chinese ethnie in the third century

BC. However, on the other hand, the findings also indicate the fragility of this first

unification of China. The Qin’s implementation of a centralised socio-political system,

which attempted to unify the entire society, had been debated amongst the ruling elites

since the beginning of its Legalist reforms in the fourth century BC. Moreover, the unity

of the Qin Empire was also contested by both ordinary people and former aristocracy

from those defeated states. For these reasons, Qin’s unification of China was not overtly

successful – the new empire only lasted for fifteen years and then collapsed.

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Chapter Four China’s Pre-Modern Ethnic Foundation: War
and the Establishment of a Territorial Basis

This chapter addresses how the Qin state (the dukedom of Qin 770 – 323 BC, the

kingdom of Qin 323 – 221 BC, the Qin dynasty 221 – 207 BC), through a series of wars,

achieved the unification of Chinese society under a centralised state for the first time in

history. Even though its long-term impact is only known from hindsight, as Qin’s

unification of China was unintentional, the statehood of the Qin Empire enabled the

establishment of a territorial basis that later became a core element in China’s pre-

modern ethnic foundation. Based on ancient historical sources, it is evident that warfare

was closely intertwined with the Chinese history from the founding of the Qin state in

770 BC to the first unification of China in 221 BC, during which Qin defeated all its

rival Chinese states and founded the first centralised empire in Chinese history – the

Qin dynasty. It can therefore be reasonably argued that warfare can be considered a vital

factor in the genesis of China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation. In this chapter, section

4.1 addresses the fact that warfare was the primary and direct cause of this united

Chinese community, which for the first time realised the imagined the Huaxia

community under the statehood of the Qin, thereby providing a dedicated territorial

basis for the pre-modern ethnic foundation of the Chinese nation. Section 4.2 then

demonstrates that frequent warfare with surrounding ethnic groups reduced Qin’s Sino-

centrism and fostered a more inclusive society, which in turn generated the possibility

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for social integration between the Huaxia community and surrounding ethnic groups.

Finally, section 4.3 discusses Qin’s strategy in relation to territorial expansion, and the

implicit geopolitical influences behind these strategies.

4.1 War and the Chinese Statehood

The emergence of China’s statehood was directly related to warfare. Previous studies

conceive warfare as the determining factor in the founding of European states and the

continent’s power structure since modernity (Weber, 1976; Tilly, 1975; Treitschke,

1914; Hintze, 1975; Schmitt 1996; Poggi, 2004; Malesevic, 2010; Kaspersen,

Strandsbjerg & Teschke, 2017). A similar situation also happened in ancient China –

according to historical sources, the evolution of a united Chinese statehood, together

with the consolidation of a united Chinese community and its corresponding centralised

socio-political structure under the rule of the Qin, was closely related to wars and

military operations (Sima.Q, 1999; Chen et al., 2012; Chen et al., 2016).

4.1.1 Frequent warfare and the founding of Qin kingdom

As Hintze (1975: 181) argues, “all state organisation was originally military

organisation, organisation for war”. The first centralised Chinese state, as a result of

China’s first true unification, was also achieved through a series of wars from 247 to

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221 BC, without which a united Chinese state would not have come into being in the

third century BC. As a result, Qin’s military capability should be considered the primary

cause of a untied Chinese statehood, which for the first time in history set up the

territorial basis for a united Chinese community and in turn fostered China’s pre-

modern ethnic foundation as a consequence of Qin’s territorial conquest over its six

rival Chinese states.

According to historical sources, Tilly (1975: 42) is correct to argue that “war made the

state, and the state made war”. The rise, triumph and eventual collapse of the Qin state

were accompanied by warfare throughout its entire history (Sima.Q, 1999). The

invasion by the Rongs of the capital city of the Zhou dynasty undermined the power of

the royal house of Zhou to a considerable extent, which then weakened its control over

its principalities. This enabled these principalities to grow into semi-autonomous

kingdoms during the Spring and Autumn era, leading to a multistate system in ancient

China, and in turn fostered their transition into territorial states in the age of Warring

States (Sima.Q, 1999). Moreover, the rise of the Qin state shares similar patterns with

Oppenheimer’s (2007) observation on the rise of primitive states in Europe, in that the

founding of the Qin state also originated from defending against nomadic tribes – in

this case a peripheral ethnic group named the Rong, who invaded Zhou’s capital city in

771 BC (Sima.Q, 1999). Owing to its performance during the wars against the Rong

invaders, the Ying clan was then granted its own principality – the state of Qin, in 770

BC. From that point onward, Qin began to grow in territorial span and population

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following its conquest of the weaker ethnic communities along the Chinese periphery,

following which it eliminated all of its rival Chinese states through a series of wars in

the later period of the Warring States era. This ultimately led to the founding of the Qin

dynasty – the first Chinese empire to unite all people of the imagined Huaxia

community under a single, centralised state.

Qin’s outstanding military power, on which the founding of the Qin Empire depended,

was inextricable with the high frequency of Qin’s military operations. According to the

timeline in the Shuihudi Qin Bamboo Slips (Chen et al., 2016), from 306 to 217 BC,

Qin fought against other states for over more than half of the period. Frequent military

actions had enriched Qin’s military experience and strengthened its military capacity,

thereby enhancing Qin’s military competitiveness against its rivals. However, it should

also be noticed that Qin’s wars of unification (230-221 BC) only account for a small

proportion of the total number of wars during this period, as recorded in the timeline of

Shiji5 (Sima.Q, 1999). Just as Jia Yi (n.d.) from the second century BC points out, Qin’s

attempt to unify China actually lasted for six generations (361 – 221 BC) before King

Zheng finally completed the task. This implies that the territorial unification of the

Chinese community, which provided the basis for China’s pre-modern ethnic

foundation, was a time-consuming process – it took over a century to achieve, let alone

the various challenges during the process.

5 Records of the Grand Historian.

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 4.1.2 Consolidating the empire through military operations

Qin’s military power was important in establishing a Chinese territorial state and

sustaining the unity of this newly united empire. Weber (1994) is convinced that the

state apparatus is born through the legitimate use of violence, especially physical

violence. The significance of the state lies closely in its monopolistic right to exercise

coercive power, whereas military practice is the most prominent and important form of

collective violence, as it controls the most formidable coercive power of death in human

society (Weber, 1994). Because of this, modern states are widely believed to sustain

their political authority through the legitimate use of violence within the sovereign

territory (Tilly, 1992; Weber, 1976; Treitschke, 1914; Mosca, 1939; Mann, 1993 &

2006; Poggi, 2001; Collins, 1975; Oppenheimer, 2007; Malesevic, 2010). The

consolidation of the Qin Empire in the post-unification era has also shown similar

features. Historical sources reveal that military operations were still deeply involved in

the Qin society after unification. Both the Liye Qin Bamboo Slips (Chen et al., 2016)

and the Corpus of Qin Bamboo Slips (Chen et al., 2012) show that military operations

were managed not only by the Qin’s central government, but also local governments as

well. It seems that the entire Qin Empire was run like a war machine ready to fight at

any time, which was evidently different from succeeding Chinese dynasties that paid

greater attention to domestic material reproduction and social cohesion, owing to the

lessons learned from Qin’s collapse (Sima.Q, 1999; Liu, 2009; Sima.G, 2007). This

indicates a strong militarist nature of the Qin state.

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Events of military operations frequently appear in the Liye Qin Bamboo Slips. First of

all, the word ‘garrison’ appeared several times: slip 8-81 has documented that “someone

(position and name missing) has gone away to somewhere (not stated) for garrison”; in

slip 8-466, a person named Ku married the daughter of a merchant, and then went away

on garrison duty for four years. As Chen et al. (2012) comment, it seemed like a legal

requirement that whomever married the daughter of a merchant had to go to a garrison.

Meanwhile, a similar description has also appeared in Shiji (Sima.Q, 1999), stating that

in the 33rd year of King Zheng (214 BC), the emperor ordered arrested fugitives, sons-

in-law of matrilocal families who take on a wife's family name, and merchants to

conquer Luliangdi (a place), setting up three new commanderies named Guilin,

Xiangjun and Nanhai, to protect and govern the new territory. Moreover, it is also found

that Qin’s troops were regularly deployed to the peripheral regions of the empire,

according to the Liye Qin Bamboo Slips. On slip 8-644, there is a question: "Is it okay

to send troops to guard it?" Following this, slip 8-1094 also recorded that government

officials were demoted to soldiers and sent away to defend the border. It is worth

noticing that regular deployment of troops to the periphery, for the aim of namely to a

garrison rather than to fight in open warfare, may indicate a form of planned migration

by the Qin government, possibly with the aim of safeguarding new frontiers that were

not yet stabilised. Such an assumption comes from the fact that state-oriented migration

plans were common during the colonial age, and it was a relatively effective measure

employed to gain control over the newly annexed territory. For instance, Australia used

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to be a place for British criminals before its independence (Reid, 2012; Maxwell-

Stewart, 2010; Oxley, 1996).

Therefore, as shown in the Liye Qin Bamboo Slips and the Corpus of Qin Bamboo Slips,

military operations still played an important role in the post-unification era. Soldiers

and ordinary people were all involved in this highly militarised mechanism. As

Malesevic (2010) suggests, deterrence is a key function of collective violence. It thus

seems that Qin’s troops, as a major means of collective violence, were an important

source of deterrence in post-unification China under the rule of the Qin. As the

territorial span of the Qin expanded several folds following its unification of China, the

difficulty in governing this huge expanse of land also grew substantially. There was not

only the conventional challenge of delivering efficient and effective governance over a

much larger territory, but also the new problem of suppressing the political influences

of former kingdoms across the newly united Chinese community. By deploying its

troops to the new frontiers of the empire, the Qin could intimidate and quell potential

threats against unification and its governance, hence protecting its effectiveness as a

governing body across the empire and therefore consolidating the newly united Chinese

community. In this way, Qin’s great military capacity thus became an important means

of deterrence and enforcement against potential separatism and attempts to revive

formerly defeated kingdoms. The Qin successfully sustained the integrity of the newly

united empire by imposing obedience and thus facilitated the genesis of China’s pre-

modern ethnic foundation on a solid territorial basis. This is a perfect example of how

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warfare institutionalised the state apparatus (Poggi, 2001; Collins, 1975; Malesevic,

2010; Weber, 1994) by introducing coercion and discipline to people across the Qin

Empire.

However, despite military operations being closely intertwined with the Qin society,

some historical sources provide adverse information in this regard, indicating that

military forces might not have been so important in consolidating the unity of the Qin

Empire in the post-unification era. Due to the fact that in the Liye Qin Bamboo Slips,

local government documents of the Qin dynasty only mentioned weapons, but nothing

about soldiers, it is quite likely that there were no permanent troops at the regional and

local levels following Qin’s unification of China. It can also be deduced that regional

and local governments down the centralised bureaucracy did not have the right to

organise or order Qin’s military forces. In slice 8-458, it mentions that in the storeroom

of Qianling county, there was armour of two different types, 341 and 21 pieces,

respectively; two types of helmet, 39 and 28, respectively; 251 crossbows; 97 crossbow

arms; 1,801 strings; around 40,090? arrows (the final digit on the bamboo slip is

missing) and 251 halberds. This was only a storeroom in a county located far away from

the border, but the weaponry would have armed at least 200 people. This implies that

local governments maintained a high level of material preparation for war, and this

might also indicate the critical nature of military power in Qin society. Nevertheless, it

is even more dubious when government documents record that weapons were to be sent

away to the capital city. Slice 8-1510 recorded that "[…] weapons will be transported

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to the capital city". Slices 16-5 and 16-6 state "Now weapons from Dongting jun

(commardery) will be transported to the capital city, and there are also plenty of

weapons waiting to be transported from Ba jun, Nan jun and Cangwu jun" (Chen et al.,

2016). Even though this huge volume of weapons transported from Qin’s peripheral

commanderies to the capital city could indicate the effectiveness of Qin's centralised

bureaucracy (Hunan Antique Archaeology Institute, 2006), it casts serious doubt on

why central government did it that way. One reasonable hypothesis could be that

following Qin’s unification of China, the central government wanted to ensure its ruling

position across the empire and therefore set out to weaken the military potential of the

lower hierarchies, hence reducing the possibility of a coup d’état or the resurgence of

former rival states.

4.1.3 Failure in war and the collapse of the Qin Empire

Based on historical sources, it is evident that previous studies rightly argue that the

ability to succeed in warfare can, to a great extent, have a decisive role in the longevity

of a state (Malesevic, 2010). As Malesevic (2010) suggests, victories in warfare can not

only secure the domestic legitimacy and prestige of the ruling elites, but it can also

generate a favourable external geopolitical environment in the international arena; in

the case of a defeat, however, a state will deteriorate in both the domestic and the

international environment. This is exactly what happened during the rise and decline of

the Qin. While the Qin dynasty’s triumph was achieved through a series of victories

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against six rival Chinese states, its rapid collapse into oblivion was accompanied by a

number of losses on the battlefield (Bodde, 1986; Gernet, 1996), following which its

capital city soon fell into the hands of rebels (Sima.Q, 1999).

The collapse of the Qin Empire has one of the most contradictory and unclear

descriptions in Chinese historical records. As mentioned previously in Chapter 2,

standard Chinese history, which attributes the collapse of the Qin Empire to the

rebellion of the peasantry caused by a harsh legal penalty, has been proved wrong by

the most recent archaeological study (Chen et al., 2016: 105) – those soldiers would

only be punished with a certain amount of extra work for their tardiness caused by

heavy rain, which is far from the death penalty. As Chen et al. (2016) discovered from

the Corpus of Qin Bamboo Slips, even though Qin law was precise and detailed, it was

far from being harsh or brutal. This new discovery provides a much better explanation

for Qin’s success in the unification of China – a state solely ruled by harsh and brutal

measures, as previous standard Chinese history described the Qin, would not have been

able to motivate its people and succeed in incessant wars. Qin would only have been to

come out of the Warring States era by making its people better off than its rivals. A

more convincing reason for the uprising of rebels, according to Shiji, was the restoration

of old aristocrats from the six former kingdoms, who saw the chance to revive their past

glories (Sima.Q, 1999). Different from the standard history that portrays the Qin as

tyrannous, the Qin authorities were actually kind to these former aristocrats, i.e. the Qin

did not execute these former royal houses after unification; instead, they were only

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asked to move to its capital city Xianyang to be overlooked by the authorities, in order

to prevent them from revolting (Sima.Q, 1999). Nevertheless, these former aristocrats

quickly revived their influence following the death of the First Emperor Zheng. The

rebellion promptly annexed Qin’s capital city Xianyang under the leadership of Liu

Bang in 207 BC by accepting the submission of King Ziying of Qin. The Qin finally

came to an end in 206 BC when Liu Bang’s superior, Xiang Yu, entered the capital city

Xianyang, plundered the city, burnt the palaces and executed the king. Only fifteen

years after Qin’s unification of China, the newly united empire fell into oblivion (Bodde,

1986).

Based on historical sources, the direct cause of Qin’s collapse was closely related to its

failure in warfare against the rebels, due to the absence of elite troops. As recorded in

Shiji, three major armies of the Qin dynasty were the northern legion (300,000) to

defend the northern frontier along the Great Wall, the southern legion (500,000) to

invade and conquest Baiyue on the southern frontier, and the central guard (50,000) that

was responsible for defending the capital city. It is clear that the central guard defended

the capital throughout the later period, while the southern legion did not join the battle

against the rebels. Rather, the southern legion stayed at the southern frontier and set up

its own state of Nanyue (Southern Yue), which lasted for 93 years but was then

eliminated by Qin’s successor – the Han dynasty, in 111 BC (Sima.Q, 1999; Ban, 1962).

What makes history dubious is the absence of Qin’s northern legion throughout its

decline. It is suspicious that none of the historical sources noted any information about

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the involvement of Qin’s northern legion while defending against the rebel uprising

until the very end of the Qin dynasty (Sima.Q, 1999). It is also strange that the Qin

deployed 200,000 criminals to fight against the rebels, which indicates a severe

shortage of soldiers. There is no reason why Qin’s central government did not recall the

northern legion when its capital city was already in danger. The absence of Qin’s elite

troops is thus a key reason why the Qin quickly collapsed under the uprising and the

revival of the former aristocracy.

4.1.4 Summary: achieving statehood by war

To summarise, the rise, consolidation and collapse of the Qin state was closely related

to military power. Qin’s military forces not only played an active role during the

unification of China, but they also took on important responsibility for sustaining the

unity of the newly united empire in the post-unification era. Historical sources show

that the Qin was a state born out of warfare – it was Qin’s military victory against the

Rongs that generated a territorial basis for the founding of the Qin state. From then on,

Qin’s military conquests continued to expand across the western periphery and the

eastern Central Plain, making the Qin a multi-ethnic state and hence offering it a

preliminary experience of social integration. Finally, Qin’s wars of unification allowed

the founding of the first centralised empire in Chinese history, the statehood of which

provided a territorial basis for the genesis of China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation.

After Qin’s unification of China, its military forces continued to play an important role

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in consolidating the unity of the Chinese community. Not only did the Qin utilise

coercive power to disseminate and enforce its commands down through the

administrative hierarchy, but it also suppressed the influence of the former aristocracy

through garrisons and deterrence.

Nevertheless, Qin’s military power did not stop its eventual collapse despite its

contribution during the unification of the Chinese community. The absence of Qin’s

elite troops was a critical issue in this regard. Being the ultimate coercive solution, Qin’s

strong military power generated the first truly united Chinese community, but it failed

to safeguard this unity and the existence of this empire following the death of the First

Emperor Ying Zheng. The collapse of the first centralised Chinese empire indicates that,

as Loewe (1999b) argues, there is no guarantee for the unity of the Chinese community;

rather, it has been temporary, contested and fragile over the past 2,000 years. This,

however, does not mean that this period was unimportant – even though the Qin dynasty

only lasted for fifteen years, its unprecedented unification of China did establish a

Chinese statehood which would provide a territorial basis on which successive Chinese

dynasties would draw upon. This may give rise to the emergence of China’s pre-modern

ethnic foundation.

Nevertheless, in contrast to previous studies that believe warfare was the fundamental

cause of the multi-polar power structure in Europe (Weber, 1976; Tilly, 1975; Hintze,

1975; Malesevic, 2010), war was a trigger for China’s first unification. Indeed, even

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though warfare once generated a multistate system during the Spring and Autumn

period (as shown in Chapter 2), as was the case in Europe, it nonetheless terminated the

multistate system and fostered instead a united Chinese community under a single,

centralised state after centuries of incessant wars across China. This divergence

between Europe and China could be due to different cultural bases, which will be

demonstrated in detail in the next chapter. However, it must be pointed out that Qin’s

imperialist expansion, together with its invasive strategy and militarised socio-political

system, was not durable and did not stand the test of time, though this model had indeed

led to the unification China for the first time (Sima.Q, 1999; Jia, n.d.).

4.2 Impact of Warfare on the Qin State and its Relationship with

Ethnic Communities

A second impact of warfare on Qin society is decreasing Sino-centrism. Frequent

warfare against surrounding ethnic groups might possibly have made Qin the most

experienced Chinese kingdom at that time in dealing with these peripheral ethnic

communities. This experience could have thus had an important influence on Qin’s

open-minded and inclusive policy towards non-Qin people during its expansion, which

then eased social integration after the reforms of Lord Shang (356 – 350 BC) in the

later years of the Warring States era (Sima.Q, 1999; Li, 2011). Qin’s incorporation of

peripheral ethnic communities after conquest taught valuable preliminary lessons in

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relation to its further expansion, both in terms of incorporating ethnic groups and

strengthening military capacity. Consequently, Qin’s warfare against surrounding

ethnic communities enriched Qin’s experience on social integration and thus helped its

further social engineering projects after the first temporary unification of China in 221

BC (Sima.Q, 1999; Sun, 2011 & 2012; Zou, 2014). This in turn facilitated the

emergence of a pre-modern ethnic foundation for a united Chinese community.

4.2.1 Sino-centrism: the Huaxia community and its surrounding ethnic groups

Frequent encounters with surrounding ethnic groups, to some extent, affected Qin’s

attitude to these materially less advanced communities, making the Qin less Sino-

centric than their rival Chinese states (Sima.Q, 1999). According to Li (2018), ancient

Chinese society held a Sino-centric view of the world: at the centre of the world (the

Central Plain) sat the Son of the Heaven – the emperor, who was surrounded and

guarded by his most trustworthy relatives, descendants and courtiers, each of whom

was granted a piece of land as their own principality (Li, 2018). The emperor, the

principalities, and their people were regarded as the core of the Huaxia community –

the name that ancient Chinese people gave themselves (Li, 2018). As Cooper (2015)

and Zhu et al. (2016) explain, ancient Chinese people conceived their imagined

community as an illustrious (hua) and grand (xia) nation. Then, beyond the Huaxia

boundary, there were tribute countries with no legal or moral affiliation to the emperor

but which were still assigned diplomatic crops and presented tribute to the emperor

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periodically (Li, 2018). Son of the Heaven, principalities and tribute countries together

made up the so-called ‘cultured place’, i.e. the sphere of influence of the Chinese

civilisation – the places where Chinese culture and power relations were accepted as

the universal value (Li, 2018). Places outside the ‘cultured place’ were in this context

perceived as uncultured regions – ethnic and nomadic groups who lived in the

uncultured regions were subsequently deemed ‘barbarians’ (Li, 2018). To differentiate

various ethnic groups, those to the east were called Dong-Yi (Eastern Yi), those to the

west were called Xi-Rong (Western Rong), those to the south were called Nan-Man

(Southern Man) and those to the north were called Bei-Di (Northern Di) (Li, 2018).

Ancient Chinese impressions of surrounding non-Han ethnic groups can be captured

through the descriptions of the Rongs in ancient historical sources. At that time, the

Rongs were perceived as a less civilised group of people than the Huaxia community

(Sima.Q, 1999; Zuo, 2007). This perception was linked to the idea that “the various

Rong tribes had not only different food, clothes and customs from the Huaxia, but also

divergent etiquette, and languages were even more distinct” (Zuo, 2007). Therefore,

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Emperor Ping of the Zhou dynasty felt humiliated and indignant at Rong’s invasion of

Zhou’s territory in Qishan and Fengshui and hence recognised the Rong people as being

characterised by “[a] lack of morality and justice” (Sima.Q, 1999: 129). It has been

noted that the emperor here portrayed the Rong ethnic group as ‘barbarians’ and

attributed negative qualities in terms of immorality and injustice characters to them. In

this way, the Rongs were perceived as aggressive and unwelcome outsiders and

invaders who needed to be expelled from Chinese territory.

However, it should also be clarified that this disparagement was associated more closely

with conflicting interests over territory, rather than institutional discrimination.

Historical sources show that ethnic Rong, Di, Man and Yi were actually closely

intertwined with the Chinese ethnic majority – the Huaxia community (Sima.Q, 1999).

Emperors in the Zhou dynasty, as well as a number of nobilitiles from various

principalities, married women from these ethnic groups as empresses or concubines,

resulting in many princes, princesses, kings and other aristocrats with a maternal

lineage from non-Han ethnic groups (Sima.Q, 1999).

4.2.2 Warfare between Qin and surrounding ethnic groups: preliminary lessons

for expansion and social integration

Bodde (1986: 31) believes that since Qin was located on the western periphery of the

Zhou dynasty, which was surrounded by groups of non-Zhou ethnic tribes, the Qin

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rulers and people would have been “culturally, and probably ethnically… much

influenced by their tribal neighbours”. This seems very likely according to historical

sources. As shown in Shiji, Qin’s expansion following frequent military contests against

surrounding ethnic groups created one of the earliest multi-ethnic societies in Chinese

history. Therefore, arguments put forward by previous studies (Durkheim, 1952; Weber,

1976; Marx, 1871, cited in Malesevic, 2010; Sumner, 1911; Simmel, 1955; Mann, 1986;

Malesevic, 2010), which suggest that warfare can be a powerful generator of social

change, especially in the case of social integration, fit very well into the situation of

Qin at this time. These frequent wars against surrounding ethnic groups on China’s

periphery have generated transformations in Qin society, resulted in three unique

characteristics of the Qin compared to other principalities of the Zhou dynasty.

First of all, frequent warfare against ethnic tribes established the superiority and

influence of the Chinese civilisation to Qin’s surroundings. As previous studies point

out, one of the major functions of warfare is to make a political differentiation between

a friend and an enemy, acting as an instrument of inclusion and exclusion (Schmitt,

1996; Weber, 1963; Simmel, 1955). The success of Qin’s conquest over its surrounding

ethnic groups allowed the extension of its power network (social, economic, political

and ideological power) beyond its boundaries, thereby acquiring the ability to

restructure existing power relations in these conquered places (Mann, 1986 & 1988;

Weber, 1976; Rustow, 1980). The conquered peripheral communities, in this instance,

were then completely transformed regarding their values, social principles and human

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practices, as Qin enhanced both cultural and power prestige through violent conquests,

according to the arguments of Weber (1976) and Rustow (1980). Consequently, Qin’s

conquests led to the enlargement of its territorial span and the dissemination of the Qin

culture, or Chinese civilisation, to these ethnic groups. This created the possibility for

the conquered ethnic communities to be culturally assimilated by their conqueror – the

state of Qin, who represented the Chinese civilizisation.

Second, frequent warfare against those peripheral ethnic communities strengthened

Qin’s military capacity, which later played a determining role in Qin’s unification of

China. The development of Qin was indispensably linked with wars and military

expansion. Born in a chaotic period when the Rongs annexed a significant part of

Zhou’s territory, the Qin state had to defeat the Rongs to recapture the territory granted

by Emperor Ping and establish their own state, which had already been occupied by the

Rongs during the fall of Zhou’s capital city Haojing during the Rongs’ invasion (Sima.Q,

1999). It took Duke Xiang of Qin twelve years to recapture the piece of land granted

by the Zhou emperor through massive wars, during which Qin’s military power had

also been strengthened by frequent encounters against the peripheral ethnic

communities (Sima.Q, 1999). Therefore, it can be imagined that if the Qin people had

lost these wars, they would not have been able to establish their state. For this reason,

Qin was born with strong intention to strengthen its military capability to win wars

against its surrounding ethnic groups, only after which the Qin people would be able to

establish their own state granted by the Zhou emperor.

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Third, the continuous conquest of surrounding ethnic groups allowed Qin to attempt

social integration between the Huaxia community and the non-Huaxia ethnic

communities. Just as Sumner (1911: 212) argues, warfare does have the potential to

generate social progress. During its wars against the Rongs, aimed at recapturing the

Zhou’s previous territory, Qin had to deal with increasing numbers of non-Huaxia

residents living on the territory, thereby governing a new community that consisted of

both Huaxia and non-Huaxia populations (Sima.Q, 1999). Even though, by ancient

Chinese social values, ethnic tribes outside the ‘cultured place’ would not have been

viewed as members of the Huaxia community, Qin nevertheless treated them as

members of the Qin state, albeit with differentiated rights and obligations (Sima.Q,

1999). This is perhaps one of the earliest ethnic incorporation attempts recorded in

Chinese history. Consequently, the expansion of Qin and its frequent engagement with

these surrounding ethnic communities, either violently or peacefully, gradually changed

Qin’s attitudes towards these ethnic communities, resulting in a comparatively more

inclusive society than rival Chinese states that were almost exclusively ethnic Chinese,

even though those non-Huaxia ethnic communities were unable to enjoy equal rights

legally (Sima.Q, 1999). Nonetheless, this was still significant progress in the

development of Chinese society – as the importance of traditional Sino-centrism among

the Huaxia community began to diminish, the ‘cultured’ Chinese community opened

up its mind and became willing to accept outsiders that had previously been deemed

‘uncultured’ and non-Huaxia. This is especially meaningful considering it happened

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more than 2,000 years ago. In this way, Qin made its first attempt at social integration

by incorporating conquered ethnic communities into the larger society. This thus

became a preliminary lesson for Qin’s social engineering project after its unification of

China in 221 BC.

4.2.3 Summary: war and evolving ethnic relations

To summarise, Qin’s engagement with its surrounding ethnic groups began from the

very beginning, and this long-lasting engagement, to a considerable extent, made the

Qin state different from other principalities of the Zhou dynasty. First and foremost,

Qin re-established their power prestige over ethnic communities on the Chinese

periphery, following the fall of Zhou’s capital city into the hands of the Rongs. This

power prestige in turn fostered the cultural prestige of the Chinese civilisation over

ethnic cultures, which subsequently provided the possibility for these peripheral ethnic

communities to be assimilated into the larger Huaxia community.

Following Qin’s conquest of a number of ethnic communities, the Qin state restructured

existing power networks and extended its own power network to those newly conquered

communities. This then resulted in the influx of a new ethnic population into Qin society,

thus creating one of the earliest multi-ethnic cultures in Chinese history. This

engagement between the Qin people and ethnic people led to decreasing Sino-centrism,

which helped ease the incorporation of ethnic people into the Huaxia community.

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Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that even though it is not mentioned anywhere in

historical sources about how this was attained, this transition of Qin society would most

likely have caused some forms of chaos and antagonism between the Qin people and

ethnic populations (just like any other social integration in history), before full

assimilation took place.

4.3 Qin’s Strategic Planning for Territorial Expansion

Apart from the rich experience gained from dealing with peripheral ethnic groups and

exercising superiority through military power, having a workable strategy was also

indispensable to Qin’s success in the unification of the Chinese community and the

subsequent founding of China’s statehood. As shown in Shiji and Zhanguoce 6 (n/a,

2007), Qin’s imperialist ambition of unifying the entire Chinese society did not exist

until the later years of the Warring-State era (Sima.Q, 1999; Zhanguoce, 2007). Like

many successful cases of strategic planning in human history, Qin made a series of

timely and realistic choices that allowed it to grow step by step, and finally to unify the

Chinese community (Sima.Q, 1999; Zhanguoce, 2007).

6 Strategies of the Warring States

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 4.3.1 Early controversies about territorial expansion: geopolitical choices

As shown in historical sources (Sima.Q, 1999; Zhanguoce, 2007), Qin’s senior

government officials held quite conflicting opinions on the direction of territorial

expansion. Policymakers during the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States eras

had always been bothered by the choices between territory at the Chinese core (within

the blue rectangle) and territory on the Chinese periphery (outside the blue rectangle).

While controlling the Chinese core, where most of the Chinese population lived, would

establish the domination of particular states across China, it was also a place coveted

by all kingdoms and thus became a highly contested area. Conversely on the periphery,

most local ethnic communities, which were conceived less civilised by the Huaxia

community, were fairly undeveloped at the time of the Warring States period, and so

they drew limited attention from Chinese states and were hence less competitive to

conquer (Confucius, 2007; Zhanguoce, 2007; Sima.Q, 1999; Sima.G, 2007). As a result,

even though all competing states aimed to expand their territory into the Chinese core,

these frontier kingdoms, such as Qin and Chu, all managed to expand into the ethnic

regions before joining the contest at the Chinese core (Sima.Q, 1999; Zhanguoce, 2007).

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It was not until a war between the kingdoms of Ba and Shu that Qin finally faced a

strategic choice between the Chinese core and the periphery (Sima.G, 2007). As

recorded in Zhanguoce (2007), Qin’s senior officials had a fierce discussion over the

direction of expansion. General Sima Cuo and Minister Zhang Yi held opposing

perspectives on the next target of expansion when meeting up with King Huiwen of

Qin. General Sima Cuo intended to invade the kingdom of Shu to the south (Chinese

periphery), whereas Minister Zhang Yi said he would instead choose to invade the

kingdom of Han to the east (Chinese core).

Aiming at establishing the hegemony of the Qin kingdom across the Chinese

community, Minister Zhang Yi believed that Qin should directly attack the Zhou’s

capital city and force the Zhou emperor to hand over the nine precious dings (a ding is

a vessel representing the implicit symbolism of ruling power since ancient China) to

Qin (Zhanguoce, 2007; Sima.Q, 1999; Sima.G, 2007). By acquiring the nine dings, Qin

would then be able to issue its own commands on behalf of the Zhou emperor, replacing

the Zhou as China’s de facto ruling power. As for the Shu in the remote periphery,

Zhang Yi regarded its populations as being just as primitive as the Rong and Di ethnic

groups. He thought conquering the Shu would be useless, because invading this weak,

primitive regime would not show off the power of Qin and would therefore be irrelevant

for establishing Qin’s hegemonic status.

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General Sima Cuo, on the contrary, argued in this context that an invasion of the

kingdom of Han and the Zhou Monarchy at the Chinese core would be “an evil thing

to do”: “I have heard whoever wants to make his kingdom wealthy must enlarge its

territory; whoever wants to strengthen his troops should manage to make its people rich;

whoever wants to become the ruling power should improve the benevolence and

morality of governance” (Sima.G, 2007). Sima Cuo explained that Qin’s expansion

should avoid direct confrontation with its six rival states, as Qin was still small and poor

at that time – although territory on the Central Plain was highly attractive, every

Chinese kingdom was focusing on it because the house of Zhou was the leader

respected by all Chinese states. Sima Cuo was convinced that Qin’s invasion of the

house of Zhou would ruin Qin’s reputation among Chinese states, as it would be seen

as an act of disrespect, not only to the house of Zhou, but also the Chinese international

order in general. Moreover, if Qin became too greedy, concerns among rival states

would lead to an alliance against Qin, which would then become a potential threat for

the Qin kingdom (Sima.G, 2007). Sima Cuo demonstrated that since the Shu people

were regarded as primitive ‘barbarians’ on the remote periphery, none of the rival

Chinese states would care about Qin’s action, nor would they regard Qin’s invasion as

a greedy action (Sima.G, 2007). Therefore, he felt that Qin could easily acquire Shu

land without too many problems arising while at the same time obtaining real material

benefits from acquiring this territory. Ultimately, King Huiwen of Qin accepted the

advice of Sima Cuo (Sima.G, 2007).

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Historical sources also indicate that leading figures of Qin held conflicting perspectives

on the issue of imperial expansion. Their controversy about the material wealth of states,

the morality of governance and the merits of territorial expansion could be interpreted

as an early discourse about the material wealth of the Chinese people, their collective

identity, good governance and the role of territorial expansion within it. The historical

significance of this decision is that the kingdom of Qin, by expanding towards the

Chinese periphery, successfully avoided warring against its six rival states in the

Chinese core before gaining absolute advantage over them. As recorded in Shiji and

Zhanguoce, Chinese states had been involved in frequent wars against each other since

770 BC, after the Zhou Monarchy became weaker and was unable to control its

principalities. Before Qin started its wars of unification in 230 BC, numerous states at

one time or another had become the hegemon of China, but all of them were soon

undermined by frequent wars against each other (Sima.Q, 1999, Sima.G, 2007 and

Zhanguoce, 2007). Qin’s expansion into the kingdoms of Ba and Shu on the Chinese

periphery in 316 BC was thus a wiser choice than expanding towards the Chinese core

– leaving the most competitive region so as to save its military capacity and to develop

its potential, thus avoiding being undermined by incessant contests amongst the

marchland states. This expanded territory and population for the Qin kingdom, and

secured a strong material basis (the Sichuan Basin) that would later support Qin’s

unification of China at the end of the Warring States period. As noted in Huayang-

Guozhi (Chang, n.d.: Ch.3):

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 “[The kingdom of Shu] is rich and materially abundant. Its cloth and silks are sufficient

for military use once we conquer this country. It has waterways towards the kingdom of

Chu. After we acquire powerful soldiers from the kingdom of Ba, we will be able to float

large boats eastward towards the kingdom of Chu, and then the Chu’s territory can be

conquered. Conquest of the Chu would be possible after eliminating the kingdom of Shu.

Once the Chu is eliminated, everywhere below the sky [meaning China in its entirety] can

then be unified.”

Moreover, as we analyse Qin’s strategic choice by referring to Zhang’s (2013a, 2013b

& 2013c) examination of China’s geographical features, it is evident that Qin’s choices

made perfect use of its geopolitical advantage. As Zhang demonstrates, the Central

Plain, which lies across the Yellow River and the Yangtze River on the third tier, has

been heavily influenced by surrounding geopolitical forces throughout Chinese history.

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The Qin state was founded on the Guanzhong Plain, securely enclosed by mountains.

Lying upstream, Qin had the logistical advantage of travelling down through the Yellow

River when expanding eastwards into the Central Plain7. After its conquest of both the

Ba and the Shu in the Sichuan Basin, Qin acquired another piece of fertile land securely

enclosed by mountains and occupied the upstream area of the Yangtze River, hence

obtaining a second waterway towards the east.

This gave the kingdom of Qin three advantages against rival states spread across the

Central Plain. First, expanding into the Sichuan Basin consolidated Qin’s material basis.

As Zhang (2013b) acknowledges, Qin’s Guanzhong Plain was easy to defend but

difficult to attack, as it was surrounded by mountains. Similarly, the Sichuan Basin also

had similar features but was larger in size, which therefore further enhanced Qin’s

geopolitical advantage against its rivals in eastern China. Moreover, as the Sichuan

Basin had even less contact with the Central Plain, it thus became an even safer and

stronger material basis during Qin’s incessant wars against its rivals. This is evident in

Shiji, which records that the regions of Ba and Shu (located in the Sichuan Basin)

continued to supply Qin’s material needs during the Warring State era. Second,

expanding into the Sichuan Basin offered Qin greater strategic depth during the Warring

States period. Even though the Guanzhong Plain is enclosed by mountains, it still faced

the potential threat from the anti-Qin alliance of its rival states (Sima.Q, 1999). The

Sichuan Basin is geographically more isolated from the Central Plain and surrounded

7 Waterways were essential in ancient military operations, as they significantly reduced logistical costs.
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by greater geographical barriers. Hence, in ancient times, it was almost impossible for

external forces to invade unless there was conflict inside that offered a chance to

external forces (e.g. the conflict between the states of Ba and Shu allowed access to

Qin). Third, Qin’s annexation of the Sichuan Basin further enhanced its geopolitical

advantage against the kingdom of Chu. While the Guanzhong Plain, through the

passage of the Yellow River, established geopolitical advantages against the Han, Zhao,

Wei and Qi, the Sichuan Basin, on the other hand, enhanced Qin’s geopolitical

advantage against the Chu when travelling downstream through the Yangtze River.

To sum up, Qin kingdom’s expansion into the states of Shu and Ba in the remote regions

of China achieved three goals set by General Sima Cuo prior to the mission: expand

territory, strengthen material basis and enhance military power (Sima.G, 2007).

Twenty-six years later (280 BC), Qin implemented Sima Cuo’s plan to invade the Chu

via the Ba and Shu regions, in the process conquering a vast amount of Chu territory

(Zhanguoce, 2007; Sima.G, 2007; Sima.Q, 1999). After another two years, Qin’s

General Bai Qi conquered Chu’s capital city Ying via the Yangtze River, forcing the

King of Chu to escape (Sima.Q, 1999). From that point, the Chu was fundamentally

weakened and unable to stop Qin taking over their land. Therefore, it was Qin’s

expansion into the states of Ba and Shu in 316 BC that strengthened Qin’s geopolitical

advantage and material basis, which in turn eased its conquest of the Chu and

subsequently facilitated its unification of China in 221 BC. Without Sima Cuo’s

strategic decision to expand towards the Sichuan Basin on the Chinese periphery, Qin

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would be highly likely to have been undermined by frequent wars in the Chinese core,

just like many preceding hegemonic states across China. If that had happened, Qin

would have been less likely to unify China in 221 BC, let alone establish a Chinese

statehood under a centralised empire that provided the territorial basis for the genesis

of China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation thereafter.

4.3.2 Qin’s rising imperialist ambition: yuanjiao-jin’gong

The new strategy

Even though Qin’s occupation of the Ba and Shu regions in 316 BC further strengthened

its material basis and geopolitical advantage, the kingdom of Qin made limited progress

in the following decades, until Fan Ju came to Qin in 271 BC (Sima Q, 1999). In the

36th year of King Zhaoxiang’s reign (271 BC), Fan Ju met the king, informing him that

Qin’s progress had stagnated for fifteen years and suggesting that Qin needed a better

strategy to establish its hegemony across China. He demonstrated that Qin was in a

strong geopolitical position, with a group of powerful military forces that enabled it to

invade other kingdoms when advantageous situations emerged, while it could retreat

and defend its homeland when facing disadvantageous situations; in addition, there was

also a group of Qin community who were brave on the battlefield. Fan Ju further

illustrated that based on its existing strategy, Qin would in no way succeed in achieving

hegemony, as it had not stayed focused on its key task of territorial expansion; rather,

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the Qin kingdom was wasting power fighting everywhere, having acquired many

enclaves far from home that were difficult to preserve and manage. Fan Ju advised that

instead of trying to attack distant countries far away from home, Qin should instead ally

with distant states while attacking neighbouring states (yuanjiao-jin’gong 远交近攻)

(Sima.Q, 1999). In this way, every piece of conquered land could be readily integrated

with the existing Qin territory, leaving no fragmented enclaves to be plundered by rival

states. As a consequence of the yuanjiao-jin’gong strategy, Qin began to expand

intensively to the east, thus making impressive progress towards its hegemony (Sima.Q,

1999).

Referring to Zhang’s (2013a, 2013b & 2013c) illustration of China’s geopolitical

features, it is evident that Qin’s strategic adjustment following the advice of Fan Ju, to

a great extent, was an inevitable choice. Qin’s conquest of the states of Ba and Shu in

316 BC, as mentioned in the previous section, expanded its territory, strengthened its

material basis and enhanced its military power. Since then, Qin gained control over both

geopolitical centres on the second tier (Guanzhong Plain & Sichuan Basin), thus

allowing itself to exert geopolitical influence over the Central Plain, according to Zhang

(2013b). Therefore, the only thing left for Qin was to expand eastwards into the Central

Plain. As Fan Ju demonstrated, this had stagnated for fifteen years, because enclaves

could not generate enough geopolitical influence to help Qin’s further expansion. In

contrast, when Qin allied with distant states while attacking neighbouring states, its

latest territorial expansion could always be backed up by the supply of materials and

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troops from the Guanzhong Plain and the Sichuan Basin. This, according to Zhang’s

(2013a, 2013b & 2013c) analysis, fully exploited the geopolitical potential of these two

places, allowing Qin to exert continuous pressure on its six rival states without

damaging its long-term material basis and reproduction of population. For Qin’s rival

states, these two factors continuously deteriorated as a result of incessant wars, as no

natural geographical barrier protected their territory. In the long term, this facilitated

Qin’s territorial expansion and hence its unification of China.

War and the longevity of the state: evolving geopolitical situation

The most important war before Qin’s wars of unification broke out at Changping, and

is therefore called the Battle of Changping (262 to 260 BC) in historical records, which

resulted in Qin’s victory against the kingdom of Zhao. As Malesevic (2010)

acknowledges, the ability to succeed in warfare has a decisive role in the longevity of

any state – victories not only secure the domestic legitimacy and prestige of the ruling

elites, but they also generate a favourable external geopolitical environment; in the case

of a defeat, a state would deteriorate in both domestic and international environment.

The Battle of Changping, as an influential military event during the Warring States

period, had three interrelated impacts on the kingdoms of Qin and Zhao, and on the

wider Chinese community in general. To a great extent, it changed the geopolitical

situation across China in the late Warring States era.

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First and foremost, the Battle of Changping had a direct impact on the military balance

between Qin and its rival states. The kingdom of Zhao, as the second most competitive

state in terms of military power, lost most of its troops in the battle, as 400,000 Zhao

soldiers died (Sima.Q, 1999; Zhanguoce, 2007). This devastated Zhao’s military power

and significantly reduced its ability to stop Qin’s expansion eastwards towards the

Central Plain. Following the fall of 400,000 Zhao soldiers in Changping, no country

could challenge Qin’s military dominance across China (Sima.Q, 1999). The kingdom

of Qi, the furthest state away from Qin, did not join the anti-alliance among the eastern

states, as it had allied with Qin prior to their expansion towards the east (Sima.Q, 1999).

Once all other kingdoms were defeated, obviously the kingdom of Qi could not defend

Qin’s invasion on their own. Therefore, it was also conquered by Qin in 221 BC, like

its neighbouring states, since when the kingdom of Qin finally united the Chinese

community (Sima.Q, 1999).

Second, the Battle of Changping, to a great extent, shattered the material basis of the

Zhao. Soldiers were a source of not only military strength on the battlefield, but also

labour force for material reproduction in an agrarian society. After losing 400,000

soldiers in Changping, the kingdom of Zhao faced a considerable collapse in the

number of young and middle-aged males that would have otherwise made up the labour

force, hence causing substantial challenges to the economy and society in general

(Sima.Q, 1999; Zhanguoce, 2007). While the six states in the east faced a declining

labour force and disrupted agricultural production because of incessant wars, Qin

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continued to enjoy continuous material support from its fertile lands in Guanzhong and

Sichuan. Therefore, the Battle of Changping established a material advantage against

the six rival states that provided the basis for Qin’s unification of China.

Third, the Battle of Changping had an enormous impact on confidence and social

cohesion in the states of Qin and Zhao. Prior to the Battle of Changping, the kingdoms

of Han, Wei and Chu were already weakened by Qin’s serial attacks (Sima.Q, 1999;

Zhanguoce, 2007). As all of the other states were weakened due to Qin’s yuanjiao-

jin’gong strategy, Zhao was the last hope in terms of resisting Qin’s expansion to the

east. Nonetheless, the defeat of Zhao army at Changping meant there was no longer any

Chinese state that could fight against Qin on its own, albeit they would still be able to

defend against Qin’s invasion when forming a solid alliance (Sima.Q, 1999; Zhanguoce,

2007). The victory at Changping thus became Qin’s political and social capital – its

victory boosted popular confidence and generated social cohesion in Qin society,

whereas the Zhao’s defeat smashed popular confidence in Qin’s six rival states and

subsequently had a negative effect on their social cohesion.

4.3.3 Summary: Geopolitical influences in Qin’s strategic planning and

imperialist ambitions

To sum up, Qin’s two important strategic choices during the Warring States period –

‘invading the Chinese periphery before expanding into the Chinese core’ and ‘allying

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with distant states while attacking neighbouring states’, which facilitated Qin’s

territorial expansion，were all wise choices from a geopolitical perspective. This

allowed Qin to fully exploit their geopolitical advantage and in turn eased its territorial

expansion towards rival states, which finally led to Qin’s unification of China in 221

BC. Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that Qin’s territorial expansion and its

subsequent unification of China were unintentional, which has, to a great extent

promoted by historical contingency; Qin also made quite a few mistakes during

territorial expansion, and its perfect utilisation of its geopolitical advantage in strategic

planning is only known from hindsight.

First of all, Qin’s location in the Guanzhong Plain was accidental. As Shiji states, the

invasion of the Rongs forced the Zhou emperor to move his capital city away from the

Guanzhong Plain and then grant this non-existent former territory to Qin (Sima.Q,

1999). Although the Qin state was founded in a geopolitically advantageous place, its

choice of location was accidental. Qin’s occupation of the Sichuan Basin was also

fortuitous. The Sichuan Basin, surrounded by many mountains and geographically

isolated from the Central Plain, was always difficult to conquer (Sima.Q, 1999). If there

had been no conflict between the states of Ba and Shu, Qin would not have had access

to this geographically isolated and remote area, and hence they would not have been

able to acquire this territory that later became Qin’s material basis during its conquest

of the Chinese community.

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Second, as shown by multiple historical sources (Sima.Q, 1999; Zuo, 2007; Zhanguoce,

2007; Shang, 2009), what really affected the choices of Qin’s policymakers was the

material factor rather than the geopolitical factor. Building up a strong material basis

was the fundamental consideration for Chinese states during the Warring State period.

The kingdom of Qin, together with its six rivals, had long been cautious about material

supplies during the campaign of incessant warfare, as wars were always associated with

tremendous costs relating to the consumption of food and the provision of goods and

military equipment (Shang, 2009).

Third, and most importantly, to what extent ancient Chinese people in the pre-Qin age

had good knowledge of broader geographical features of China remains open to debate.

Historical sources suggest that ancient Chinese people in the pre-Qin age did have some

sort of geographical knowledge about China. In Guanzi (Guan, 2009), the book written

by the chancellor of the Qi kingdom, Guan Zhong, during the Spring and Autumn

period (770 – 476 BC), there is a dedicated chapter on maps (Guanzi-Map 管子·地图

篇), demonstrating that whoever commanded the army should examine and understand

the map in the first place. The book states that mountains, valleys, plains, passes, hills,

grass, forests and bushes, as well as the length of roads and sizes of cities and towns,

should all be marked accordingly. Therefore, if chancellor Guan Zhong of the Qi

kingdom in the seventh century BC had a certain degree of geographical knowledge,

there is no reason why the Qin people in the fourth century BC did not have that

knowledge, too. However, even though the Qin people may have a sense of

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geographical knowledge, it does not mean they could apply this knowledge to the same

level as the modern theoretical framework of geopolitics. As Huang (1997) argues,

mapping, like other sciences, has always been restricted by the level of science and

technology. Though there were already maps for military use in the Warring States

period, their precision and maturity were still primitive. Maps with topographical

features did not turn up in China until the third century, when Pei Dian, a senior official

of West Jin dynasty, came up with a systematic theory on mapping (Huang, 1997).

Therefore, Qin’s wise strategic choices were based much more on great fortune than on

science – it is more likely that the Qin people accidentally chose the best way to fully

utilise their geopolitical advantage. It should not be forgotten that Qin once made

limited progress over four decades after occupying the regions of Ba and Shu. Qin did

not make the right choices all the time – it did succeed in some attempts, but it also

failed to achieve its goals in many other cases (Sima.Q, 1999).

4.4 Conclusion: the Role of Wars and Military Power in the

Formation of China’s Pre-modern Ethnic Foundation

To conclude, this chapter demonstrates how warfare and military power facilitated the

founding of China’s statehood following Qin’s unification of the ancient Chinese

community in 221 BC, which then provided the territorial basis for the emergence of

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China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation.

First and foremost, it has been argued that the establishment of China’s statehood,

especially the territorial basis on which China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation emerged,

is closely related to warfare and military power. The Qin state, which founded the first

centralised empire in Chinese history, was accompanied by war and military power

throughout its emergence, development, triumph, decline and eventual collapse

(Sima.Q, 1999; Gernet, 1996). The wars of unification allowed the Qin dynasty to

establish the first centralised empire in Chinese history, the statehood of which provided

a territorial basis for the emergence of a Chinese pre-modern ethnic foundation. After

unification, Qin’s military forces continued to play an important role in consolidating

the unity of the newly united Chinese community. While the military success in

expelling the Rongs allowed the founding of the Qin state, its collapse only fifteen years

later was caused by a series of defeats on the battlefield. Though the Qin dynasty only

lasted for fifteen years, its unprecedented contribution to the first centralised Chinese

statehood provided the territorial basis that succeeding Chinese dynasties could draw

upon. This had in turn given rise to the genesis of China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation.

Second, Qin’s frequent engagement with peripheral ethnic groups, to some extent,

developed its relations with these communities, thus helping to gain essential benefits

for its later reforms and subsequent unification of China, such as developing a

competent military force during the wars against the Rong people, and enriching its

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experience of incorporating increasing number of ethnic populations. This not only

strengthened Qin’s military capacity, but it also fostered inclusiveness of the Qin society

by reducing Sino-centrism amongst the Qin people (Sima.Q, 1999; Sima.G, 2007), both

of which contributed to Qin’s unification of China and the subsequent social

engineering project thereafter.

Third, it is also evident that Qin’s geopolitical advantage played an important role

throughout its unification of China, although this is only known from hindsight. The

geopolitical advantage was a key reason why Qin, rather than other Chinese states,

achieved their goal of unification. Historical sources reveal that the unification of China

was not an original goal of Qin – rather, it was more of an accidental consequence. It

was only after making two important strategic choices correctly that Qin finally

established its geographical advantage against its six rival Chinese states, and this

outcome later facilitated Qin’s subsequent success in the unification of China.

As we can see from Qin’s wars of unification, the significance of war and military

power lies in the ability to remove any uncompromisable obstacles, most of which are

political and social, against unification and social integration. Military success enables

the conquering society to incorporate the conquered society – it became the ultimate

solution and most effective means of coercion against political resistance towards a

united Chinese statehood. More specifically, Qin’s military strength weakened the

military and political power of its rival states, helping remove elites’ resistance against

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social integration from Qin’s rivals. Once these political elites lost their states, they

were no longer able to impede the further integration of China under Qin’s leadership.

Supported by his outstanding military forces, King Zheng of the Qin started the wars

of unification by following his grandfather’s strategy – attacking neighbouring states

while allying with distant states (Sima.Q, 1999). From 230 BC onwards, the kingdom

of Qin conquered Han (230 BC), Zhao (228 BC), Wei (225 BC), Chu (223 BC), Yan

(222 BC) and finally the Qi kingdom in 221 BC (Gernet, 1996). Qin’s unification of

China established a united Chinese community within the framework of a single state

for the first time in Chinese history, which had in turn formed a territorial basis for

succeeding dynasties and the emergence of China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation, even

though Qin’s unity only lasted for fifteen years. The long-term impacts of this territorial

foundation will be deliberated further in the discussion chapter.

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Chapter Five China’s Pre-Modern Ethnic Foundation:
Reforms of Lord Shang and China’s Ideological Basis for
Unity

This chapter explores the reforms of Lord Shang, which, according to Gernet (1996)

and Bodde (1986), had a considerable impact on ancient Chinese society, as these series

of reforms successfully introduced Legalism into Qin society that later became a shared

ideological basis for the united Chinese community – the Qin dynasty. The Warring

States period (475 – 221 BC), as its name indicates, was a time marked by massive

conflicts and wars. All states aimed at surviving the wars through defeating and taking

over territory from other states. Consequently, weaker states and nomadic groups were

gradually eliminated and assimilated, leaving only seven major kingdoms across China.

To ensure their survival, these seven major kingdoms all tried to augment their military

capacity by reforming their social, political and economic patterns in different ways.

Finally, the kingdom of Qin succeeded in this competition by carrying out a series of

effective and enduring Legalist reforms under the leadership of Duke Xiang and Shang

Yang from 359 BC onwards. The impact of Qin’s Legalist reform is historically

significant, as they remarkably empowered Qin’s competitiveness against rival Chinese

states, which then gave rise to its conquest over the Chinese community, leading to the

end of the 550-year incessant wars since the fall of the West Zhou dynasty into the

hands of the Rongs in 771 BC. As a consequence of Qin’s military conquest, the first

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centralised Chinese state was founded in 221 BC. Qin’s triumph proved the potential

of Legalism in fostering the unification of China and had thus consolidated its position

as the ruling ideology of the newly united Chinese community. This has, to a great

extent, determined the ideological basis for a united Chinese community ever since.

This chapter consists of three main sections: Section 5.1 introduces the process and

outcomes of Qin’s Legalist reform by Shang Yang. Section 5.2 then thoroughly

discusses how Shang Yang implanted Legalism into Qin society, making it the

foundational ideology of the Qin state. By enforcing these Legalist reforms, Shang

Yang introduced rule by law and the centralisation of power into the Qin society, having

constituted a centralised socio-political system run through a centralised bureaucracy

across the wide expanse of territory. This in turn fostered social, political and economic

integration. Following this, section 5.3 examines the reforms in Qin’s six rival Chinese

states during the same period. By demonstrating the reasons for their respective failures,

this chapter explains that although a reform was difficult to implement during the

Warring States era, it could nevertheless generate substantial social, political, economic

and, consequently, military capacity once it succeeded. This is why the kingdom of Qin

finally united China through a series of military successes over 140 years.

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 5.1 Qin’s Thirst for Strength and the Reforms of Lord Shang –

Implanting Legalism into Chinese Society

The beginning of reforms came from Qin’s desire to boost its weak military capacity

against other six rival states (Sima.Q, 1999; Shang, 2009; Lü, 2007). When Duke Xiao

of Qin succeeded the throne in 361 BC, Qin had fallen far behind its rivals, facing both

domestic problems and external threats. On the domestic side, not only were there rising

social conflicts, but there was also confrontation amongst the elites themselves (Sima

Q, 1999). First, it has been noted in Shangjunshu8(Shang, 2009) and Lüshi-chunqiu (Lü,

2007) that there was a serious theft issue, due to the difficulty in making a living.

Second, and more importantly, confrontation also existed in the ruling class itself –

between traditional lords, who were granted the power over a significant amount of

land provided by the monarch, and new landlords who acquired their lands through

reclamation and acquisition. By the time Duke Xiao came to power, Qin was socially

less developed than their rivals. In the rival states, the new landlords replaced the old

lords as the new ruling body of their countries; whereas in Qin, traditional lords still

dominated, albeit their ruling position was already under threat, as new landlords aimed

to recruit more free men to reclaim and farm the land. Moreover, most Qin people

(labour force) were privately held by lords as their private slaves, and they were

certainly unwilling to set them free. This was where the core contradiction existed.

8 Book of Lord Shang

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Third, the lords were so powerful that they became a threat to Qin’s monarch, as they

were the de facto ruling power across their own dominions, thus making the monarch a

marionette in the state. As recorded in Shiji (Sima.Q, 1999), the traditional lords even

planned a coup d’état to choose a new monarch in order to retain their privilege. On the

external side, Qin faced military invasion from the six rival states to the east (Sima.Q,

1999). During the previous seven generations of Qin monarchs, Qin had lost territory

to these rival states in a number of wars – especially the kingdom of Wei, which was

the hegemon of China at the time. As Qin had fallen behind its rivals, it would

ultimately fall into oblivion if it could not catch up and become competitive enough. It

was in this context that Duke Xiao, who was eager to strengthen his state, issued a call

for talented people who were capable of managing the Qin state, following which he

recruited many foreign intellectuals, including Shang Yang (awarded a lordship after

the reforms, titled Lord Shang) (Sima.Q, 1999).

5.1.1 The beginning of Legalist reform and its resistance

Shang Yang was introduced to Duke Xiao’s favourite minister three times until he

finally convinced Duke Xiao with his Legalist approach, following which they met for

a fourth time to discuss governmental matters for many days without a break (Sima.Q,

1999). It is interesting to note that Shang Yang offered Duke Xiao three completely

different ideological approaches during the first three meetings. In the first meeting,

Shang Yang advised it would be prudent to follow the path of Chinese emperors in

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antiquity by adopting a laissez-faire form of rule, keeping state intervention to a

minimum. This was a typical Daoist approach in ancient Chinese society, but the duke

showed no interest in this option at all. Then, Shang Yang recommended Confucianism

in the second meeting, advising the duke to rule by etiquette (li) and benevolence (ren),

but again the duke was not interested. Finally, at the third meeting, the duke was

attracted by Shang Yang’s recommendation to establish Qin’s hegemonic status across

the Chinese community by employing Legalism. As Nivison (1999) acknowledges,

Legalism is a more realistic and active ideology in terms of its desire to reshape society,

compared to the passivism of Daoism and the idealism of Confucianism. In contrast to

Daoism, which believes in the natural law of society, and Confucianism, which stresses

the need to respect existing socio-political patterns, Legalism emphasises the maximum

mobilisation of resources to achieve a certain goal – such as strengthening Qin’s

military capacity to survive clashes with competing Chinese states (Nivison, 1999).

Therefore, Legalism was certainly a more realistic choice for the Qin state that wanted

to build up its military strength to survive the Warring States period. However, as Sima

Qian (1999) comments in Shiji, even though it would be the right decision to strengthen

the Qin state over a short period of time, Legalism as a goal-oriented ideology would

prove difficult to match the same level of benevolence compared to former etiquette-

oriented Confucianist patterns from the Zhou dynasty. This notion will be discussed

later in this chapter.

As a new ideological approach, Legalism was not favoured by existing elites of the Qin

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state, according to historical sources (Shang, 2009; Sima.Q, 1999). As written in

Shangjunshu 9 (Shang, 2009), there was a fierce debate between Shang Yang, a

proponent of Legalism, and representatives of Qin’s existing elites – Gan Long and Du

Zhi. When Duke Xiao called both sides together for a discussion, there were plenty of

‘fors’ and ‘againsts’ in terms of whether Qin should retain traditional socio-political

patterns or embrace reform by overthrowing the old system instead. Duke Xiao was

afraid of being criticised by the Qin people for challenging the traditional principles

and patterns of society:

"It is my liability to continue focusing on the development of my country after

succeeding this place from my predecessor, but it is your [chancellors’] liability to

exemplify my authoritativeness as the duke when we manage this reform of the law.

However, since we are planning a reform of this country through changing the codes

of conduct, I am worried that people will not understand my intention and criticise

me.”

(Shang, 2009: 2)

Gan Long, as the leading figure of the aristocracy, was against the reform and suggested

that it would be much easier, and more convenient, to run a country with existing laws

and traditions:

9 Book of Lord Shang.

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 "A clever person would not ask people to change their old customs and traditional

codes of conduct, nor would he manage a country by rectifying existing laws.

Achievements can be easily made by following existing social orders. Not only

would the entire bureaucracy be familiar with rules and regulations, but ordinary

people would also feel comfortable under a stable situation.”

(Shang, 2009: 4)

Gan Long told the duke that he was worried about criticism of the government by the

masses: "If we disobey Qin's enduring traditions, laws and codes of conduct, people

may criticise you; I hope you can consider this possibility" (Shang, 2009: 4). Du Zhi,

on agreeing with Gan Long, asserted that "I have heard that law shall not be changed if

the potential benefits would not be a hundred times greater; tools should not be changed

if the effectiveness cannot be ten times greater" (Shang, 2009: 6). He claimed that it

would never be wrong to follow the ancient ways of ruling the state, as retaining old

codes of conduct would ensure mistakes were not made.

Nevertheless, Shang Yang strongly disagreed with Gan Long and Du Zhi, stressing that

"lack of initiative to act would stop you making any achievement, and hesitation would

lead to no effectiveness" (Shang, 2009: 5). To convince him of the Legalist reform,

Shang Yang told the duke “It is not necessary to stick to one way of governing society,

following traditions is not a must if new methods are effective” (Shang, 2009: 7). He

argued that a country should not stick to traditions and should instead continuously

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reform itself in order to catch up with the evolution of human society, and only mediocre

people would stick to traditions and be unwilling to make a change. Furthermore,

people of this kind only knew how to follow tradition without knowing why they should

do it that way. Shang Yang continued by acknowledging that there were three dynasties

(the dynasties of Xia, Shang and Zhou) in ancient time, and each had a different set of

laws; there were also five hegemons in China, but none of them followed the same set

of guidelines. He explained that the state should set up its laws and regulations

according to the latest situation, following the evolution of society. Keeping up to date

was more important than sticking to ancient traditions, and there were no fixed rules

for society as long as they were fit for purpose. According to Shang Yang (2009), laws

were created in order to care for ordinary people, while codes of conduct were set up

for the convenience of daily routines – it would be unnecessary to follow old laws as

long as new laws brought prosperity; it would be unnecessary to follow traditional

codes of conduct if people benefited from not having them. Finally, after a series of

debates between Shang Yang and existing elites, Duke Xiao was convinced by Shang

Yang's proposals and authorised him to implement Legalist reform across the Qin state

(Shang, 2009). There were three major themes in Shang Yang’s proposed reform: (1)

rule by law, (2) centralisation of power and (3) the unification of social, political and

economic patterns across the Qin state.

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 5.1.2 Enforcement of Legalism and its outcomes

Just as Gan Long anticipated, most people across the Qin state did not feel comfortable

with the Legalist reform (Sima.Q, 1999). At the beginning of this reform period,

thousands of people in the capital city thought the new laws were inconvenient, and

therefore they struggled to adapt. For example, the crown prince broke the law during

the first year of reform. Considering that he could not be executed, as he was the

successor to the king, Shang Yang punished his teachers, following which all Qin

people were shocked and everyone started to obey the new laws. Ten years after

implementing the new laws, the whole society completely changed – both social order

and security improved considerably, so did people’s living standards. From that point,

Shang Yang was appointed as Qin’s chancellor, as a reward for his important

contribution to the reform, and at the same time granted the title of Lord Shang.

Nevertheless, although Shang Yang’s Legalist reform strengthened society in general,

it still faced hostility from the existing elite, in both the Qin and other Chinese states,

who considered his Legalist reform an offence to their interests as aristocracy (Sima.Q,

1999; Shang, 2009). The Legalist reforms considerably reduced the privilege of the

aristocracy, and consequently they conceived Shang Yang as their common enemy. In

Shang Yang’s new laws, successors could only inherit their fathers’ noble title and rank

if they made a sufficient contribution on the battlefield; otherwise, they would not be

able to enjoy their political privilege, even though they were wealthy enough to do so

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(Sima.Q, 1999; Shang, 2009). Elites from other Chinese states also regarded Qin’s

Legalist reform a threat, as they were afraid that it would be replicated in their own

countries, hence ruining their own privilege (Sima.Q, 1999). Moreover, Shang Yang’s

relations with other kingdoms were not without problems either, as he sometimes used

immoral strategies during wartime or in diplomatic contexts (Sima.Q, 1999).

As a result of Shang Yang’s unsatisfactory relations with the aristocracy across the

Chinese states, the final period of his life was rather tragic (Sima.Q, 1999). After Duke

Xiao, his most intimate political ally, died in 338 BC, Shang Yang was arrested by the

new king, Huiwen, who used to be the crown prince and whose teachers were punished

by Shang Yang when he was young. It was impossible for Shang Yang to hide due to

the strict laws implemented by himself, nor was it possible for him to escape to other

states, due to his poor relationships with their aristocracy. He was finally executed

through a form of death sentence called chelie – whereby the body is divided into five

parts as horses attached by rope to the four limbs and the head run off in different

directions away from the body.

Though Shang Yang died, his Legalist reforms nonetheless remained and were further

developed under the reign of the new king Huiwen, who had accepted the request of

Qin’s old aristocracy to execute Shang Yang. Not only did this assuage their anger over

both Shang Yang and the reforms, but it also made it possible for King Huiwen to

identify those old aristocrats who were dissatisfied with the Legalist reforms. As shown

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in later history (Sima.Q, 1999), King Huiwen gradually dismissed and then executed

these old aristocrats who had once attacked Shang Yang’s Legalist reforms. In this way,

both Shang Yang and those old aristocrats against the reform were eliminated, and the

achievements of Qin’s Legalist reform was then successfully retained.Ultimately,

however, Shang Yang’s Legalist reform made the Qin state a socially, politically,

economically and militarily more advanced society than its rival states, which fostered

its unification of Chinese community thereafter. Owing to its effectiveness in

strengthening the Qin state, the Legalist doctrine was then promoted as the ruling

ideology of what would eventually become a united Chinese community. Shang Yang

fulfilled his ambition at the cost of his life.

5.2 A Legalist China

The introduction of Legalism into the Qin state in the fourth century BC was an

evolutionary reform and a critical milestone in the development of the Chinese

community. There are three major components in the Legalist doctrine – rule by law,

the centralisation of power and the unification of social, political and economic patterns

across society, all of which aim at enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of social

governance to maximise the mobilisation of resources and succeed in incessant wars.

All three components will be demonstrated in this section. As acknowledged in

previous studies (Gernet, 1996; Loewe, 1986a, 1986b, 1999a & 1999b; Sima.Q, 1999;

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Ma, 1982), by transforming Qin society under the Legalist doctrine, the reforms of Lord

Shang generated three important legacies for the Chinese community: not only did they

set up a centralised socio-political system in the Qin state, but they also popularised

codified law and professionalism across society, plus the reforms built up a Legalist

state with a faceless administration and military organisation. These three achievements

established a direct connection between the state and the vast majority of the peasantry,

thus enabling the effective mobilisation of resources. This, according to Gernet (1996),

is the key reason why Qin would become the ultimate winner who survived through the

Warring States period and united the Chinese community under a centralised state for

the first time in history. Since then, all major Chinese imperial dynasties and republics

have more or less inherited Qin’s socio-political system (centralisation, codified law

and the Legalist doctrine). Therefore, it is Qin’s Legalist reforms that formed the

ideological basis for the unification of the Chinese community and in turn facilitated

the emergence of China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation.

5.2.1 Rule by law

The idea of rule by law rests on the basis of Qin’s Legalist reforms. Rule by law was

the principal concept in the Legalist school of thought in ancient China, with Shang

Yang himself one of the most prominent figures. Chinese Legalism refers to a realist

approach to strengthening the wealth and power of states via reward and punishment to

achieve a disciplined, safe and stable society (Pines, 2014). Legalists believed men were

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born evil due to their self-interest (Han, 2003; Shang, 2009). Because of this, it would

be necessary to discipline the various interests of individuals to promote the overall

interests of society as a whole, which would then help build a more competitive state

than its rivals. Therefore, Legalist thinkers were convinced that good governance could

be achieved through the implementation of a legal system with codified laws – rule by

law, rather than the rule of man, should be prioritised by the government. However,

there are differences between rule by law in Chinese Legalism in the fourth century BC

and the modern Western sense thereof (Liang, 1989). Chinese Legalism was constituted

profoundly differently from modern Western Legalism, which emphasises “a pragmatic

appreciation of legal order as a form of governance […] – the interaction and mutual

dependence of law and morality in the everyday work” (Winston, 2005: 314). Winston

(2005: 313) explains that rule by law in the context of Chinese Legalism, is “amoral

and an instrument of power,” rather than a disciplinary setup for morality.

Shang Yang’s perception of the rule by law

According to Shang Yang (2009), by introducing the rule by law, a state could be

governed more efficiently and effectively and at the same time be less affected by the

personal capability of the monarch than in the traditional idea of the rule of man under

a Confucianist doctrine. In Shangjunshu (Shang, 2009), he argues that at the time of the

Warring States, when every country was busy fighting against every other country over

territory, resources and security, it was the priority for all states to achieve good

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governance domestically before joining the inter-state military conflict: “In the past,

whoever can control the world must be able to control his people in the first place,

whoever can prevail his enemy should be able to surmount his own people beforehand”

(Shang, 2009: 150). Here, Shang Yang linked good governance to effective control over

people. He was convinced that as a wartime strategy, the only way to achieve

dominance was to maximise the mobilisation of resources, or in other words make

people willing and able to fight bravely on the battlefield and participate actively in

farming during times of peace. This, according to Shang Yang, required strict laws and

a precise legal system, because he believed that based on human nature, people would

be unwilling to do so. Shang Yang contended that in order to eventually become the

hegemonic power across China, the state should follow general historical trends rather

than go against them, to set up an effective, up-to-date socio-political system and then

rule by the law, without any exception: “[Policy should] fit the era” (Shang, 2009: 158).

In Shang Yang's view, society evolved over time and circumstances and values were

subject to change. Hence, he believed that what used to be considered a perfect

approach in the past might not be suitable for current circumstances. That is why

national strategies should keep changing, following the evolution of society. According

to Shang Yang (2009: 81), “Wise men in the past neither imitated ancient ways nor

followed herd behaviours of the present time”. He added that a country would fall

behind its rivals when choosing to stick to ancient methods, or it may be impeded from

further progress by vested interests when simply following the common ways. Shang

Yang believed that policies should be formulated according to the real-time situation,

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closely following the general trend of society. He was convinced that reform was the

only way to achieve efficient and effective governance.

Shang Yang (2009) suggested that setting up an effective integrated legal system was

the priority for any ambitious monarch wanting to acquire outstanding achievements.

He argued that an outstanding monarch should run his country through a well-organised

legal system and bureaucracy rather than the autocracy of the monarch himself. He

warned (2009: 94) that “whoever becomes a monarch shall not lack vigilance for his

own conducts.” According to Shang Yang (2009: 121), “good governance relies on

three key factors: first, the law; second, credibility; third, authority”. He illustrated that

credibility is the fundamental bond between the monarch and his people, without which

a state could not exist. Authority owned by the monarch is granted by trust (as a result

of the monarch’s credibility) from the people, which itself can only be protected by

justice as well as the effectiveness of laws and legal system – once the effectiveness of

the legal system is doubted by the people, trust between the people and the monarch

will soon disappear and then the state might collapse. The monarch himself sits within

this system, seen as the benchmark for everyone else, and is therefore supposed to act

on the basis of the law himself to sustain his legitimacy. As Shang Yang (2009)

suggested, any monarch who wants to conquer the world should conquer himself in the

first place. When both the monarch and the people follow the laws, all society will be

well-organised and ready for any domestic and external challenges. Moreover, Shang

Yang (2009) also advised the monarch that there should not be any kindness in

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governmental policies to keep society running well. According to Shang Yang (2009:

170), the existence of a legal system was insurance for social order: “People can only

focus on their job when laws are in place”. He posited that monarchs require a legal

system to avoid society running into chaos – people need to be governed, although no

one ever favours constraints. Shang Yang was convinced that when politics were clean

and transparent, the entire society will be closely bond together; whereas when politics

were chaotic and corrupt, social cohesion would soon be lost. Furthermore, Shang Yang

was extremely critical of the rule of man. He strongly believed that even the most

capable man could only ensure the strength of a state for a period of time, while rule by

law through a well-established legal system would guarantee the competitiveness of a

state forever. In particular, he pointed out that when an intelligent man runs a country

for the monarch, he may seek to grow his own interests, which might eventually become

a serious threat to the country and the monarch.

From Shang Yang's (2009) point of view, the implementation of the law was extremely

important for social integration and solidarity. No matter how well the legal system was

organised, it needed to be put into effect in order to make an impact: “No disorder in

governance takes place due to disorder in law, nor is it because the laws are abandoned.

All countries have laws, but lack ways to ensure the implementation of the law” (Shang,

2009: 150). Shang Yang believed that rule by law should be institutionalised, the socio-

political system should be transparent, the state should be authoritative over its people

and that the government should favour meritocracy as its guiding principle. For Shang

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Yang, having a transparent and fair legal system – appropriate rules on rewards and

penalties, was the key to consolidating Legalism as the guiding ideological principle in

governance. Whenever a state was in trouble, there were definitely problems in its legal

system. Having an appropriate legal system was essential, but it would be even more

important to follow the law – it was the law that should become the priority in society,

not any other subjective factors such as kinships, personal relations, etc. (Shang, 2009).

In Shang Yang's (2009) blueprint, the reward-punishment mechanism played a

prominent role in the legal system. He thought there should be more punishments than

rewards in governance, in order to intimidate the people and prevent them from

committing crimes or behaving immorally. He further explained that while most people

expected good governance to bring social cohesion and prosperity, their true wills very

often did not match with what they thought they wanted. He also suggested that people

were usually willing to do pleasurable things that were simple and easy. However, in

most cases, simple and easy tasks could only generate limited benefits – most benefits

were usually the consequence of difficult and complex tasks that most people wanted

to avoid. Because of this, in order to achieve good governance, Shang Yang promoted

heavy punishments to stop people from doing simple things and force them to attempt

the complex and difficult ones instead, which would eventually benefit society in

general. As for the reward side, Shang Yang (2009) suggested that criteria should be

transparent, achievable and accessible to everyone in society – whoever made a

contribution to the state should be rewarded accordingly, whether by offering a noble

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rank or money. Shang Yang (2009: 124) emphasised in this context that the monarch

should always keep it in mind “not to govern the world for his own benefits, but rather

for the wellbeing of the entire world”. Therefore, it would be crucial to treat everyone

equally when offering the rewards, no matter whether they were aristocrats or civilians.

Only if the system was fair would people be willing to follow and support the

government, and the monarch should not be stingy in rewarding his people. Instead, he

should learn to share the achievements of his state with the vast majority of ordinary

people, awarding them whatever they had conquered during the territorial expansion of

the state, if necessary. For Shang Yang (2009), using heavy punishment did not

necessarily indicate the brutality of the state – the intention behind heavy punishment

was to intimidate people, force them away from immoral behaviours and finally avoid

having any punishment in the future. “Good governance can be achieved when heavy

penalties stop people from breaking the law, while bad governance may take place if

penalties are not threatening enough to stop people from breaking the law” (Shang,

2009: 49). According to Shang Yang (2009: 138), “when wise men govern a country,

they set a universal standard for rewards, punishments and education,” and

consequently “people would understand how to behave”. He speculated that after

implementing a homogenous set of rules on rewards, penalties and education, a state

would eventually be able to achieve a situation where society needs no rewards, no

punishment or education, as everyone would behave properly according to the law.

Once there is a good legal system, people would be willing to work hard to earn money

during peaceful times, and they would also be able to win any war, as they would be

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brave enough to fight. Shang Yang was convinced that if this come to fruition, it would

not take long for a state to achieve its hegemony.

The consequence of the reforms

To conclude, the reforms of Lord Shang, which introduced rule by law to Qin society,

were one of the most important cornerstones of Chinese society. The historical

importance of the reforms of Lord Shang lies in their attempt to form a closely bonded

society through what Bodde (1986: 26) called the codification of law and

professionalisation – replacing “the traditional and largely unwritten, but tacitly

accepted, rules of customary behavior known as li (etiquette)” with a set of well-

constituted laws and a specialised legal system, which allowed the Legalist doctrine of

rule by law to replace the traditional idea of the rule of man accepted by many other

Chinese schools of thought such as Confucianism. In Shang Yang’s (2009) view, an

ideal society with good governance could only be achieved through the rule by law, as

everyone, no matter ordinary people or aristocrats, would always prioritise their own

self-interest. Rule by law had the potential to avoid this weakness of human beings,

according to Shang Yang. He emphasised the importance of punishment and rewards to

achieve this well-integrated society but hoped this would lead to a society that needed

neither of these, as people were well-educated and willing to follow the law.

Nevertheless, Shang Yang (2009: 154) was also aware of the limitation of rule by law,

acknowledging that rule of man and rule by law actually complemented each other,

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since a social system based on the rule by law needs people who believe in it to govern

and sustain:

“When a sagacious monarch is in power, courtiers appointed by him would also

be sagacious, so the law would be implemented by sagacious people. Once the

law is under control by sagacious people, it will be implemented down the

hierarchy, and then people would dare not to do bad things; whereas, when the

monarch in power is unwise, his courtiers would be incapable either. By the time

a country does not have serious laws, evil persons would then dare to do bad

things.”

Though admittedly Shang Yang’s Legalist reforms were a wartime strategy that aimed

at strengthening the military capacity of the state to survive throughout the chaotic

Warring States era, it nevertheless made three critical contributions to the unification

and integration of the Chinese community later on, which in turn would facilitate the

emergence of China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation.

First of all, the rule by law, in the form of professionalisation of a legal system with

codified law, provided the basis for homogenisation, incorporation and social

integration across the Qin state. The reforms of Lord Shang made the first historically

successful attempt to introduce rule by law in Chinese society. By having a community

of obedient civilians and monarchs who were willing and able to follow the law, Qin

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became the first Chinese regime to govern by legally defined disciplines, rather than

traditional customs, codes of conduct or the rule of man that were common in rival

Chinese states. Hence, while becoming socially advanced through the codification of

law and the professionalisation of the legal system, Qin’s civilians were aware of a

homogenous society under the same set of laws. This allowed the homogenisation of

Qin society consisting of both the Huaxia and non-Huaxia ethnic communities, which

then became a preliminary attempt at social integration prior to Qin’s conquest of the

entire Chinese community.

Second, introducing rule by law into Qin society generated an extendable power

network throughout society, which was later expanded to the entire Chinese community

following Qin’s unification of China. Owing to the professionalisation of legal system

with codified law, Qin society became socially integrated by the same set of laws. While

Qin’s rival Chinese states were constituted around kinships, family ancestry, traditional

customs and codes of conduct, the Legalist Qin state had a more extendable social

organisation and power network based on a unified professional legal system with

codified laws. Therefore, Qin society was constituted around a much simpler ideology

than its rivals – Legalism in the form of codified Qin law, which was more likely to be

replicated beyond its borders following Qin’s territorial expansion. Compared to the

single, codified law across Qin society, kinships, family ancestry, traditional customs

and codes of conduct were deeply rooted in their place of origin and were subject to

variations from place to place, hence making it difficult to become homogenised and

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integrated. Consequently, Qin’s Legalist power network was more extendable, as

members of foreign communities only needed to abide by Qin law when incorporated

into the Qin community. This more extendable and replicable power network followed

Qin’s territorial expansion, and thus became the prototype of the power network for a

united Chinese community – the Qin Empire after 221 BC.

Third, rule by law created a more open and inclusive Chinese society, which became

less accountable to traditions while becoming more accountable to laws. The Qin state

could thereby get rid of restrictions provided by some traditions and thereby become an

increasingly open and inclusive society. There are two aspects of Qin’s openness and

inclusiveness. On the one hand, decreasing traditional restrictions meant that Qin could

develop a more vibrant society based on interest-driven logic and a goal-oriented

strategy. As the Qin state was no longer restricted by traditional ideologies and codes

of conduct after Shang Yang’s Legalist reform, there was thus a greater possibility of

adopting innovative ideas. As a result, the Legalist Qin state in its post-reform era was

able to stimulate motivation and initiative from individual civilians, which further

strengthened its competitiveness against rival states. Consequently, tremendous

developments took place after the reforms of Lord Shang, making it socially, politically,

economically and militarily more advanced than its rivals. On the other hand, the

deteriorating influence of kinship and aristocracy generated a space for fostering

meritocracy in Qin following the consolidation of rule by law. Against the backdrop of

the Warring States era, successful outcomes, namely winning wars and expanding

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territory, became the top and only priority for the competing Chinese states. As Legalist

reforms significantly weakened the influence and dominance of Qin’s aristocracy,

capable individuals who could promote Qin’s success against other states were thus

attracted to join the kingdom of Qin with their talents and intelligence, which in turn

made Qin a more ethnically diverse and inclusive society, just like today’s United States,

which welcomes talented people from across the world to boost its development.

Therefore, besides the fact that adopting Legalism was a wartime strategy aiming at

strengthening Qin’s military capacity, it led to much greater historical implications than

imperialist attempts at power and dominance across the Chinese community. The

reforms of Lord Shang, which followed the Legalist idea of rule by law, triggered social

advancement in ancient China with professionalised legal system with codified law, a

more extendable power network, as well as greater openness and inclusiveness of the

Chinese society, all of which were critical for the success of social integration and the

emergence of China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation in the third century BC.

5.2.2 Centralisation of Power

The second most important impact of Shang Yang’s Legalist reforms on Qin was the

centralisation of power across the state. Shang Yang was a pioneer in the centralised

state system in China, which completely repossessed the governing jurisdiction from

local lords and aristocrats, directing most decision-making authority to the central

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government and its affiliated bureaucracy. The centralisation of power fostered a deeply

integrated Qin state, thereby boosting its military potential to fight against its six rivals

by maximising the mobilisation of resources. This centralizised administrative system

facilitated Qin’s conquest of its six rival states, and promoted the expansion of Qin’s

power network across the Chinese community after its unification of China in 221 BC.

Therefore, the centralisation of power made a significant contribution to the integration

of Chinese states into a single, unitary community, which in turn provided the basis for

the emergence of China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation.

Gathering political authority

Shang Yang (2009) strongly believed that the supremacy of the monarch should never

be compromised or threatened. To promote the absolutist leadership of monarchy, he

considered it vital in this context to suppress the power of other aristocrats and ordinary

people in society and keep them ‘weak’ (Shang, 2009). He thought that in terms of the

relative power correlation between the monarch (state) and the rest of people, “when

people are in a stronger position, state's influence will be relatively weaker; whereas if

the state is in a stronger position, popular influence is relatively weaker” (Shang, 2009:

170). He was convinced that in order to ensure the monarch's absolute leadership, the

power of everyone else, including aristocrats, should be suppressed, or otherwise they

might attempt to overthrow the monarch someday. Shang Yang was cautious about the

authority of the monarch, because this happened in the kingdom of Qi at the beginning

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of the Warring-State period, when the house of Tian usurped state power from the house

of Jiang, to become the new rulers of the Qi kingdom (Sima.Q, 1999).

Based on this notion, Shang Yang (2009) advised Duke Xiao to weaken the influence

and power of all other people in Qin through five different ways. First, he believed that

when all other people became absolutely weaker than the monarch, they would have a

stronger desire to gain noble ranks and financial rewards from the monarch. In this way,

the monarch could order them to do things more easily (Shang, 2009). He was

furthermore convinced that “people are more likely to obey the law when they are weak,

and they will pursue their own will once they have grown stronger” (2009: 170). The

second option was to suppress the rich and help the poor. Shang Yang suggested that

“when governing a country, the most important thing is to make poor people rich while

at the same time making rich people poor” (2009: 58). Accordingly, the state was meant

to punish and suppress rich and privileged families that did not behave properly, and

instead encourage poor families to become rich by working hard so that the rich would

not stay permanently rich and the poor would not be permanently poor throughout their

lifetime. He believed this social mobility was essential to maintaining the vitality and

energy of the state, thereby avoiding social-wide depression due to class solidification

(Shang, 2009). Third, the monarch should encourage individuals to inspect and report

others so as to break the trust among society, avoiding people forming a common

interest group that may become a threat to the monarch (Shang, 2009). Fourth, the

monarch should pay particular attention to suppressing the aristocrats (Shang, 2009).

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Aristocrats received considerable pay from the government and collected heavy taxes

from their fiefs to feed their family and vassals, which, according to Shang Yang (Shang,

2009), would demotivate the hardworking farmers and hence have a negative impact

on agricultural production. The state should charge the aristocrats a high tax for their

ownership of vassals, forcing them to leave and go back to farming (Shang, 2009). The

hiring of workers and maids by aristocrats, and the children of aristocrats, should all be

suppressed so that everyone would be forced back to material reproduction rather than

simply consuming materials, which would then make the state materially stronger

(Shang, 2009). Finally, mountains, forests, lakes, wetlands and all other natural

resources should all be owned by the state, thus avoiding private individuals making

easy money out of these rich resources (Shang, 2009). Shang Yang strongly believed

that “when access to mountains, forests, lakes and wetlands is forbidden by the state,

those lazy and greedy people who dislike farming would then have no way to make a

living. If there is no effortless way to make a living, people will surely be back to

farming. Once these people are all back to farming, then uncultivated land will all be

reclaimed” (2009: 16).

Unifying the socio-political system

Moreover, Shang Yang was keen on unifying and simplifying the socio-political system,

noting that a state should have a highly integrated bureaucracy whereby each

department focuses on its own functions, because “good governance can only be

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achieved through a single channel; a country with ten channels will end up in poor

governance” (Shang, 2009: 173). The bureaucratic institution of the state should be

simple and transparent, making decisions according to the laws that have been set up.

To make bureaucracy work efficiently and effectively, there should only be a single

voice or opinion from the central government, rather than having many of them, which

would confuse this bureaucracy and lead to chaos. According to Shang Yang (Shang,

2009), once an integrated, transparent socio-political system was set up, civilians would

feel confident about society and hence be able to focus on material reproduction and

have nothing to worry about. This would then drive the state into a benign cycle,

increasing material supplies and subsequently the possibility of winning wars (Shang,

2009). However, Shang Yang was also aware of the difficulty of running a centralised

government. Diversity across the state could make it particularly difficult to implement

a homogenous system, especially during expansion into conquered territory (Shang,

2009). Nevertheless, he insisted on homogenising socio-political systems across the

Qin state, suggesting that the only possible way to achieve this was by rule by law –

using the professionalised legal system with codified law rather than government

officials’ personal opinions, to run the country (Shang, 2009). He also stressed that the

law should be understandable by the vast majority of people, and the state should have

a group of government officials for legal affairs (OFLA) whose role would be to ensure

the implementation of the legal system across the entire state (Shang, 2009). OFLAs

should be assigned to every hierarchal level of the bureaucracy to disseminate legal

knowledge to civilians and government officials. These OFLAs should also teach legal

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knowledge to every civilian, helping them understand how the legal system works.

OFLAs should also be responsible for demonstrating laws correctly for civilians, and

their demonstrations should be held accountable for their lifetime. The central

government should send out copies of revised laws down the hierarchy every year to

update the legal system on time. These measures would keep the legal system running

well across the state.

Centralisation of power – its consequences

To summarise, Shang Yang’s conception of the centralisation of power saw three key

achievements concerning the unity of the Chinese community and the emergence of

China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation. First and foremost, the criticality of

centralisation of power rested in its ability to consolidate social solidarity in the Qin

state and later the united Chinese community under the Qin Empire. Shang Yang’s

Legalist doctrine was keen on establishing the absolute authority of the monarch – a

single, strong power centre of the Qin state representing the authority of central

government, by suppressing other power centres of society such as aristocrats, the

nobility, businesses and civilians. This attempt to centralisation of power was a wartime

strategy aimed at setting up effective control over society and reducing unnecessary

domestic confrontation, which would in turn enable the central government to

maximise its ability to mobilise resources to fight against its rivals and hence maximise

the chances of winning. By weakening and eliminating other power centres, the central

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government became the dominant force in society. As a result, the entire Qin society –

government, individuals and other interest groups became a closely bonded community

with a common goal, moved in the same direction, and shared a common interest. This

in turn strengthened communal awareness of a shared community and its collective

identity.

Second, centralisation of power also gained its importance in terms of generating

material abundance in the vast Chinese community. Material needs are the basic

requirements of human beings, without which people will refuse to join and sustain a

shared community, no matter how splendid the big picture may be in political terms.

Therefore, material abundance is more than necessary for the existence of any national

or ethnic community. Through active government intervention, enabled by

centralisation of power, the Qin state was thus capable of developing a stable and

vibrant society along with strong social mobility. By adopting government intervention,

aristocrats and nobles who did not directly contribute to material production were

suppressed and weakened, while their consumption of luxury goods was also

suppressed. Whereas, on the other hand, ordinary people were motivated to become

rich and move up the social hierarchy through hard work. Consequently, through active

government intervention, Qin society re-divided up the share of the cake and passed it

from privileged aristocrats and nobles to ordinary people. This would improve the

material abundance and living standards of ordinary people at the cost of the privileged

class, generating greater popular support for the central government and the integrated

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community it represented.

Third, centralisation of power helped establish effective governance over a united Qin

community. Shang Yang was convinced that Qin should have a transparent, integrated

and simplified bureaucracy, which only focused on two tasks: encourage farming at

home and support warfare at the front. While this institutional setup did indeed reduce

regional and local autonomy, a centralised bureaucracy would nevertheless be able to

pass a command from central government down through the institutional hierarchy, thus

reinforcing popular consciousness about the existence of a shared community ruled by

a central government. Therefore, centralisation of power made an impact on fostering

a shared collective identity amongst the people within Qin’s territorial borders, thus

giving rise to the emergence of China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation.

5.2.3 Unification of social, political and economic patterns

across the Qin kingdom

The third direct impact of Shang Yang’s reforms was that they created a homogeneous

set of social, political and economic patterns across the entire Qin state, thereby making

the Qin state an integrated war machine. The aim of Qin’s governance clearly had an

imperialist dimension – to defeat rival Chinese states on the battlefield, so as to survive

through the incessant wars in the Warring States period. In order to support warfare at

the front and win these battles, material basis became a key concern. Therefore, the

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whole Qin state needed to be closely bonded together to supply troops at the frontier.

Farming and warring

Shang Yang (2009: 27) argued that at the time of the Warring States era, all states

needed to focus on both farming and warfare in order to succeed and survive – “Power

and prosperity of a country rely on its agricultural and military strength”. He explained

that because wars were hugely costly, military success hence required a strong material

basis. However, it was impossible to achieve dramatic production growth in the third

century BC, because human productivity grew very slowly in agrarian society.

Therefore, the only thing a state could do was to limit the amount of consumption. The

strategy that Shang Yang developed included two aspects – on the domestic side, the

government should try as hard as it could to encourage people to achieve maximum

efficiency in agricultural production, whereas on the external side, it should encourage

soldiers to release their strength to the maximum, both of which required a Legalist

state system to ensure their effectiveness (Shang, 2009).

Farming as the basis for warring

Shang Yang (2009) suggested that when all states try to establish their hegemony by

defeating others, a solid material basis will then become the foundation for final success

– the strength of a state depends on the strength of its material reproduction. Whichever

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state could achieve a material advantage over others would gain a leading position in

this scramble for dominance and hegemony (Shang, 2009). He also emphasised that

money was far less significant than material wealth during this time of incessant warfare.

When most people sought to make money by doing business, there would be limited

numbers of people still working hard on the farmland, which would then cause a

decrease in the food supply. When there was not enough food available, troops on the

frontline would be unable to fight, and they would subsequently lose the war. As a result,

it was government's priority in times of war to maximise material reproduction, with

farming becoming the priority above everything else. According to Shang Yang (2009),

farming was the basis of all other economic activities in society because of its direct

implications for the survival of human beings, namely civilians at home and soldiers in

battle. Therefore, farming should be prioritised by the government in the following

ways.

First of all, people should be encouraged, or forced, to work on the land (Shang, 2009).

Shang Yang believed that during wartime the only thing that helps with warfare at the

front is material supply, and food in particular. The state should motivate as many

people as possible to focus on farming so that its attention could be free from domestic

issues and concentrated on war. Second, entertainment should be suppressed because

it had no relevance to warfare and was only effective in ruining people's willingness to

fight, as they would feel too comfortable with life at home. Third, he suggested

suppressing commerce and trade. Merchants did not produce any material wealth, but

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they could nonetheless get rich through trade and deals. This would attract other people

away from farming with the intention of joining the business sector, thus meaning fewer

people working on the farmland and causing a decline in material supplies. The black

market would also be targeted, as it would otherwise reduce state control over material

supplies and discourage incentives to farm. Fourth, inns should be outlawed, because if

there was no inn, people would not leave their farmland and travel further afield.

Consequently, everyone would be tied to their farmland, working hard to grow food

crops. Fifth, strict control over luxury goods was noted. Raising taxes on luxury goods

would reduce consumption so that people would be less extravagant and wasteful, thus

allowing the state to accumulate higher material surplus to supply the frontline. The

sixth measure involved restricting the spread of knowledge by discouraging education

and intellectuals. When intellectuals travelled around from place to place, they would

spread all kinds of ideas to people. This could be a disaster for farming, because when

farmers heard novel ideas and issues from the outside world, they would be interested

in visiting these places rather than staying on the farmland, hence reducing the

production of food crops. For Shang Yang, if there was a lot of money circulating

around in the country during wartime, everyone would scramble for it and the state

would end up having no material resources to ensure victory. Conversely, if material

supply was abundant, then the state would never be short of finances and would be able

to ensure the success of wars at the frontier. There could never be too much material

supply during wartime.

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Shang Yang (2009) claimed that to make sure people focused on farming,

corresponding laws should apply, particularly in relation to rewards and punishments.

The state should make detailed legal arrangements to tie people to their farmland so

they would not think about doing anything else. Apart from assigning responsible

government officials to rural areas, Shang Yang reasoned that it was more important to

make use of human nature (pursuing benefits and avoiding harm), setting up strict laws

to force people to farm and prevent them from escaping. Meanwhile, rewards such as

noble ranks should be given to people producing more crops than others, thus

encouraging them to keep on. Shang Yang (2009) maintained that the monarch’s

authority to grant privilege and benefits to people was the key to governing a country.

Government shall not hesitate to reward the people who have made contributions.

Land cultivation and adequate population

Shang Yang (2009: 64) suggested that in order to exploit the full potential of land,

adequate population density was essential:

“There is a mistake which monarchs usually make: do not count his own capacity prior

to the wars, and do not calculate the volume of land when reclaiming uncultivated lands.

As a result, in some places, there is only limited land for a large sum of people, leading

to high population density, while in other places there is a considerable amount of land

with too few people, leading to low population density. In places where population

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 density is high, locals should devote time to reclaiming more land, whereas in places

where population density is low, they should encourage outsiders to come and farm the

land”.

According to Shang Yang (2009), in the Qin state there were places where population

density was extremely high, with a limited amount of land but a vast number of

populations; there were also places where there was a considerable amount of land but

an insufficient number of people to farm. As Shang Yang (2009: 64) suggested, the

country's potential was far from being fully exploited – the state should have

appropriate planning over its territory in the following way: “mountains and forests

count for 10%, lakes and wetlands count for 10%, rivers and streams count for 10%,

cities, towns and roads count for 10%, barren farmlands count for 10%, fertile

farmlands count for 40%. That is the configuration by ancestors”. Shang Yang (2009:

127) added that for Qin, its population was too few in number to cover the amount of

territory, and therefore they needed to attract immigrants from other states to exploit

this full potential: “Nowadays in the state of Qin, there are five pieces of land more than

a thousand square li (one Chinese mile), but less than 20% has been utilised, [so] goods

and treasures from lakes and marshes, streams and valleys, mountains and rivers cannot

be fully utilised. That is because of the insufficient population.”

Instead of avoiding immigrants from abroad, Shang Yang (2009) suggested that Qin

should try as hard as possible to attract as many immigrants as possible and then to

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reclaim the vast amount of uncultivated land. He explained that instead of importing

threats, immigrants would actually make Qin stronger – Qin's power would not be fully

exploited without reclaiming these uncultivated lands. Immigrants in this context could

help exploiting the potential of such vast tracts of farmland and freeing the Qin people

from farming, thus generating more usable soldiers on the battlefield: “Use native Qin

men to become soldiers and letting new immigrants farm the land. If there is any

country that disobeys your majesty’s order, you can ask your troops to disturb their

farming in spring, eat their food in summer, wrest their harvested crops in autumn and

freeze their stored crops in winter… then, in ten years’ time, there will be no country

disobeying you anymore” (Shang, 2009: 131-132). To attract a sufficient number of

immigrants, the state should offer new immigrants enough desirable benefits, especially

the benefits that immigrants want the most, including free land and tax exemptions for

a certain period of time. To further motivate new immigrants, the state could award

noble ranks and other rewards to the most outstanding in this cohort, thus encouraging

other immigrants to follow their behaviours. Shang Yang added that a particularly

important factor was that state and government officials, from top to bottom, should

treat new immigrants as equally as native Qin people, which was important for building

up their sense of belonging to Qin. In line with ethno-symbolism, this is a typical

example of establishing emotional attachment. According to Guibernau (2013: 3),

belonging is a key composition of self-identification, which involves “various degrees

of emotional attachment to a range of communities and groups”. The strength of this

emotional attachment depends heavily on individuals’ willingness to conform, which

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can therefore become an instrument not only in identity formation, but also in the

political mobilisation that is deemed crucial by elites (Guibernau, 2013). By treating

new immigrants as equals, the Qin state could foster stronger emotional attachment

among the new immigrants, thereby increasing their willingness to conform. This

would then attract even more immigrants to Qin and eased the incorporation of new

immigrants into the Qin community, thus boosting social integration. In addition, in

case of need, the government should have a comprehensive, up-to-date household

registration across the kingdom, including all necessary information such as male or

female, alive or dead, etc. (Shang, 2009).

An integrated society: its consequences

In summary, following the Legalist reforms provided by Shang Yang, which introduced

the rule by law to Qin society and achieved centralisation of power across the state, Qin

finally became a highly integrated society within which social, political and economic

patterns were all unified and homogenised. Given that Legalism was a wartime

ideology aiming exclusively at building up military capacity, Qin society was shaped

as a well-integrated war machine, making it capable of defeating its rivals on the

battlefield. Apart from transforming the Qin state into a war machine, Shang Yang’s

Legalist reforms also made three major contributions to the formation of a united

Chinese community in the third century BC and the subsequent emergence of China’s

pre-modern ethnic foundation thereafter.

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The first contribution was a community with a common goal. As its name indicates, the

Warring States period (475 – 221 BC) was a time of constant conflict. By turning the

entire Qin society into a war machine, focusing exclusively on farming and warfare,

the lives of ordinary Qin people were thus driven by a common goal – to win wars. This

enhanced awareness of a common thread among the Qin people. As the war machine

continued to run, society became increasingly integrated and homogenised through

social, political and economic patterns. Following Qin’s territorial expansion, more and

more people from the conquered territory became members of this burgeoning society

and got used to living under Qin rules. In this way, they were then incorporated into a

larger, integrated Chinese community of the Qin Empire.

The second contribution was active government involvement in society. Shang Yang’s

Legalist reforms led to the active involvement of government, especially the central

government, in the daily routines of Qin society to ensure that people focused

exclusively on warring and farming, the two primary tasks of the kingdom. This

included encouraging working on farmlands to increase agricultural production,

suppressing social-wide entertainment to keep people away from living a comfortable

life, suppressing business activities to motivate farmers, restricting inns to make people

stay on their farmlands, restricting the consumption of luxury goods to avoid

unnecessary use of wealth and materials, and restricting the delivery of knowledge to

make people focus on their farming. These frequent interactions between government

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and civilian would be helpful in setting up the dominant position of government in

society, and effectively promote communal awareness of their common community,

which the authority of government represented.

The third contribution was a less Sino-centric attitude to immigrants. Though Shang

Yang’s original purpose behind welcoming foreign immigrants was to reclaim Qin’s

vast amount of uncultivated land, this policy was also an effective way of building up

an open and inclusive Qin society. Openness and inclusiveness were important for the

unification of China, as successful social integration could not be achieved without

popular recognition. Following Qin’s victories in conquests, an increasing number of

the non-Qin population was incorporated into the Qin community. Therefore, popular

attitudes towards the conqueror, i.e. the Qin state, thus became crucial for both social

stability and the likelihood of successful integration. At this moment, an open and

inclusive Qin society as a result of Lord Shang’s Legalist reform, could make it easier

to accommodate those new members by reducing their emotional resistance against Qin,

hence facilitate the integration and homogenisation of the post-unification Chinese

society.

However, besides its contribution to Qin’s military, political, social and economic

strength, which in turn facilitated Qin’s final victory in the Warring States period, it

should also be noticed that the Legalist socio-political system might have been much

less favourable to ordinary people than to the elites. We should not forget that the

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Legalist doctrine aimed to maximise the mobilisation of resources through the reward-

and-punishment approach, to gain sufficient power to succeed in wars during the

chaotic Warring States period (Nivison, 1999). This, on the one hand, could really

reinforce the economic and consequently the military power of the state, as it

pressurised all of the population to focus on farming and warfare. However, on the other

hand, maximising mobilisation of resources would also mean that the state would

exploit as much resource as it could from the vast majority of the population, leaving

limited surplus for ordinary people. It is evident from the historical sources cited above

that the reformer Shang Yang wanted the people to do nothing more than farming and

warfare. In order to stick Qin’s people to the farmland, Shang Yang (2009) had ordered

to (1) suppress nationwide entertainment to prevent people from having a rest; (2)

suppress commerce and trade to maximise government control over material supply; (3)

outlaw inns to avoid the movement of people; (4) raise the tax over luxury goods to

avoid wasting material supply; (5) restrict the spread of knowledge by discouraging

education and intellectuals so as to prevent peasants from thinking about things other

than farming and warfare. While it is understandable that the state chose to restrict the

consumption of unnecessary luxury goods during wartime, to avoid wasting scarce

resources, other measures such as suppressing entertainment, controlling the movement

of people and restricting the spread of knowledge were clearly against the direction of

human development, nor would this generate a positive picture of the collective

community. To a great extent, Shang Yang’s Legalist doctrine was a ruling ideology

that carefully examined people’s likes and dislikes and thus exploited human nature to

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an extreme. All the intentions behind the policy were to achieve the ambition of the Qin

state, rather than the wellbeing of individual Qin people. Because of this, Qin’s Legalist

socio-political system never considered the interests and happiness of ordinary people

as a priority. From Shang Yang’s perspective, the people might simply be an instrument

to achieve a goal. Just as Jia (n.d.) commented in the second century BC, which was

also written down in Shiji (Sima.Q, 1999: 199), “Qin’s governance lacks benevolence”.

This, as both ancient and modern scholars believe, is a key reason why the Qin

collapsed only fifteen years after its unification of China (Sima.Q, 1999; Jia, n.d.;

Gernet, 1996; Bodde, 1986).

5.3 Social and Political Reforms in the Other Six States in Ancient

China

Qin was not the only Chinese state to make an attempt to strengthen itself by carrying

out socio-political reforms. Its six major rivals – the states of Wei, Chu, Han, Zhao, Yan

and Qi, all tried to reform themselves in one way or another, but none of them succeeded

in sustaining the achievements of reforms during the 254-year Warring States period

(475-221 BC). Despite the fact that ancient historical sources on Qin’s six rival states

have far less content than on Qin, due to various acts of destruction throughout the past

2,000 years, it can still be gleaned from available historical sources that several themes

explain the reasons for Qin’s success and the failures of the other six Chinese states.

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Therefore, this section focuses on the reforms of Qin’s rival states, exploring the reasons

why they ultimately failed in the Warring States era.

5.3.1 Reforms in Qin’s six rival states

As we can see from historical sources, the major reform themes in Qin’s rival states did

not differ much from those in the Qin. First and foremost, four out of the six states

implemented their reforms through a Legalist doctrine. As shown in historical sources,

all reforms in the Wei, Chu, Han and Yan have reflected elements of Legalist principles.

Second, five out of the six states reshaped their administrative system. Hereditary

aristocracy was a common problem across the Chinese states, and so reformers in both

the Wei and the Chu recommended that their monarchs suppress the aristocracy for the

overall interests of their respective states (Sima.Q, 1999; Han, 2003). On the other hand,

every state turned to a meritocratic administrative system, and promoting government

officials according to their personal capability became a new standard (Sima.Q, 1999;

Zhanguoce, 2007). Third, three out of the six states, i.e. the kingdoms of Wei, Chu and

Han, focused on material reproduction (Sima.Q, 1999). In order to boost agricultural

production, both the Wei and the Han abolished the traditional farming policy that

distributed the responsibility of communal farmland to individuals, and transformed to

complete private ownership of farmland (Sima.Q, 1999). This would motivate the

peasants, as they did not have to cultivate communal farmland any longer – all the

harvest belonged to the peasants themselves, after tax. In order to protect farmers,

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avoiding the paradox of a bumper harvest, Marquess Wen accepted Li Ke’s suggestion

to buy more crops from farmers during the years of good harvests and sell crops during

bad years, in order to balance out extreme fluctuations in food prices at market (Sima.Q,

1999). Fourth, five out of the six states strengthened their military power during the

reforms. The kingdoms of Wei, Chu, Han, Zhao and Yan all carried out a series of

military reforms in order to succeed on the battlefield.

5.3.2 Reforms amongst the Chinese states: major differences

Nevertheless, the reforms of the six states still differed from Qin’s reforms of Lord

Shang in a number of ways. First of all, even though the major themes were not much

different, reforms in the six states clearly lacked comprehensiveness compared to the

reforms of Lord Shang. For instance, as we can see from historical sources, both the

Wei and the Chu carried out reforms introducing Legalism, selecting government

officials, suppressing the aristocracy, encouraging agricultural production and

strengthening military capacity, but they did not pursue a homogenised society as Qin

did. The Qi carried out reforms selecting government officials and rectifying laws but

did not embrace Legalism, nor did it encourage agricultural production or boost military

capacity. The kingdom of Han introduced Legalism, selected government officials on a

meritocratic basis, encouraged agricultural production and promoted the production of

military equipment, but it did not suppress the aristocracy. The kingdom of Yan

embraced Legalism, selected government officials on a meritocratic basis and

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strengthened its military power, but it did not encourage agricultural production.

Whereas for the Zhao, they implemented military reform only, without transforming

any other aspect of society. Each of Qin’s rival states did something similar to the

reforms of Qin, but none of them was as comprehensive as Qin.

Second, embracing the centralisation of power is a key difference between Qin and its

rivals. As demonstrated early in this chapter, Qin institutionalised a centralised

administrative system across its state. This, however, cannot be found anywhere else in

Qin’s rival states according to historical sources. Furthermore, in line with previous

studies on nation and nationalism, the sociology of war and geopolitics, social

penetration is an extremely important element in the formation of a state, as it not only

links to the ability of a state to mobilise resources, but it is also closely intertwined with

the formation of collective identity. According to Tilly (1975), Mann (1986 & 2006),

Malesevic (2010) and Spencer (1971), the level of social penetration deeply influences

the ability of the state to mobilise resources – only by penetrating into the wider society

under an advanced central government with fiscal, legal, financial and civil

administrations, together with a group of top-down regional administrations, can a state

effectively mobilise social-wide resources. For this reason, Qin would have been much

more effective in mobilising resources than its six rival states, as we have seen nothing

about their centralised state system in historical sources. This offered Qin a great

material advantage against its rivals on the battlefield and very likely contributed to its

conquest of them by 221 BC. That is why Fukuyama (2012: 125) argues that “those

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states like France and Spain in the late seventeenth century that are commonly spoken

of as ‘absolutist’ [state] were, as we will see, considerably weaker in their power to tax

and mobilise their societies than was the state of Qin in the third century BC”. Moreover,

as both modernists and ethno-symbolists argue, social penetration is a key determinant

of whether people in pre-modern ethnic communities had a sense of collective identity.

As Collin (1999) and Hutchinson (2017) acknowledge, pre-modern empires and

modern nation-states have different levels of capacity in relation to promoting social

integration, due to different extents of social penetration into society. The less

penetrative pre-modern empires, often in the form of layered tribute states, are weak in

terms of assimilating a population, due to their indirect rule across the empire; modern

nation-states, by contrast, have much greater capacity in assimilating non-Han ethnic

groups into the dominant group, as they are more penetrative and therefore have the

“capacity to impose the culture of the dominant group though its public institutions,

including education, produces either assimilation or minority ethnic counter

mobilisation to achieve a separate state” (Hutchinson, 2017: 90). Therefore, the

centralised Qin state had much greater capacity than its six rival states in relation to

social integration, as it had a set of centralised administrative institutions that could

reach individual households across the state, whereas none of its rival Chinese states

had such a centralised state system. Nevertheless, due to the different stages of human

development, Qin’s centralised administrative system would in no way be as

penetrative as modern nation-states, and hence it would have much less capacity to

promote social integration.

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Third, the endurance of reforms is another key difference between Qin and its rival

Chinese states. As shown in historical sources, all competing Chinese states

implemented reforms in one way or another, and had all achieved a certain degree of

success. The major difference between Qin and its six rival Chinese states is that it

sustained the achievements of its Legalist reform after the death of its monarch despite

the reformer Shang Yang being executed in order to assuage the anger and

dissatisfaction of the hereditary aristocracy. In the case of Qin’s six rivals, the

achievements of their reforms diminished over time, especially when the monarchs who

enforced the reforms passed away. As we can see from historical sources, Wu Qi, a

participant in the Wei reforms, escaped after Marquess Wen of Wei died. Even though

he had carried out a series of successful reforms in the kingdom of Chu, he was

nevertheless assassinated by Chu’s aristocrats during the funeral of King Dao of Chu,

after which the reforms were abolished. Similar situations also happened in other

Chinese states, meaning they were unable to sustain the previous achievements of their

reforms and, hence, their competitiveness.

5.3.3 A reflection: reforms in seven states and their different outcomes

As evident in all ancient historical sources, reforms were widely unwelcomed by the

aristocracy in all states, including the Qin state, which would eventually succeed in

sustaining their achievements (Sima.Q, 1999; Shang, 2009). As we can see from section

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5.1 of this chapter, The reforms of Lord Shang also had a very difficult beginning. The

fierce pre-reform discussions among the monarch, the aristocrats and the reformer were

recorded in both Shangjunshu and Shiji. There was Duke Xiao of Qin, representing the

interests of Qin’s royal house, but there was also Gan Long, the ex-prime minister of

Qin, together with his mentee Du Zhi, representing Qin’s ruling class and hereditary

aristocracy, and finally, there was Shang Yang, Qin’s new chancellor and promoter of

the reforms, representing the Legalist school of thought. Based on historical sources, it

is evident that Gan Long and Du Zhi, as the representatives of Qin’s ruling class and

hereditary aristocracy, showed strong resistance to the reforms. In the age of Chinese

feudalism, the aristocracy held a relatively strong influence over society – on the one

hand, they supported the monarch, whilst on the other hand they could also be a threat

to him. Although having been suppressed during Shang Yang's reforms, Qin’s

aristocracy soon campaigned against the reformer Shang Yang after Duke Xiao's death,

with the intention of abandoning the Legalist reforms (Sima.Q, 1999). This then forced

the new King Huiwen to kill Shang Yang in order to temporarily satisfy their anger, and

to obtain the time to defend against this backlash by the aristocracy (Sima.Q, 1999).

Luckily, King Huiwen successfully suppressed the aristocracy after the execution of

Shang Yang, which in turn sustained Qin’s achievements by the Legalist reforms stayed

in place thereafter (Sima.Q, 1999).

Admittedly, throughout history, reforms have been extremely difficult to promulgate,

due to them usually ruining the vested interests of upper-class aristocrats and other

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privileged people. According to Zhanguoce (n/a, 2007) and Shiji (Sima.Q, 1999), a

similar situation happened in the state of Zhao, whereby aristocrats refused to attend

court meetings, with all kinds of excuses, trying as much as they could to stop the

reforms. In the Chu, the conflicts were even greater - the reformer Wu Qi was even

killed by the aristocrats when he attended the funeral of King Dao of Chu, who

employed him and supported him in carrying out the reforms (Sima.Q, 1999). Therefore,

compared to its rivals, the Qin state was lucky that even though Shang Yang was also

killed after the death of his friend and supporter Duke Xiao, the achievements of his

reforms were nevertheless sustained by King Huiwen, son of and successor to Duke

Xiao. As a result, the success and endurance of Qin’s Legalist reform is historically

contingent and therefore of high socio-historical significance. If Qin had been unable

to sustain the achievements of the Legalist reforms, as happened in the rival states, they

would not have been more competitive than their rivals in the social, political, economic

and military spheres. In that case, there would not have been a Chinese state that would

unify the Chinese community through the military conquest of its rivals, let alone the

realisation of the imagined Huaxia community under a centralised Chinese empire in

221 BC. Without Qin’s first unification of China, the emergence of China’s pre-modern

ethnic foundation would have been far less likely in the third century BC.

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5.4 Conclusion: Reforms of Lord Shang and the Legalist Ideological

Basis for a United Chinese Community

This chapter has examined the reforms of Lord Shang, carried out in the Qin state in

the fourth century BC, demonstrating how this series of reforms transformed Qin

society through the Legalist school of thought. Three major themes emerged in this

regard. First, rule by law, as a key idea of the Legalist doctrine, was a comparatively

progressive thought in China in the fourth century BC. The idea led to the establishment

of a professionalised legal system with codified law across the Qin state, which not only

forced the ruling class to rule Qin society according to the law rather than by the will

of the monarch, aristocrats or any other privileged government officials, but also created

a more extendable power network across the Qin state that would later become the

political basis for a united Chinese community under the Qin Empire.

Second, by implementing the rule by law, the privileges of the hereditary aristocracy

were considerably reduced across the Qin state, giving rise to the second theme – the

centralisation of power. This concentration of political authority led to the formation of

a centralised administrative system across the Qin state, allowing effective

communication through the chain of command. Due to its more penetrative nature than

the traditional fief system, Qin was then able to mobilise resources with higher

efficiency and effectiveness. This thus strengthened Qin’s military capacity on the

battlefield and in turn facilitated its unification of China in 221 BC. Since then, this

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centralised state system was inherited by successive Chinese imperial dynasties.

Third, thanks to the centralisation of power that connected central government to

individual households via the institutional hierarchy, Qin was thus capable of

implementing a homogenised social, political, economic and cultural pattern across

society. Nonetheless, even though centralisation of power did indeed promote Qin’s

military success and the unification of China in 221 BC by maximising the mobilisation

of resources, it failed to sustain the unity of the Qin Empire in the post-unification era.

To some extent, this centralised state system, which only lasted for fifteen years after

the first unification of China, seemed more fragile than the fief system that had

previously survived several centuries of incessant wars throughout the East Zhou

dynasty.

As we can see from historical sources, Shang Yang was a realist who intended to

radically transform Chinese society. He questioned established ways of governance and

pointed out that socio-political systems did not last forever, which therefore needed to

be reformed over time. Throughout his career as the chancellor of the Qin state, Shang

Yang was devoted to destroying the traditional socio-political system and replacing it

with the Legalist system based on rule by law and the centralisation of power. Apart

from that, Shang Yang was still a typical ruling elite in fourth-century BC China, who

insisted on the absolute dominance of the monarch and treated ordinary people as an

instrument to achieve personal and state ambitions, namely to strengthen military

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capacity and establish Qin’s hegemony across the Chinese community. This was the

dual characteristics of Shang Yang – half progressive, half conservative.

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Chapter Six China’s Pre-Modern Ethnic Foundation: An
Attempt at Social Solidarity under an Increasingly Diverse
New Empire

This chapter explores Qin’s efforts to promote social solidarity and forge a common

collective social identity for a united Chinese community, before and after the

unification of China in 221 BC. By discussing Qin’s governmental policy in coping

with growing diversity, due to its continuous expansion during the Warring States

period (475 – 221 BC), this chapter tries to offer an empirical account of how the first

centralised Chinese empire attempted to institutionalise the historically imagined

Huaxia community by trying to develop a sense of collective social identity, which is

an important pillar of pre-modern ethnic foundation under the ethno-symbolist

framework. The reforms of Lord Shang, as demonstrated in the previous chapter,

installed the Legalist doctrine as the cultural basis of Qin society, having transformed

the social, political, economic and military dimensions and fostered Qin’s

overwhelming advantage against six rival states in the later period of the Warring States

era. Consequently, Qin’s advantageous competence led to its success in warfare and

territorial expansion, making the state increasingly diverse. This situation generated

new challenges to Qin’s social governance, which at the same time also fostered more

effective governance over the Chinese community. Therefore, this chapter endeavours

to highlight Qin’s efforts in relation to the social aspect, i.e. how they managed to

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establish the social foundation for a newly united Chinese community through a series

of social engineering projects, which later became the social basis for China’s pre-

modern ethnic foundation.

This chapter consists of three main themes. Section 6.1 addresses Qin’s welcoming

attitude towards foreign intellectuals in order to strengthen itself during the Warring-

State period. Section 6.2 then illustrates the spread of the centralised socio-political

system out to every corner of its territory in an attempt to promote an integrated society

under the control of central government of the Qin Empire. Following this, Section 6.3

explains governmental policies of the Qin dynasty on migration, mixed residency and

marriage, which aimed at fully integrating society by spreading the ethnic majority and

assimilating non-Han ethnic groups.

6.1 Qin’s Openness and Incorporation of Foreign People during the

Warring States Period

As Hutchinson (2005: 9) acknowledges, the basis of evolving ethnic communities is

formed by survivors of competition. The Warring States era in ancient China was an

age of contest during which all competing states tried as hard as they could to succeed

and survive through a period of incessant wars. In order to strengthen itself, the Qin

state not only attempted to attract foreign talents and intellectuals from across the

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Chinese community, but it also endeavoured to incorporate them into its community,

hoping to gain a competitive advantage over its rivals. This section, then, demonstrates

how Qin government attempted to socially construct emotional attachment, an

important element in the ethno-symbolist framework, with the foreign population

serving the kingdom of Qin, trying to incorporate them to be a member of the Qin

community.

Social integration would not succeed without the addition of people, especially elites

and talented people. As Guibernau (2013) argues, a sense of belonging, as a key

composition of emotional attachment to communities and groups, is a critical

instrument in both identity formation and political mobilisation. The significance of

emotional power lies in its potential to be a powerful trigger for political mobilisation,

which can reshape the power structure in the social and political arenas (Guibernau,

2013). To establish its hegemonic status across ancient China, Qin managed to attract

talents and intellectuals from all Chinese states. It has been pointed out in multiple

ancient historical sources (Sima.Q, 1999; Li, n.d.; Zhanguoce, 2007; Sima.G, 2007)

that Qin was highly open to this cohort. This is an essential condition for becoming a

great empire or state, no matter in ancient times or in the modern age. As recorded in

both Jian-zhukeshu10 (Li, n.d.) and Zizhi-tongjian11 (Sima.G, 2007), “Qin made good

use of intellectuals from other countries to obtain interests that would last for 10,000

generations”.

10 Petition against the Expulsion of Guest Officers.

11 Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance.
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 6.1.1 The beginning of opening-up

In fact, the Qin state was not in an advantageous position from the outset. According to

Shiji (Sima.Q, 1999), since their territory was in the remote area of Yongzhou, which

was far away from the Central Plain where the other kingdoms lay, it was thereby

regarded by other principalities of the Zhou dynasty as a primitive and barbaric society,

similar to those ethnic communities on the Chinese periphery, when Duke Xiao became

Qin’s new monarch in the middle of the fourth century BC. To revitalise his state, Duke

Xiao promulgated that “Whenever I think of my ancestors’ will, I am so distressed

[about the current situation in Qin]. I would like to honour high-ranking official

positions as well as share my territory with all guests and visitors, courtiers and

ministers – whoever can come up with superb tactics and strategies that can strengthen

the Qin kingdom” (Sima.Q, 1999: 145).

Welcoming intellectuals of all origins was commonplace during the Spring and Autumn

and Warring States eras (Sima.Q, 1999; Zhanguoce, 2007; Sima.G, 2007). This not only

happened with Qin, but also other Chinese states. Since the split in the Eastern Zhou

dynasty in the eighth century BC, all principalities intended to welcome people from

across the Chinese community to strengthen themselves (Sima.Q, 1999). However,

most of the contributions made by foreign people could hardly be retained when the

monarchs or themselves died or left the country they once served (Sima.Q, 1999). The

Warring States period (475 – 221 BC) was a time of frequent interaction and integration

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across China, during which time people from different states moved from one country

to another looking for the best opportunity and realising their personal ambitions. A

considerable amount of people worked or served in a different state than their own

country of origin (Sima.Q, 1999). Although it was difficult to find out how many people

worked in foreign states, historical records nonetheless show that a number of foreign

people served as high-ranking officials in Qin during the Warring States period (Sima.Q,

1999; Zhanguoce, 2007; Sima.G, 2007). Qin not only opened up to foreign intellectuals,

but it was also willing to trust foreign people, which was even more important at a time

of fierce contests. For instance, as shown in Zizhi-tongjian (Sima.G, 2007), General Si

Li did not originate from Qin. He was born to an ethnic group labelled ‘barbarians’ from

the southwestern commandery of Shu, but he was nevertheless chosen as a leader of

the Qin army.

Based on this fact, it can be deduced that many foreigners, i.e. the non-Huaxia ethnic

population, served Qin in various positions, and in return Qin trusted them. By

promoting foreigners to high-ranking positions and offering them enough trust, Qin

possibly established emotional attachment with those foreign talents and intellectuals

beyond simple, interest-based relations. As Guibernau (2013: 142) argues, emotion is

one of the most powerful triggers for political mobilisation, as it can become “a source

of… loyalty, solidarity and readiness to self-sacrifice”. Establishing emotional

attachment with foreign talents and intellectuals would have made them feel at home,

thus encouraging their incorporation into the Qin community, which would in turn

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strengthen Qin’s competitiveness against its rivals. These guest officials, who earned

their success in Qin, would then become exemplars for those capable and talented

people in other kingdoms across China, which might then encourage increasing

numbers of foreign people to join Qin to maximise their personal value. By doing this,

not only did Qin succeed in attracting elites and intellectuals from across China, but

also enhanced the inclusiveness of the Qin community, which in turn boosted the

attractiveness of the Qin state and thereby reshaped the power structure amongst

competing Chinese states in the long run.

6.1.2 Fragility of the Chinese community and opposition from local communities

Nevertheless, social integration is usually accompanied by antagonism. Qin’s openness

to foreign intellectuals, at the same time, caused dissatisfaction in local communities,

especially among the aristocracy. The anger and dissatisfaction of the Qin people

towards the increasing number of foreigners is evident in the case of the Zheng Guo

Canal, described in Shiji (Sima.Q, 1999). In 247 BC, Zheng Guo, a professional

hydraulic engineer, travelled to Qin to persuade the Qin government to build a canal

along the Guanzhong Plain – Qin’s core territory, which would help improve the

irrigation system throughout the region and hence augment agricultural productivity.

However, this project was later found a stratagem to reduce Qin’s short-term potential

in war by leading Qin’s population towards building infrastructure, even though in the

long run it would still improve agricultural production. Once this was discovered, Qin’s

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aristocrats believed there were too many foreigners serving in the Qin kingdom and that

they should not be offered any important positions, as they might be spies from other

Chinese states. King Zheng of Qin recognised the value of the project and ordered

Zheng Guo to continue building the canal, he was nevertheless pressurised by Qin’s

aristocrats to expel all the foreigners serving in Qin (Sima.Q, 1999). Even though today

we can easily conceive it as the jealousy of Qin’s aristocrats seeing foreigners ranked

higher than themselves, the king still accepted this request by the aristocracy, in order

to release political pressure.

Amongst the foreigners being expelled, Li Si had written the famous Jian-zhukeshu (Li,

n.d.), in which he demonstrated that the rise of the Qin state was closely related to an

influx of foreigners and the contributions they subsequently made. Li Si addressed the

notion that that following the founding of the Qin state, there were three peaks

(excluding final unification) during which eight key ministers contributed to these

successes, all of whom were foreigners while one of them was even a person from an

ethnic group in a remote area of China, perceived as ‘primitive’ and ‘barbaric’. The

pamphlet argued that “All the four greatest monarchs in Qin’s history got their

achievements due to the contributions of foreign guest officials. From this point of view,

guest officials did not let Qin down!” (Li, n.d.) Moreover, Li (n.d.) pointed out that

discarding foreigners away to other countries, rejecting guest officials away to rival

states and refraining talented people from coming to Qin was just like “lending a

weapon to the enemy, offering food to thieves”, which would lead to a catastrophic

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situation. He further explained that several important products required by Qin were

from places outside its territory, even though they were valuable; additionally, a

considerable number of people were not born in Qin, but they were nevertheless willing

to serve the Qin kingdom. On receiving the Jian-zhukeshu by Li Si, King Zheng realised

his mistake and soon ordered government officials to welcome these foreign guest

officials back to Qin.

6.1.3 Summary: Qin’s attempt at opening-up and incorporation

In summary, this is a good example of how the Qin state managed to reshape the

existing social and political power structure across the Chinese community by offering

interesting incentives and then establishing emotional attachment with foreign people

and talents. Just as Guibernau (2013) acknowledges, emotional power is deemed crucial

by elites, due to its potential as a powerful trigger for political mobilisation, which can

then reshape the power structure in the social and political arenas. Starting with

motivating them through material and career interests (official position), Qin initially

attracted a number of foreign talents and intellectuals and then tried to establish an

emotional attachment by offering sufficient trust and high-ranking positions to them.

This offered these foreigners a sense of self-esteem and a feeling of being trusted, which

thus encouraged their incorporation into the Qin community. As a result of this

openness and incorporation, foreign talents and intellectuals made an important

contribution to Qin’s rise and triumph, thereby facilitating the eventual unification of

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China in 221 BC, following which a united Chinese community began to take shape.

However, on the other hand, social integration projects were unavoidably accompanied

by conflicts, as the push for inclusivity caused dissatisfaction, jealousy and antagonism

among the local people, notably the hereditary aristocrats who used to dominate Qin’s

high-ranking official positions. To sustain their dominance and interests, they even

requested the king to expel all foreign guest officials. This signifies the difficulty and

fragility of social incorporation across different communities – while incorporating

foreign talents may strengthen the capacity of the state, it may also lead to domestic

social and political conflicts that could ruin a state if not managed properly.

6.2 Control over Territory: Social Penetration of Political

Institutions in the Post-Unification Qin Dynasty

6.2.1 Administration and bureaucracy as a tool for social integration

As shown in ancient historical literature and government documents, the centralised

bureaucracy, which spread across China following Qin’s conquest of the Chinese states,

was still an essential force in terms of social integration in post-unification China. Just

as Mann (1986; 1988), Weber (1976) and Rustow (1980) argue, warfare leads to the

extension of the power network (social, economic, political and ideological power) of

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a particular community beyond its boundaries, with the aim of restructuring existing

power relations. After unification, the Qin started to expand their political system across

the entire Chinese community, transforming the whole country into a centralised ‘3+4’

decision-making structure (Sima.Q, 1999; Shang, 2009; Liu, 2009): the '3' refers to the

three-level centralised socio-political structure, including central government, Jun

(commandery) and Xian (county), whilst the '4' means the four-hierarchy base structure

below Xian level, connecting ordinary people at the bottom to the superstructure at the

top: Xiang (borough), Ting (ten Chinese miles), Li (one Chinese mile) and Wu (five

households). The difference is, the three upper hierarchies belonged directly to the

central government, whose officials were directly appointed by its upper hierarchy and

had to follow top-down commands from the central government. Whereas in the four

lower hierarchies, there was slightly more autonomy, as its officials could be either

appointed by their superiors or elected and recommended by local communities. This

was quite different between the Qin and its succeeding Chinese dynasties – the Qin

achieved complete control over all its administrative hierarchies, and it was therefore

able to enforce its commands down to every household, whereas all of the Qin's

succeeding Chinese imperial dynasties only held mandatory power at the county level

and beyond.

The bureaucratic organisation of the Qin was highly centralised. Any command made

by the central government would be passed down through a postal system across its

territory (Sima.Q, 1999). Below central government there were juns (commanderies)

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that were responsible for managing a considerable piece of land (small commanderies

were of similar size to the Greater London area, whereas large ones might be as big as

the whole of England). According to Liye Qin Bamboo Slips (Chen et al., 2016), the

governor of each jun was called a taishou, a leading official appointed by central

government to rule the commandery. Below the commandery level was the xian

(county). Despite the fact that there are quite a few descriptions about different jun

available from historical sources, being a key administrative hierarchy, xians are not

mentioned much in the Liye Qin Bamboo Slips, apart from the name ‘Qianling Xian’,

which turned up several times in the bamboo slips. Below the county level there is a

xiang (borough). As shown in the Liye Qin Bamboo Slips, it seems that the Qin had

good communication and control over this level. Slice 8-39, for instance, records that

"Chu, the mayor of Qiling Xiang, together with his assistant Xian, has died in year 28

of King Zheng (218 BC)". However, there is some ambiguity here. In the following

sentence it says, "Chu, the mayor of Qi'ling Xiang, together with his assistant Yuan, has

died in year 29 of King Zheng” (217 BC). However, slices 8-1783 and 8-1852 note that

Chu was fined two jia (an ancient currency unit during the Qin) in year thirty of King

Zheng (216 BC). Therefore, it is unclear why these government documents were

recorded in this way. Nevertheless, this recording shows at least the bureaucracy of the

Qin dynasty were well-informed about what happened at the borough level.

Furthermore, the three boroughs Duxiang, Erchun and Qiling are frequently mentioned

in the Liye Qin Bamboo Slips, showing that good communication was maintained

between the county level and the borough level so that information could be exchanged

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frequently, which indirectly reflects the effectiveness of the administrative systems in

these places. Below the borough level was a ting, whose leader was called a tingzhang.

However, the ting’s function in the administrative hierarchy is ambiguous. While Chen

et al. (2012) believe it was a solid administrative hierarchy below the xiang and above

the li, other scholars have completely different thoughts. In the chapter Xiaolü of

Shuihudi Qin Bamboo Slips (Chen et al., 2012), tingzhang is listed on the same

hierarchal level as a warehouse manager or an agriculture manager in a borough. In the

Qin's succeeding dynasty – the Han, ting refers to the institution responsible for

inspecting markets, which can be proved by pottery dating back to the Han dynasty

(Chen et al., 2012). Below the ting level there was the li, the second-lowest hierarchy

in the administration system of the Qin dynasty, and the lowest permanent position for

government officials. Literally, li means one Chinese mile. The leader of a li was called

a lizheng, or dian in the Shuihudi Qin Bamboo Slips (Chen et al., 2012). Finally, a wu

was the lowest hierarchy and not an official position. Wu literally means ‘five’ in the

Chinese language, and the term refers to a unit of five households. According to

Hanshu12, the leader of a wu was directly elected from the five households.

According to Collins (1999), the capacity of states to promote ethnic integration

depends largely on the extent of state penetration into society – the pre-modern empires

in the form of layered tribute states were weak in in terms of assimilating populations,

due to their indirect rule across the empire, thus making central government less

12 Book of Han
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penetrative; modern nation-states, by contrast, had much greater capacity in

assimilating non-Han ethnic groups into the dominant group, as they were more

penetrative and therefore had the “capacity to impose the culture of the dominant group

through its public institutions, including education, produces either assimilation or

minority ethnic counter mobilization to achieve a separate state” (Hutchinson, 2017:

90). As we can see from historical sources, even though the Qin dynasty was a pre-

modern empire, it was not a layered tribute state in the same way as the Zhou dynasty;

rather, it was a centralised state with a precise bureaucratic system penetrating deep

down to the very bottom of society. This strengthened its ability to promote social

integration.

Evidence shows that the penetration of the Qin’s centralised bureaucracy was part of its

integration strategy after unification. By examining the Liye Qin Bamboo Slips, it seems

that the Qin developed a widely effective assimilation strategy and governance in the

newly conquered territory. First of all, it can be deduced that the Qin established an

effective system to assimilate and support conquered territory. For instance, there is a

word appearing on the slice 8-1516, xindili, which means a government official who is

appointed to govern a newly conquered territory (Yu, 2009). Although that is simply

one word, it is interesting to consider that it was also used in other ancient documents,

such as slice No.6 slice in the tomb, slice No.4 in the Shuihudi Qin Bamboo Slips and

slices No. 893 and No. 1113 in the Yuelu Bamboo Slips (Chen et al., 2012). Therefore,

this governmental position was unlikely to have been an occasional arrangement, but

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rather a permanent position in a well-structured governmental plan. Moreover,

historical sources also show that the Qin installed the same type of administrative

system in the conquered territory, fully identical to the one implemented in its original

territory. On slice 8-38 of the Liye Qin Bamboo Slips appears 'Chengdu Ting’, while

'Zhi Xian' is found on the reverse side of slice 8-197. Ting and xian are two

administrative hierarchies in the Qin’s bureaucratic apparatus: Chengdu Ting was

originally the territory of the Shu kingdom, and Zhi Xian was originally territory

belonging to the Ba kingdom, both of which were located in southwestern China,

neighboured the kingdom of Qin and were later annexed by Qin in 316 BC. The fact

that Qin's administrative documents were written in the town of Liye approximately a

century after its conquest, shows that the Qin achieved a single, unified, top-down

administrative structure even in those places beyond its original territory. This is an

example of how large civilisations were created through the coercive means of

integration – conquest, in Rustow’s (1980) sense. The more competitive community,

namely the Qin state, became the conqueror, “offer[ing] alternative organizational

means of social control” (Mann, 1986: 2) by expanding its power network (socio-

political system) to the conquered Ba and Shu kingdoms, whereas the conquered Ba

and Shu societies, according to Simmel (1955), would then be completely transformed

in the sense of values, social principles and human practices. In this way, the conquered

communities were assimilated and then integrated into the larger Qin society.

Nevertheless, whether or not the Qin really did gain effective control over the bottom

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layers of society remains a question – to what extent did a pre-modern agrarian empire

have the ability to penetrate its administrative institutions in this way? Though China’s

centralised administrative institutions first emerged in the Qin and Han dynasties, with

a chain of command established through central government – commandery – county

– borough – li (one Chinese mile or 100 households) – shi (10 households) – wu (5

households), it was unable to achieve complete control over the lower hierarchies of

society at the time (Sima.Q, 1999; Shang, 2009; Ban, 1962). There is a long-lasting,

very old saying in Mandarin that “Emperor's influence will not penetrate below the

county level, and everything below the county level is ruled by the squires”. According

to Xuan (2016), even though the attempt to penetrate administrative institutions began

in the Spring and Autumn period, the Chinese central government did not infiltrate the

bottom of society throughout its 2,000-year imperial history – governance below the

county level was usually a compromise between central government and local clans

and squires. It was not until the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949 that

central government gained a permanent presence across all administrative hierarchies,

straight down to the very bottom, which then allowed it to control matters down to the

household level, owing to the reshaping of the organisational hierarchy and

improvements in communication technology (Zhou, 2005). Because of this, despite

historical sources indicating that the Qin did have a firm control over the lower social

strata, this fact might be less evident than historical sources reflect.

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 6.2.2 Qin’s legal system as a tool for homogenisation and collective identity

formation

Apart from the bureaucracy, the legal system was the key ruling instrument of the Qin.

Being a Legalist society after the reforms of Lord Shang, the Qin’s legal system also

made an important contribution to social integration in the post-unification Qin Empire.

As shown in Chapter 5, the Qin state was keen to unify people's customs, habits and

behaviours. As previous studies argue, modern states are widely believed to be coercive

forces that sustain their political authority through the legitimate use of violence within

the sovereign territory (Tilly, 1992; Weber, 1976; Treitschke, 1914; Mosca, 1939;

Mann, 1993 & 2006; Poggi, 2001; Collins, 1975; Oppenheimer, 2007; Malesevic,

2010). Qin’s attempt to promote social integration through the legal system can be seen

as an example of how the state tries to achieve its aims by enforcing its will through

utilising the coercive force of its legal system. Therefore, the implementation of various

kinds of law, in this case, became a crucial means of achieving social integration across

the Chinese community in the post-unification era. According to a provincial governor's

speech recorded in the bamboo slips, "In the old days, all people had their own customs,

people's likes and dislikes were different. This could be either inconvenient for the

people or detrimental to our country. Therefore, his majesty has made a law to redress

people's thinking, to abandon evil behaviours and to remove coarse customs. Laws are

barely complete and sufficient enough, because lots of people are dishonest

opportunists, that is why there are commands to supplement the imperfections of laws.”

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This sentence illustrates a clear social engineering attempt during the Qin dynasty,

whose government intended to restructure society in an ideal way of the emperor and

government officials.

As we can see from both the Liye Qin Bamboo Slips (Chen et al., 2016) and the Corpus

of Qin Bamboo Slips (Chen et al., 2012), Qin laws were extremely specific and detailed.

For instance, laws on animal husbandry required an appraisal of cattle on a regular basis,

and farmers and related government officials would be rewarded and punished

according to their performance. In another law on farming, details related to how many

seeds should be used on every unit of farmland, and both farmers and government

officials had the responsibility to enforce this law.

Unifying the written Chinese character

Following the unification of China in 221 BC, the Qin dynasty carried out a series of

policies aiming at homogenising Chinese society, including written Chinese characters,

the track width of carriages, units of measurement, moral principles and ethics (Sima.Q,

1999; Sima.G, 2007). While these measures would all give rise to the integration of a

newly united Chinese society, it is worth noting that the homogenisation of Chinese

characters has greater significance than other policies in terms of generating a collective

identity for the Chinese community. As we can see from the image below, the seven

competing Chinese states had seven different fonts, which made communication among

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people of different origins fairly difficult. Qin’s homogenisation of Chinese characters

therefore generated a shared cultural basis for a united Chinese society under Qin’s rule,

which thus enabled interaction and communication among the Chinese people of

different origins. As a form of written language, the Chinese character is not only an

important symbol of ‘Chineseness’, but it is also a key vehicle of Chinese myths and

memories under the ethno-symbolist framework, which has the potential to generate

emotional attachment among the Chinese community. Moreover, achieving cultural

homogeneity through the standardisation of a universal language is also conceived as a

basis for a solid ethnic foundation by modernist thinkers (Gellner, 2006; Anderson,

1991; Hobsbawm, 1983 & 1990), although they tend to deny the possibility of cultural

homogeneity in pre-modern society. Even though, nowadays, the Chinese language still

belongs to five different language families, with ten factions, 80+ types of dialects and

thousands of different local accents across China (Sun, 2007), and there are still

completely different dialects even between two nearby villages, a unitary written

language has removed major barriers for people across China to communicate with each

other, which began with the Qin. Though evolving over time, the Chinese characters

can still be read and understood by contemporary Chinese people, which itself is a proof

of cultural continuity – the development of Chinese pre-modern Chinese culture over

la longue durée. This is why the Qin can be seen as the forebear of China’s pre-modern

ethnic foundation, at least in terms of culture.

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However, a standardised Chinese character may not be enough to prove the existence

of a pre-modern national community in ancient China. Both modernists and ethno-

symbolists have argued that a major difficulty in confirming a proto-nation lies in how

to define and verify popular consciousness of pre-modern communities – there is no

guarantee whether a sense of nationalist-sounding discourse or communal sentiment

could have existed among ordinary people in antiquity, most of whom were illiterate

peasants (Gellner, 2006; Hobsbawm, 1983 & 1990; Anderson, 1991; Brass, 1991;

Smith, 1986).

Although there is no evidence proving the exact percentage of the literate population in

proportion to the total number of Chinese people in ancient times, the level of

productivity in the agrarian society would not be able to support a significantly literate

population – the majority of people, most of whom were peasants, could not afford to

attend school while leaving their farmland uncultivated. According to Rawski (1979),
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the overall literacy rate in the later period of the Qing dynasty (1936-1912), China’s

last imperial dynasty, was around 20% (male 30~45%, female 2~10%). This implies

that the literacy rate in earlier Chinese dynasties would have been no more than 20% of

the total population when we consider ancient China as an agrarian society. Therefore,

it can be deduced that in ancient Chinese society, the clear awareness of ‘Chineseness’

could only be found in 20% of the literate Chinese population, whereas the 80%

illiterate Chinese people were unlikely to have, or at least did not have, a clear

consciousness of belonging to the united Chinese community. Furthermore, the public

education system, which is equally as important as standard written language in

promoting cultural homogeneity (Hobsbawm, 1990; Gellner, 2006), did not appear in

Chinese society before more than a century after Qin’s unification of China. As Braudel

(1993) acknowledges, it was not until 124 BC that the Han dynasty prioritised state

education in selecting government officials, leading to the founding of the earliest

Chinese public education system, which “established an ethic and a rule of life which

tended to maintain order and hierarchy in society and the state” by teaching leading

students selected on a nationwide basis (Braudel, 1993: 176-178). Therefore, even

though the Qin standardised Chinese characters after unification, its effort might not

have been enough to generate a collective identity amongst the Chinese masses, since

most of them were illiterate. Nonetheless, Qin’s efforts at least fostered cultural

homogeneity among literate Chinese elites, thereby still making a contribution to the

emergence of a pre-modern ethnic foundation of China on the cultural aspect according

to ethno-symbolism – ethnies are “named units of population with common ancestry

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myths and historical memories, elements of shared culture, some link with a historic

territory and some measure of solidarity, at least among their elites” (Smith, 1995: 57).

6.2.5 Summary: the centralisation of state authority and the social integration of

the Chinese community in the post-unification Qin dynasty

To sum up, the expansion of Qin’s socio-political system was an important move during

social integration in post-unification China. This highly centralised bureaucratic

administration allowed the top-down flow of commands from central government to

trickle down to individuals on the bottom of the social hierarchy. On the positive side,

this organisational structure could be highly efficient and effective, as every hierarchy

was directly responsible to and accountable for its higher hierarchy so that policies

could be precisely passed down the chain of command. In this way, the entire state

became one unitary machine, since every single person on every hierarchal level could

simply follow commands issued by central government. This would be helpful in

fostering a shared collective identity, as everyone in this community was moving in the

same direction, aiming at the same goal. Moreover, as this type of centralised socio-

political structure was highly similar to a military or a corporate chain of command

focusing on efficiency, it would be more efficient in moblising sources than the

traditional Chinese feudal system (enfeoffment) in the pre-Qin age. According to the

Shuihudi Qin Bamboo Slip (Che et al. 2012), Qin’s bureaucracy in central government

had the ability to govern every household in the empire, all the way down the

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institutional hierarchy. In this way, Qin’s centralised bureaucratic system could

establish more effective communication with every hierarchy, no matter whether for a

top-down command or a bottom-up reply.

However, this advancement in governance could have been over-advanced for an

ancient empire such as the Qin dynasty in the third century BC. A complex centralised

socio-political system would have been highly costly in terms of resources – both time

and money. Not only did information need time to process through the hierarchical

structure, but many matters also needed a huge number of bureaucrats and civil servants

to deal with them. This would have been a huge fiscal burden for the Qin, especially in

view of the fact that the relatively low level of social productivity in agrarian society

(compared to modern industrialised societies) at that time (2000 years ago) was unlikely

to have been able to support an organisational structure of this scale and scope. This is

a key reason why there have been continuous doubts over the penetration of Qin’s

administrative system into Chinese society. As we can see from later Chinese history

(Liu, 2009), Qin’s succeeding Chinese dynasties could barely afford to run this

centralised socio-political system with its 3+4 hierarchical structure. Instead, the

authority of the central government in the Han dynasty could only reach the top three

hierarchies (central government – commandery – county), while the authority of the

lower hierarchies was actually beyond the reach of central government. Rather, local

authority was transferred from central government to the local clans and squires,

offering them substantial autonomy. As a result, coercion by central government thus

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became more necessary in order to prevent the hierarchies from a potential revolt

against the kingdom that could have threatened unity. Military deterrence, as a form of

coercive power wielded by the central government, therefore became the

complementary solution to safeguarding the unity of a rapidly expanding, increasingly

diverse Chinese empire, alongside the centralised bureaucracy that spread across China.

The centralisation of state power remained a crucial characteristic of Qin’s socio-

political system, and a key element of ensuing Chinese imperial dynasties and even

today's China, albeit modern technology allows more interaction among the hierarchies.

Furthermore, the Qin tended to incorporate every piece of land equally into its territory,

installing exactly the same socio-political system in conquered territory, which is fairly

different from the colonial system employed by Western empires since the Age of

Discovery (Curtin, 1973). Based on the names and titles appearing on bamboo slips, it

can be deduced that Qin's socio-political system and centralised administrative

institutions were replicated across conquered lands since the Warring States period,

treating every piece of conquered land the same as its original territory on the

Guanzhong Plain. Just as Fan Ju told King Zhaoxiang of Qin in 271 BC, this allowed

every piece of conquered territory to be readily incorporated into the Qin community,

which eased Qin’s social engineering project aiming at homogenising the newly united

Chinese community. In this way, the Qin expanded their power network across China

and enhanced people's collective identity by offering a homogeneous, centralised socio-

political system.

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6.3 The Role of Migration, Mixed residency and Marriage for Social

Integration in the Qin Empire

Even though military power and centralised administrative institutions could effectively

suppress attempts to disintegrate the empire, a large and ethnically diverse community

could only be firmly sustained if people really felt they were living in a homogeneous

community. That is, according to ethno-symbolism, establishing an emotional

attachment between individuals and their collective community. To deal with an ever-

expanding territorial domain and increasing ethnic diversity, state-driven migration

movements, mixed residency and inter-ethnic marriage thus became one of Qin’s key

governmental strategies, aiming at acquiring permanent social solidarity in society,

which would then sustain the newly united Chinese community (Sima.Q, 1999; Chen

et al., 2016).

6.3.1 State-driven migration: settlement of Qin people with peripheral ethnic

groups

Historical sources show that the Qin state frequently sent criminals and migrants to

newly conquered territories, exiling old nobles and aristocrats in the other six kingdoms

away from their homeland (Sima.Q, 1999; Chen et al., 2016). This created the

requirement for Qin migrants and government officials to live together with the

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aboriginal population in the newly conquered territory, thereby spreading Chinese

civilisation and the social, political, economic and cultural systems of the Qin, in an

effort to incorporate locals into the larger Chinese community (Sima.Q, 1999; Chen et

al., 2016). The Chinese character ‘relocate’ (qian 迁) has appeared multiple times in

historical records about the Qin, which indicates that sending Qin people to newly

conquered territories was a measure frequently employed by the Qin state to stabilise

its peripheral ethnic regions:

“Year twenty-one of King Zhao [xiang] (286 BC), Sima Cuo attacked Henei of Wei kingdom.

The Wei kingdom gave up Anyi to the Qin, the Qin expelled Wei residents in the city,

migrating voluntary Qin residents to Anyi city by offering these immigrants noble titles,

officially amnestied people were also moved to there…” (Sima.Q, 1999, Ch.5).

“Year twenty-seven, Sima Cuo attacked the kingdom of Chu, [the government] amnestied

convicted people and relocated them to Nanyang [conquered from the Chu kingdom]”

(Sima.Q, 1999, Ch.5).

“Year twenty-eight, General Bai Qi attack the kingdom of Chu, conquered cities Bi and Deng,

[the government] amnestied convicted people and relocated them to these places” (Sima.Q,

1999, Ch.5).

“Year thirty-four, Qin settled its relations with Wei and Han, turning Shangyong into a

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commandery, migrating surrendered Nanyang residents there” (Sima.Q, 1999, Ch.5).

“October Year fifty, due to his disagreement with the king (of Qin) and refusal to lead the

Qin army to attack Handan city, the capital of Zhao kingdom, General Bai Qi annoyed the

king (of Qin) and was then demoted to an ordinary soldier, relocated to Yinmi” (Sima.Q,

1999, Ch. 5 & 73).

“Year eight of King Zheng, the king’s younger brother Lord Chang’an, whose name is

Chengjiao, attacked the Zhao kingdom but renegaded, died in Tunliu, all officers were killed,

and local residents were relocated to Lintao (north-western border)” (Sima.Q, 1999, Ch. 6).

“In the Year Nine of King Zheng (238 BC), in which Marquess Changxin (named Lao Ai)

failed in his rebellion against King Zheng, he and his associates were all arrested. Twenty

major leaders of the rebellion all got their heads chopped off, their bodies cracked by

carriages and shown to the masses, and their entire families were killed. Their vassals

charged with minor offences were adjudicated to do manual labour. Another four thousand

families who had their noble titles deprived were relocated to Shu Jun (commandery), living

in Fangling” (Sima.Q, 1999, Ch. 6 & 85).

“Year Twelve Marquess Wenxin Lü Buwei died and his funeral was carried out in secret.

His vassals, whose origin was Jin (from the kingdom of Han, Zhao and Wei), were deported

from Qin Kingdom; his vassals who were Qin citizens and earned an annual salary of over

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600 dan were to get[?] their noble title removed[?] and were required to relocate elsewhere;

those whose annual salary was below 500 dan were asked to relocate elsewhere without

having their noble titles removed” (Sima.Q, 1999, Ch. 6).

Year thirty-two, “Emperor Shihuang assigned General Meng Tian to attack Hu barbarians to

the north with 300,000 Qin troops, conquered the territory on the south bank of Yellow River”

(Sima.Q, 1999, Ch.6).

“Year thirty-three, conscripting fugitives, son-in-law of matrilocal families and merchants

to attack the Luliang region, setting up Guiling Jun (commandery), Xiang Jun and Nanhai

Jun, assigning demoted government officials to defend the new territories” (Sima.Q, 1999,

Ch.6).

“500,000 people were relocated to the five-mountain region, living together with local Yue

aboriginals” (Sima.G, 2007, Ch. 7).

“Year thirty-four, the government exiled judicial officials who abused the law, released

guilty criminals and jailed people due to their misjudgement to build the Great Wall or

relocate them to Nanyue region” (Sima.G, 2007, Ch.7).

“Year thirty-six of King Zheng, relocated 30,000 households to Beihe Yuzhong (northern

border)” (Sima.Q, 1999, Ch.6).

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 “Roads to Ba Jun (commandery) and Shu Jun are dangerous and difficult to pass, exiled Qin

people all live in Shu Jun” (Sima.Q, 1999, Ch. 7).

“At the beginning of the reform, some people thought the new laws were convenient while

others conceived them as inconvenient. Shang Yang regarded both of them as disturbing the

codes of conduct and relocated all these people to cities on the border” (Sima.Q, 1999, Ch.

68).

“Demoted migrants were living together with local Yue people for over thirteen years”

(Sima.Q, 1999, Ch. 113).

As demonstrated in the quotations above, there were in total at least 15 government-led

migrations within 75 years (286 – 221 BC) between Qin’s rise as the most powerful

Chinese kingdom and its unification of the Chinese community in 221 BC, during

which time four monarchs ruled the Qin kingdom. This was on average one migration

project every five years, which implies that state-driven migration, and in many cases

forced migration, was a frequently used policy of the Qin government as a means of

achieving social solidarity and social integration – and in many cases social assimilation

of populations within newly subjugated areas.

These migrations were the Qin’s attempt to spread its people across its rapidly

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expanding territory and to place them among ethnic communities that were often

perceived as less civilised and primitive. The ideology underlying their migration can

be analysed in terms of a ‘civilising mission’, as these migrants were meant to introduce

the socio-political system of the Qin and spread their sense of the Chinese civilisation.

As the Qin had already established its power prestige over these ethnic communities by

war, the migration of the Qin people into those ethnic regions, according to Weber

(1968), can be seen as the state’s attempt to promote the cultural prestige of Chinese

civilisation across these ethnic communities and then cultivate a sense of common

myths, symbols and collective memories, which would in turn foster their emotional

attachment to the Chinese community according to ethno-symbolist perspective (Smith,

1986 & 1991; Guibernau, 2007 & 2013; Hutchinson, 1987, 2000 & 2005). Qin’s

strategies associated with migration and the incorporation of foreigners may be seen as

another source feeding the emergence of China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation on the

social dimension.

The Qin relocated a variety of people, such as criminals and political prisoners, to the

remotest edges of the empire in the post-unification era (Sima.Q, 1999; Chen et al.,

2012; Chen et al., 2016). This act seems similar to the situation 2,000 years later when

the modern British Empire decided to exile criminals from the home country to colonies

like Australia (Reid, 2017; Maxwell-Stewart, 2010; Oxley, 1996). Throughout imperial

history over the past 2,000 years, Chinese empires have tried to introduce and replicate

the socio-political system to new territories, attempting to develop new territories to the

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same standard as the core, as long as the natural environment has not been too poor. In

this way, ancient Chinese empires spread their own civilizisation to newly conquered

territory, together with mixed residency and marriage, which after decades would

integrate the conquered ethnic communities into the Chinese ethnic core, which would

then generate a new ethnic core as the conquered ethnic communities diminished and

were integrated into the new ethnic core of the Chinese community. This is what ethno-

symbolists mean by ‘continuous ethnic self-renewal’ – the cultural contents of ethnic

identity may evolve over time under certain circumstances, such as war and conquest,

exile and enslavement, as well as the influx of immigrants and religious conversion

(Smith, 1991).

However, on the other hand, we have to understand that this kind of state-driven

migration would in no way have been a pleasant journey, which would thus make it

unfavourable for those people who were required or forced to move away from the

place in which they had lived for generations. Most migratory movements during Qin’s

rule were not generated by the wills of the migrants themselves, but rather on the

political, military and economic objectives of the Qin state (Liu et al., 2021).

Considering that most destinations were in peripheral and ethnic regions far away from

the migrants’ place of origin at the Chinese core, these forced migration projects would

no doubt have been a heavy burden for the migrants, thus generating anger and

dissatisfaction towards the Qin government. This might be implicitly reflected by an

unusual fact at the end of the Qin dynasty – when Qin’s 500,000 southern legion refused

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to rescue the capital city under siege (Sima.Q, 1999). In most cases, there would have

been no reason why Qin’s southern legion did not march back to defend the Qin state

in the case of a revolt. Surprisingly, not only did they refuse to rescue the Qin Empire,

but they also killed some local government officials appointed by central government

and then founded their own state of Nan-Yue. It is not a surprise to see a few high-

ranking commanders wanted to declare independence from the Qin at such a chaotic

time, but it was really astonishing when 500,000 agreed to stay in the region of Nanyue

and live together with local Yue people, at least those soldiers did not oppose this

decision made by their senior commanders. This therefore implies that the 500,000

soldiers in the southern legion did not favour Qin’s rule; otherwise, they would not have

been willing to stay in the region of Nan-Yue and separate themselves completely from

the Qin Empire. This is an example of the fragility of the united Chinese community,

where unity and social cohesion have been contested and subject to power struggles

throughout the history of China.

6.3.2 Non-Huaxia ethnic communities and their incorporation and integration

into Qin society

Details about non-Han ethnic groups have also been found in bamboo slips and ancient

historical literature. The word Shubang (属邦) appeared on slice 8-657 of the Liye Qin

Bamboo Slips and also on slice No. 201 of the Shuihudi Qin Bamboo Slips. According

to Chen et al. (2012) and Hanshu (Liu, 2009), Shubang refers to the government

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institution responsible for managing relevant affairs of non-Han ethnic groups, which

is evident from the inscriptions on ancient weapons from the Qin age. In modern

language, it can be understood as the Bureau of Vassal State Administration. Moreover,

on slice 8-657 of the Liye Qin Bamboo Slips, the name Dangqu Dao appears. According

to Hanshu, Dangqu was the name of a county in the commandery of Ba, which is

today's southwestern China. It acknowledges that Dao was the name for the county-

level administration set up in regions where residents were mostly peripheral ethnic

communities. Hanshu also notes that the xian (county) granted to kings were called

‘states’, the xian granted to empress dowagers, empresses and princes were called yi,

while the xian administrations that consisted of non-Huaxia ethnic groups were called

dao. Slices 8-1449 & 8-1484 of the Liye Qin Bamboo Slips contain further information

about ethnic communities. There is a word "Man-geng" noted down on slices 8-1449

and 8-1484. Chen et al. (2012) suggest it seems to mean 'barbarians' corvee', which

refers to the duty of free labour owed by ethnic communities to the government.

According to Hou-Hanshu13 (Fan, 2009), following Qin’s conquest of the kingdom of

Ba, King Huiwen of Qin granted the ruling house of the Ba kingdom the role of the

leader of all peripheral ethnic communities, requiring every generation male member

of the house of Ba to marry a Qin woman. The Qin also regulated that people who were

granted noble titles would not have corvee, but they would be able to use their noble

titles to offset a criminal offence. These details show that engagement with ethnic

groups had already been institutionalised during Qin’s time. It is also notable that ethnic

13 Book of Later Han.

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communities were not equally perceived by the Qin, since they were given a special

form of address under the Qin administration, plus these ethnic groups also received an

additional ‘barbarian corvee’ that only applied to non-Huaxia communities.

The simultaneous existence of the two types of county-level administrations, xian and

dao, indicates that social integration between the Huaxia community and the non-

Huaxia minority ethnic groups was not accomplished during the Qin’s rule. As shown

in historical sources, the non-Huaxia minority ethnic group was still treated differently

at the legal level. Therefore, it can be inferred that the centralised administrative system

did not penetrate everywhere across the Qin Empire. Rather, a certain degree of

autonomy was still granted to those ethnic regions beyond the reach of central

government. Based on this presumption, it can also be speculated that peripheral ethnic

communities at the time did not fully accept the new Chinese civilisation offered by the

Qin Empire. However, this does not indicate a failure of Qin’s policy, as the Qin dynasty,

as a united Chinese community, only lasted for fifteen years, which was far from enough

time to forge social integration and foster a sense of collective identity based upon

Chinese civilisation.

6.3.4 Summary: Qin’s social integration with non-Huaxia ethnic communities

In summary, the Qin made various attempts to forge social integration following the

conquest of new territory, both before and after unification. These measures included

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state-driven migration movements, mixed residency and inter-ethnic marriage between

the Huaxia and the non-Huaxia ethnic communities. The Qin carried out intensive state-

driven migration to the newly conquered regions, most of which consisted of ethnic

communities along the Chinese periphery. Even though migrating the Huaxia

population to these ethnic regions would spread the dominant Chinese civilisation to

ethnic communities, and hence cultivate a sense of common myths, symbols and

collective memories amongst their people, fifteen years was far from enough to

consolidate a united Chinese community with cultural homogeneity. On the contrary,

this forced migration may actually have caused anger and dissatisfaction among the

migrants, which could have deteriorated the basis of a united Chinese community under

Qin’s rule.

6.4 Collapse of the Qin Empire and the Revival of Regional

Identities

According to Shiji (Sima.Q, 1999) and Bodde (1986), despite all the attempts the Qin

made during territorial expansion, both before and after its unification of China in 221

BC, the first centralised imperial dynasty in Chinese history quickly fell into chaos and

decline following the unanticipated death of Emperor Zheng in 210 BC.

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 6.4.1 Rising rebellions and the revival of regional identities

The death of Emperor Zheng resulted in severe problems amongst both the ruling class

and the ordinary people. On the one hand, the ruling class, especially members of the

royal family and high-ranking officials, were competing for authority and political

interests; on the other hand, the Second Emperor Hu Hai further expanded the corvee

and tax burden on civilians, which therefore worsened the living standards of ordinary

people, most of whom were self-sufficient peasants that had limited capacity to afford

these extra burdens (Sima.Q, 1999). This then caused resentment on the part of the

peasants, which in turn facilitated their uprising only one year after the death of

Emperor Zheng – Qin’s founding father. As a result of the rebellions of the peasantry

and the revival of the nobility from the six former kingdoms, the Qin Empire broke up

and regional identities quickly revived (Sima.Q, 1999).

Compared to the peasant uprising, which the Qin government quickly quashed only six

months after it started, the revival of old nobilities and aristocrats had impacts on a

much greater scale and scope. Under the leadership of Xiang Yu, Qin’s territory was re-

divided into eighteen principalities in 208 BC, each of which was governed by a king.

Xiang Yu himself was titled Overlord of West Chu (Xichu Bawang 西楚霸王), i.e. the

de facto leader of all principalities. In this way, Qin’s socio-political system, run

through the centralisation of power and the corresponding commandery-county

bureaucratic system, was completely abolished. The socio-political mechanism of

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Chinese society thereby returned to the pre-Qin situation.

However, it should be clarified that the revival of the former kingdoms – Qi, Chu, Yan,

Han (韩), Zhao and Wei, although having exactly the same names as those previously

eliminated during Qin’s wars of unification, were not entirely revived by their former

noble houses. It is true that the kingdoms of Qi and Wei were still under the rule of

former royal houses, while Chu and Han were instead ruled by former aristocrats with

no connection to former royal houses. For Yan and Zhao, they were simply ruled by

civilians following the peasant rebellion. Consequently, it can be reasonably deduced

that even after fifteen years of Qin’s rule, the popularly accepted identity was still

regional identity based on former principalities, rather than the collective social identity

of the Chinese community under Qin’s rule, which the Qin Empire had made huge effort

to foster.

6.4.2 The Qin’s attempt to create social solidarity, and its challenges

As a result, it can be confirmed that the Qin’s attempt at a united Chinese community

was not overtly successful; or to a great extent, it could also be considered a complete

failure, as the unity of the Qin Empire quickly collapsed only one year after the death

of Emperor Zheng. Instead of having a period of gradual decline, like many other

imperial dynasties in Chinese history, the Qin achieved its triumph when it successfully

united the entire Chinese community but then simply collapsed into oblivion, following

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which its centralised socio-political system was abolished, its two-tier commandery-

country bureaucracy abandoned and the entire Chinese society returned to the multistate

system that had existed before unification.

Nevertheless, from another point of view, the Qin’s effort did make an impact, as this

this new version of the old Chinese society did not last long. Liu Bang, the King of Han

(汉), won the contest against Xiang Yu after being enfeoffed as the King of Han, who

then founded the second centralised imperial dynasty in Chinese history (five years

after Qin’s collapse) – the Han dynasty, the name of which later became the name for

China’s ethnic majority – the ethnic Han. As demonstrated in both Shiji (Sima.Q, 1999)

from the first century BC and Hanshu (Liu, 2009) from 105 AD, the Han dynasty

inherited most of Qin’s socio-political system, albeit with minor amendments.

Therefore, the Han dynasty was the continuation of the Qin system but with a degree

of compromise. Knowing the difficulty involved in forging a centralised empire, the

Han dynasty founder Liu Bang employed a less aggressive way to transform the

fragmented Chinese society into a centralised empire – allowing the co-existence of

limited principalities with a centralised socio-political system across the major part of

the Han empire. Those principalities were then gradually weakened by Liu Bang’s next

emperor, the influence of whom had then been mostly eliminated by the fifth emperor

of the Han, Emperor Wu, more than a century after the founding of the Han dynasty.

There could be three main reasons for Qin’s failure to forge a united Chinese community.

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First of all, the declining strength of its army could have been an important reason.

Qin’s wars of unification began in 230 BC. When the rebellion broke out in 206 BC, it

had been twenty-four years since the beginning of unification, and the generation of

soldiers who succeeded in the unification of China were already old and well past their

prime. Soldiers of the new generation would most likely have had limited or no

experience at all on the battlefield, leading to the declining military strength of the Qin

when defending against the rebellions. The peaceful times after unification could also

be another factor in failing military strength, hence making it unable to safeguard the

unity of the empire.

Second, the lack of agreement amongst the ruling class could have been another reason.

As shown in the previous chapter, Qin’s government officials had a fierce discussion

over the choice of socio-political system in the post-unification era, most of whom still

believed in the traditional fief system, which required the splitting up of territory and

apportioning a number of principalities to relatives and officials who had made a

contribution. It should be understood that the centralisation of power, as a socio-

political system, was a ground-breaking invention at the time of the third to the second

centuries BC. Even though today most modern nation-states have achieved

centralisation of power, to various extents, people in the third and second centuries BC

in China would have had great difficulty accepting this novel system, as the traditional

fief system had prevailed for over a millennium.

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Third, the fifteen-year duration of the Qin Empire, and actually eleven years from its

unification of China to the death of the First Emperor, was too short to consolidate the

unification of the Chinese community. As noted in Shiji, the Qin had actually been kind

to those former nobilities and aristocrats from the six rival states. Instead of executing

them, like many other Chinese dynasties, the Qin as the first centralised imperial

dynasty only required them to reside around Qin’s capital city Xianyang, so they could

be monitored. Therefore, when the rebellion occurred in 209 BC, those old royal houses,

noble clans and aristocrats were still alive and were able to revive their influence after

the First Emperor passed away.

Finally, the Qin’s attempt to forge a united Chinese community and its corresponding

collective social identity could have been over-ambitious. As shown in the earlier part

of this chapter, even though many Qin policies had a good starting point, their

implementation across the newly united Chinese society was nevertheless a disaster. As

we can see from the example of Qin’s succeeding dynasty – the Han, it took five

generations of emperors, stretching over a hundred years, to end the co-existence of

powerful principalities along with the commanderies and counties of the centralised

bureaucracy. Therefore, society could not be transformed in a limited period of fifteen

years, so the Qin paid a very high price for their aggressive policies relating to social

solidarity and collective social identity.

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 6.5 Conclusion: The Role of Government during the Formation of

China’s Pre-modern Ethnic Foundation

This chapter has mainly focused on how the Qin government dealt with increasing

ethnic diversity during and after its unification of the Chinese community. Social

integration, which aims to homogenise societies on the conquered territory, has always

been a tough problem for ethnically diverse societies. Making good use of talents and

intellect from across China was an essential part of social integration in the Qin state.

By opening up its domestic opportunities to foreigners, the Qin became a diverse

community, both ethnically and culturally, which in turn boosted the incorporation and

homogenisation of society.

Moreover, the centralised administrative system was another major force in promoting

social integration in the post-unification era. Its expansion allowed the penetration of

the state into the lower hierarchies of society, thus establishing more effective

communication with each hierarchy, no matter whether it was a top-down command or

a bottom-up reply. In this way, the entire state became one unitary machine, since every

single person on every hierarchal level could simply follow commands from central

government. This would be helpful in fostering a shared collective identity, as everyone

in this community was moving in the same direction, aiming at the same goal.

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Furthermore, Qin’s strategy was to unite individuals from different ethnic groups within

its territory by incorporating them into a unitary society through cultural assimilation.

Migration, marriage and mixed residency generated the possibility for interactions in

this regard. When the process of assimilation was complete, everyone would be

perceived as belonging to the ethnic majority. As this process progressed, the ethnic

majority would grow exponentially and in turn consolidate the collective social identity

of the Chinese community. This is a key reason why the population of China’s ethnic

majority, the Han Chinese, has always maintained an absolute majority (90% and above)

throughout its history – because most ethnic communities have already been

incorporated into the ethnic core through what ethno-symbolism called ‘continuous

ethnic self-renewal’.

Nevertheless, as discussed in this chapter, Qin’s social integration and incorporation

was not overtly successful; in fact, it can be seen mostly as a failure if we only consider

the sudden collapse of the Qin Empire only fifteen years after its unification of China

– the shortest statehood amongst major imperial dynasties in China’s history. However,

it is worth noticing that Qin’s efforts did make a great contribution to the emergence of

China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation in the long run – through the homogenisation of

written Chinese characters and the formation of a centralised socio-political system.

The historical significance of the Qin dynasty lies in its genesis of a social and cultural

basis for a united Chinese community. As Anderson (1991) argues, a standardised

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written language is a key trigger of national identity in modernity. Prior to Qin’s

unification of China in 211 BC, each Chinese state had its own form of written

characters and pronunciation. It was the Qin Empire that, for the first time in history,

standardised these written Chinese characters, which were then spread across the entire

Chinese community via the centralised administrative bureaucracy. Consequently,

those literate elites with a shared culture thus became the social and cultural basis for

the genesis of a Chinese pre-modern ethnic core, according to Smith (1995). Even

though the Qin only lasted for fifteen years, its standardised written Chinese characters

and centralised administrative bureaucracy were later inherited and consolidated by its

successive dynasty – the Han (West Han and East Han, 202 BC – 220 AD) for over 422

years, since when the name of the pre-modern Chinese ethnic community was known

as the Han Chinese.

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Discussion

Chapter Seven Qin’s Wars of Unification and the Formation

of China’s Pre-modern Ethnic Foundation

In the previous chapters, three major themes are identified from the empirical study.

First of all, this research confirmed the historical significance of Qin’s wars of

unification (230 – 221 BC) in the emergence of a united Chinese community. After this

series of wars, the kingdom of Qin, with strong imperialist ambition, defeated and

conquered its six major rival states across China, which is how the first centralised

imperial dynasty in Chinese history was founded. I hence argued that Qin’s unification

of China in 221 BC marks the beginning of a truly united Chinese community.

Second, this thesis explained and reflected in the findings chapters how the reforms of

Lord Shang, which prioritised Legalism as the ruling ideology, facilitated Qin’s

unification of China. Based on these findings, I argued that it was only after this series

of reforms that the Legalist doctrine was introduced into Qin society, which fostered

rule by law and the centralisation of power across the Qin state. The success of the

reforms transformed Qin into a more advanced and competitive state, which then

provided the basis for its later conquest of all rival states and the subsequent

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establishment of the first centralised Chinese empire – the Qin dynasty (221 – 207 BC).

Third, the findings of this research also highlighted the importance of government

policy in the process of Qin’s unification and the integration of Chinese society. I

examined how the Qin state attempted to promote social integration through a

comprehensive set of new governmental policies, aiming to cope with growing ethnic

diversity following its territorial expansion. I also discussed how the Qin Empire

implemented a series of policies during its expansion, aiming to unify every aspect of

society in the newly conquered territory. This caused the spread of the Qin’s social,

political, economic and cultural power network, including the unification of written

Chinese characters, track width of carriages, units of measurement, moral principles

and ethics, state-driven migration, inter-ethnic marriage and mixed residency, to the

conquered territory following its imperial expansion, before and after unification in 221

BC.

This discussion chapter will now compare the empirical findings of this thesis with

relevant themes and arguments from the literature review chapters (Chapters 1, 2 and

3). In so doing, it will answer the three research questions: (1) How did China’s pre-

modern ethnic foundation take shape (Section 7.1), (2) in what ways did war influence

the emergence and development of a Chinese ethnie in ancient China (Section 7.2) and

(3) what were the distinctive features of the ethnie in the pre-modern Chinese

community? (Section 7.3).

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 7.1 How did China’s Pre-modern Ethnic Foundation Take Shape?

7.1.1 Qin’s wars of unification – ending 500 years of incessant wars

According to the findings of this thesis, the emergence of China’s pre-modern ethnic

foundation started with Qin’s unification of China in 221 BC, following the series of

wars called Qin’s wars of unification running from 230 to 221 BC (Sima.Q, 1999;

Sima.G, 2007). Previous studies suggest that warfare is widely believed to be a

powerful generator of social integration in social, political, cultural and moral

dimensions (Durkheim, 1952; Weber, 1976; Marx, 1871, cited in Malesevic, 2010;

Sumner, 1911; Simmel, 1955; Mann, 1986; Malesevic, 2010). This is exactly the case

for Qin’s unification of China, during which warfare played a decisive role in fostering

the first centralised empire in Chinese history – the Qin dynasty (Sima.Q, 1999).

Through a series of conquests over its rival Chinese states, Qin’s wars of unification

led to a truly united Chinese community under a single, centralised state, which

provided a basis for the emergence of China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation.

Previous studies (Weber, 1976; Tilly, 1975; Treitschke, 1914; Hintze, 1975; Schmitt

1996; Poggi, 2004; Malesevic, 2010; Kaspersen, Strandsbjerg & Teschke, 2017)

consider warfare as one of the determining factors in shaping modern nation-states and

power structures across the European societies since modernity. This also fits very well

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with the birth of a centralised Chinese state in the fourth century BC. Qin’s unification

of China in 221 BC marked the ending of 550-year long socio-political turmoil since

770 BC, when the Zhou dynasty was severely weakened by the invasion of the Rong

people (Sima.Q, 1999; Sima.G, 2007). Though the Qin was not the first dynasty (it is

the fourth one) in Chinese history, it was nonetheless the first to gain direct control over

the entire Chinese community (Sima.Q, 1999; Sima.G, 2007). For the first time in

Chinese history, this realised the imagined Huaxia community under a single

centralised Chinese state. However, even though Qin’s wars of unification were the

direct cause of the first bringing together of the Chinese community, Qin’s unification

per se was actually a consequence of a much longer historical process (770 – 221 BC).

Throughout the course of 550 years, outright war was an inextricable part of Qin’s

emergence and development – establishing the Qin state through recapturing Zhou’s

former territory, which had been invaded by non-Han ethnic groups, pursuing victories

on the battlefield by reforming the socio-political system, gaining success in terms of

territorial expansion by choosing the correct strategies and conquering all rival states

to achieve the unification of China. Only after accomplishing all of these tasks did the

Qin finally establish China’s first centralised empire, which became the beginning of

an integrated Chinese community (Sima.Q, 1999; Sima.G, 2007).

Moreover, Hui (2001) is correct to identify that the international order in the Chinese

context 2,000 years ago actually followed a different logic from the Westphalian

European nation-state international order in the mid-seventeenth century, which was

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based on the logic of balance. The whole process of Qin’s emergence, development and

unification of China, just as Hui (2001) acknowledges, followed the logic of domination,

whereby only the ultimate winner would dominate the international order across China.

While Weber (1976), Tilly (1975), Hintze (1975) and Malesevic (2010) suggest that the

multi-polar socio-political power structure of Europe is deeply rooted in pre-modern

feudal states with strong military origins, the uni-polar socio-political power structure

of China after Qin’s unification, on the other hand, is also rooted in pre-221 BC feudal

states across China, which had been warring against each other from 770 to 221 BC.

Both the multi-polar European power structure and the uni-polar Chinese structure had

strong military origins (Sima.Q, 1999; Sima.G, 2007).

To summarise, Qin’s unification of China was achieved predominantly through a series

of wars, and in particular its wars of unification, which directly led to the founding of

the first centralised Chinese empire accommodating a united Chinese community under

a single state.

7.1.2 The formation of China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation

Instead of conceiving China as a nation-state, many prominent figures in academia

believe that it has never had that status throughout history – it should instead be seen

as a standing civilisation (Pye, 1990; Huntington, 1996; Braudel, 1993). According to

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Pye (1990: 58), China does not belong to the family of nations; rather, it is “a

civilization pretending to be a state”. However, as identified in this thesis, the Chinese

community founded its first centralised state following Qin’s unification of China in

221 BC and has remained a united community under a single state for most of history.

Regarding the formation of the Chinese community based on the Confucian-Legalist

civilisational basis and its internal diversity, Jacques (2009) and Zhang (2012) might be

correct to consider China as a civilisation-state, rather than the concept of nation-state

originating from Europe, despite the fact that these two types of state had many

characteristics in common during their emergence and development. Nevertheless, it is

not entirely clear, based on the findings of this research, whether China became a

civilisation-state in 221 BC. Though Jacques (2009) and Zhang (2012) are correct to

argue that the centralised Chinese state incorporated a number of states, ethnicities,

cultures and customs into a single community, Qin’s unification of China cannot prove

the civilisational nature of Chinese society in 221 BC when we consider that the

formation of the first centralised Chinese state was almost entirely achieved through

warfare and the coercive implementation of the Qin’s socio-political system. Because

of this, at least by 221 BC, no evidence would suggest that there was a strong sense of

shared belief in a common civilisation across the Chinese society despite the imagined

Chinese nation Huaxia existing for a few hundred years (Confucius, 2007; Sima.Q,

1999).

Moreover, it is also worth noticing that the Qin was a Legalist state focusing on nothing

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but warring and farming (Sima.Q, 1999; Shang, 2009). Braudel (1993), Pye (1990) and

Jacques (2009) identified Confucianism as the fundamental ideology in Chinese society,

acting as the ruling dogma of social order and daily routines. Nonetheless, this has not

been reflected in the findings of this thesis.

On the contrary, Zhao (2015) accurately contests some of the above arguments by

suggesting that the nature of Chinese society could not simply be explained by

Confucianism alone, as the whole picture of Chinese society consists of many more

aspects. Zhao (2015) is convinced that China has been a Confucian-Legalist state as a

result of both imperial expansion and traditional codes of conduct (Confucianism).

Based on the findings of this thesis, Zhao (2015: 13) is right to point out that

Confucianism was actually “a loosely defined philosophical tradition” when it first

developed in the late sixth century BC, which did not have any political significance

during the chaotic period of 770 – 221 BC. In fact, China did not become a Confucianist

state until Qin’s succeeding dynasty – the Han dynasty. Just as Braudel (1993: 176)

notes, the development of Confucianism was closely related to the prioritisation of state

education, which did not occur until 124 BC, when Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty

founded the Great School in the capital city Chang’an. The Great School represented

the highest education institution of China where a “complex body of doctrine” based

on Confucian tradition was taught to leading students selected nationwide (Braudel,

1993: 176). However, Zhao (2015) also fails to notice it was the Legalist school of

thought that was preferred as the ruling ideology in Qin and a few other Chinese states

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during the Warring States period (Sima.Q, 1999; Shang, 2009; Zhanguoce, 2007;

Sima.G, 2007). Therefore, it would be more precise to classify the first centralised

Chinese state under Qin’s rule as a Legalist-militarist state rather than as a Confucian-

Legalist state.

Furthermore, post-unification China under Qin’s rule has shown similar features to the

modern nation-building process defined by both modernism and ethno-symbolism.

According to the ethno-symbolist definition, the nation is “a named population sharing

a historic territory, common myths and historical memories, a mass public culture, a

common economy and common legal rights and duties for its members” (Smith, 1996b:

447). The Chinese community, following Qin’s unification of China, became a group

of people with common myths and historical memories as the descendants of the

imagined Huaxia community, sharing a historic territory on the eastern side of the

Eurasian continent, with mass public culture, a common economy across the Qin

Empire and a government that legislated a series of laws that defined individual rights

and duties of its citizens. Nonetheless, what disqualifies the Qin from being a national

community is the question of ‘social penetration’ – it is extremely difficult to know

whether a sense of nationalist-sounding discourse or communal sentiment could

penetrate down to ordinary people in antiquity, most of whom were illiterate peasants

(Smith,1986: 70). Just as Hobsbawm (1990: 48) argues, “discovering the sentiments of

the illiterate who formed the overwhelming majority of the world's population before

the twentieth century” is an unachievable task, as most references we have nowadays

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are the debates of the literate and elites, and their ideas therefore do not represent the

vast majority of the illiterate population in antiquity. Though no previous study can

prove the exact literacy rate in ancient China, it was surely the case that ancient agrarian

Chinese society could barely afford to educate its citizens on a large scale, most of

whom were peasants. For this reason, it can be reasonably deduced that only urban

elites and bureaucrats would have been literate at this time. For this reason, a strong

sense of citizenship and collective identity would not have existed among ancient

Chinese people despite them living under a centralised Chinese empire. Therefore, it

would be more precise to argue that post-unification China under the Qin dynasty had

some elements of modern nations, such as a centralised state system, the unification of

written Chinese characters and a common currency, but it did not achieve social

penetration among the masses, which is a key difference between the ancient agrarian

Chinese community and modern industrial European nations. Hence, it would be more

precise to conceive the post-unification China after 221 BC as a pre-modern ethnic core,

i.e. “named units of population with common ancestry myths and historical memories,

elements of shared culture, some link with a historic territory and some measure of

solidarity, at least among their elites” (Smith, 1995: 57).

To summarise, the findings of this thesis have provided solid evidence for the birth of

a united Chinese community under a centralised state – the Qin dynasty, since 221 BC.

The unification of China in 221 BC was directly and exclusively driven by warfare, and

notably Qin’s wars of unification from 230 to 221 BC, during which the kingdom of

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Qin conquered all rival states and united Chinese people under a single community.

Even though many scholars have pointed out that China has been a civilisation-state

deeply rooted in Confucianism, there is no evidence that by 221 BC this was necessarily

the case. However, this does not mean China was not a civilisation-state – although the

Chinese civilisation-state based on Confucianism was not yet in place, there is solid

evidence that the Qin and the entire Chinese community at the time promoted Legalism

as its ruling ideology, which fostered Qin’s unification of China by generating social

transformations across various aspects of Chinese society.

7.1.3 Natural protection – a geopolitical environment for a united Chinese

community

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Though findings of this research have confirmed the central role of warfare in the

founding of the first centralised Chinese state in 221 BC, this perspective has not clearly

identified the geopolitical advantage of the united Chinese community after this time,

as the geopolitical advantage of the Qin kingdom was only slightly mentioned in ancient

literature and hence in the findings of this thesis. Previous studies on the Chinese nation

and nationalism have also failed to do so. Besides advanced military strategy, stronger

productive forces and higher social mobility, it is well worth noticing that geopolitical

factors were also essential for Qin’s unification of China and the unity of the Chinese
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community in ancient China (Sima.Q, 1999).

Qin’s unification of China in 221 BC also shaped the geopolitical situation of Asia for

millennia, as this subsequently consolidated the dominant position of the Chinese

community over East Asia. Furthermore, it integrated China’s Central Plain,

Guanzhong Plain and Sichuan Basin (later, the Qin also expanded into the Pearl River

Delta Plain following its conquest of the region with 500,000 troops during 219 – 214

BC), which formed the Chinese core territory. Qin’s unification of China and the

founding of the Qin Empire led to the formation of a dominant geopolitical power in

Asia. As shown in the map above, Chinese territory occupied the majority of the best

habitat in Asia along the northern temperature zone in the northern hemisphere,

surrounded by natural barriers such as mountains, plateaus and deserts. The Burma

Plain and the Indochina Plain in Southeast Asia are naturally blocked by mountains and

jungles, let alone there were no unification across the region in history. In the South

Asia subcontinent (today’s India, Pakistan and Bangladesh), there was no unity until

British colonisation in the seventeenth century (Asher & Talbot, 2006; Taylor, 2016),

plus the region also faced the obstruction of the Himalayas – the world’s highest

mountains along the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Therefore, any power wanting to enter

Chinese core territory from the west would have to pass an unacceptably long way

around through deserts and mountains. The situation in East Asia was even simpler.

Chinese people did not gain control over the Northeast China Plain until a millennium

after Qin’s unification of China in 221 BC, and the region was not very developed until

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the nineteenth century, as the freezing weather was not at all suitable for farming – the

basis of Chinese agrarian society (Zhao, n.d.). Whereas for the Kanto Plain of Japan, it

was not developed until the seventeenth century (Sansom, 1961) and was too small to

become geopolitically competitive against the Chinese core in ancient times, unless

there is a generational difference of civilisation (i.e. agrarian society vs. industrial

society) – for instance, while for the past 200 years Japan has been an industrialised

society, China has remained an agrarian society and hence has had no strength against

Japan, even though Japan is much smaller in size and geopolitically less advantageous.

As a result of China’s geopolitical advantage, however, no other community was able

to challenge its dominance in East Asia throughout the ancient and early modern eras.

Therefore, based on the findings of this thesis, I would hence argue that Qin’s

unification of China in 221 BC established the geopolitical advantage of the Chinese

community in East Asia before the growing up of other potential geopolitical power

centres in the region. This in turn generated a favourable external environment for the

emergence and development of China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation.

7.1.4 Summary: warfare and social and legal reforms – the key to China’s first

unification

To summarise, Qin’s wars of unification between 230 and 221 BC played a fundamental

role in the creation of the first centralised Chinese empire – the Qin dynasty, which

became the basis for the emergence of China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation for the

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first time in history through the use of collective violence. Qin’s success was heavily

based on its considerable military advantage over its rival Chinese states. Nonetheless,

in contrast to previous studies that argue that China is a civilisation-state rooted deeply

in Confucianism, Qin’s unification of China was actually driven by the Legalist doctrine

and a Legalist-militarist socio-political system created through the reforms of Lord

Shang (discussed in the following Section 7.2). Furthermore, this unification also

brought about an advantageous external geopolitical environment for the united

Chinese community, which set up and safeguarded China’s dominance of East Asian

continent since then. Qin’s wars of unification not only fostered a united Chinese

community under a centralized Chinese state, but also made a decisive contribution to

China’s dominant geopolitical environment in East Asia, which had since then

supported the unity of the Chinese community and in turn facilitated the emergence of

China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation.

7.2 In what ways did war influence the emergence and development

of a Chinese ethnie in ancient China?

7.2.1 Violent engagement, Sino-centrism and the Chinese identity

First, warfare weakened traditional Sino-centrism in Qin society, triggering a less Sino-

centric attitude towards the non-Huaxia ethnic communities, and hence making the

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kingdom of Qin a more inclusive society compared to its rival states. Basu (2014) &

Fairbank (1968), as well as the findings of my empirical research (Sima.Q, 1999;

Sima.G, 2007), all suggest that the ancient Chinese world order – the tribute system,

was a Sino-centric world order that conceived the Chinese community as the centre of

the world, and whose monarch was also seen as the leader of the world, although

Chinese elites were already aware of the existence of other civilised societies elsewhere

as early as in the first century BC (Cooper 2015). However, as shown in the findings,

Qin became the most pragmatic Chinese state in dealing with peripheral ethnic

communities, owing to its frequent engagement with them, most of which were violent

(Sima.Q, 1999). As a result, Qin society thus became more socially inclusive following

the weakening Sino-centrism. This became a preliminary lesson on Qin’s way towards

ruling a united Chinese community after 221 BC.

7.2.2 Warfare and reform – rule by law and centralisation of power

Second, warfare also triggered social transformation in the Qin state, leading to the

reforms of Lord Shang based on a Legalist doctrine. Not only did this series of reforms

firmly introduce rule by law to Chinese society for the first time in history (other

Chinese states had also tried, but their achievements could not be sustained), but it also

constituted a centralised socio-political system that was essential in maintaining the

contested and fragile unity of the Chinese community for over 2,000 years.

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As mentioned in the literature review, Malesevic (2010) argues that the ability to

succeed in warfare, to a great extent, can have a decisive role in the longevity of a state

– victories in warfare can not only secure the domestic legitimacy and prestige of the

ruling elites, but they can also generate a favourable external geopolitical environment

in the international arena; conversely, in the case of a defeat, a state will deteriorate

both domestically and internationally. According to the findings of this thesis, this

argument is also applicable to ancient China’s Warring States period, during which

Qin’s military conquests united the Chinese community. As we can see from historical

sources (Sima.Q, 1999; Zhanguoce, 2007; Sima.G, 2007), Qin’s initiative towards

reforms came from its continuous defeats on the battlefield, which led to a shrinking

territory and concerns over its survival. It was this crisis of the Qin state that triggered

one of the most important and revolutionary reforms in Chinese history – the reforms

of Lord Shang, which introduced the Legalist doctrine as the ruling ideology, which

emphasized a realist approach to strengthen the wealth and power of states through the

reward-and-punishment mechanism, resulting in a disciplined, safe and competitive

society (Pines, 2014),

Previous studies also highlight that warfare was a key trigger for the centralisation of

power in the modern nation-state system in Europe, rooted in a strong materialist

motive due to the immense fiscal burden of military operations (Tilly, 1975; Mann,

1986; Collins, 1975; Marx, 1871, cited in Malesevic, 2010; Spencer, 1971; Kaspersen,

Strandsbjerg & Teschke, 2017; Malesevic, 2010). This was also true in ancient China’s

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Warring States period. To succeed on the back of incessant wars, the Legalist school of

thought, on the one hand, strengthened Qin’s military power by forcing people to focus

on farming and warfare, and it also institutionalised a centralised administrative system

across the state to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of governance, in so doing

ordering the entire country to follow the same set of rules and to achieve the same goals

as central government (Shang, 2009). As a result of this Legalist reform, Qin became a

closely bonded community that focused on a common mission – to win wars. This led

to Qin’s victories on the battlefield and raised popular confidence in the new Legalist

socio-political system established during the reforms (Sima.Q, 1999; Sima.G, 2007).

Consequently, as shown in ancient historical sources (Sima.Q, 1999; Sima.G, 2007),

domestic legitimacy and the prestige of Qin’s elites, together with a favourable external

geopolitical environment, were all sustained, which then fostered Qin’s military

capacity and in turn facilitated Qin’s unification of China some 130 years later.

However, although Weber (1968) believes that the importance of rule by law was

promoted in society through military discipline in modern European society, which in

turn encouraged the masses to act by the rules and led to an increasingly disciplined

social order, that is not the case in the Warring States China. According to the findings

of this thesis, rule by law was introduced to Qin society via political authority, through

which Shang Yang exercised his reward-and-punishment mechanism to enforce his

social, political, economic and legal reforms (Shang, 2009; Sima.Q, 1999). As a result,

the situation in Qin was instead similar to Tilly’s concept of “coercion wielding

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organisations”, which sustain their political authority through the legitimate use of

violence within a sovereign territory (Tilly, 1992: 1; Weber, 1976; Treitschke, 1914;

Mosca, 1939; Mann, 1993 & 2006; Poggi, 2001; Collins, 1975; Oppenheimer, 2007;

Malesevic, 2010). Just as Poggi (2001) and Collins (1975) point out, political authority

is defined, if not exclusively, by its ability to control organised violence of the state in

the enforcement of policies and disciplines. Qin can be considered in this context as a

regime that enforced its Legalist reform through coercive punishments and rewards

through its bureaucratic institutions, forcing civilians to comply with the commands of

the government while at the same time rewarding those who performed outstandingly

well in complying with these commands (Shang, 2009; Sima.Q, 1999).

Moreover, as Treitschke (1914), Hintze (1975), Mann (1988) and Schmitt (1996)

suggest, wars have not only played a key role in generating modern states and

centralisation of power, but they have also led to the democratisation of states in

modernity. However, this was not quite the case in ancient China, based on the findings

of this thesis. Even though it was true that frequent warfare against rival states triggered

Legalist reforms in the Qin state, which led to a professionalised legal system with

codified law, together with the centralisation of power (Shang, 2009; Sima.Q, 1999),

democratisation did not occur anywhere in China at the time. On the contrary, the Qin

state enhanced the authoritarian rule of the monarch by suppressing the hereditary

aristocracy and preventing its civilians from doing anything else apart from farming

and warfare.

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In addition, Gorski (2017) and Sharma (2017) argue that the institutionalisation and

bureaucratisation of modern European nation-states should be attributed to the

separation between church and state. However, in the case of ancient China, it would

be difficult to assess the influence of religion in the institutionalisation and

bureaucratisation of Chinese states during the eighth to the third centuries BC in this

research, as the separation between church and state never took place in China, because

Chinese society has always been a secular society throughout history. Just as Confucius

(2007: 80) says, “focusing on things that meet public interests, respecting God and

Ghost but keep away from them, that is wise”. This is one of the most prominent

differences between China and Europe. Just as Jacques (2009) notes, unlike Europe,

where different power centres (government, religion, business) share the authority over

society, the authority of the secular government has never been challenged in Chinese

history. If there was ever a potential threat of religious power gaining political influence

in society, then the administration would always remove it with the coercive power of

the state before it really developed into a political power centre, which happened four

times in Chinese history (Sima.G, 2007).

In summary, warfare was an effective trigger for the centralisation of power in ancient

China. It was Qin’s concerns regarding its defeats on the battlefield that led to Shang

Yang’s Legalist reform, which in turn created a centralised socio-political system in the

Qin state. This strengthened Qin’s capacity to mobilise resources and enhanced its

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military power against its rivals, thus resulting in its unification of China later on.

7.2.3 Removing potential obstacles through coercion

Third, the findings of this research suggest that warfare helped to remove potential

resistance against unification and social integration, hence fostering the unification of

Chinese society and the subsequent emergence of China’s pre-modern ethnic

foundation. Mann (1986; 1988), Weber (1976) and Rustow (1980) suggested that

warfare is the extension of a power network (social, economic, political and ideological

power) of a particular community beyond its boundaries, with the aim of restructuring

existing power relations. It can be argued that this was also true during Qin’s unification

of China. Through the conquest of its rival states, the Qin successfully extended its own

power networks into conquered territories. This included the homogenisation of written

Chinese characters in the social dimension, the merging of currency and units of

measurement in the economic dimension, the centralisation of power in the political

dimension, and employing Legalism as the ruling ideology in the ideological dimension

(Sima.Q, 1999). Through a series of wars and conquests, the more militarily

competitive Qin community was then able to “offer alternative organizational means of

social control” across the conquered territory in Mann’s (1986: 2) sense, thus

establishing prestige and superiority of its own social power, especially in cultural terms

whereby written Chinese characters were unified by the Qin’s written format (high

culture from the conquering group – the Qin) (Sima.Q, 1999). Just as Weber (1986: 926)

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acknowledges, “cultural prestige and power prestige are closely associated. Every

victorious war enhances the cultural prestige”. Following Qin’s conquest of its rival

states, the state extended its territorial boundaries into the subjugated territories of its

rival states, replicating its own social patterns and power networks through an

integrated, centralised socio-political system. This matched Qin’s territorial boundaries

with the national boundary of the imagined Chinese nation, turning the imagined nation

into a real, centralised Chinese state under the Qin dynasty.

To summarise, warfare enabled Qin to utilise its most competitive power – the military

power, to eliminate its rivals and establish the first centralised Chinese state – the Qin

dynasty. With a strong coercive power of military forces, the Qin was then able to

expand its own social, political, economic and cultural power networks to all the

conquered territory, which thus enabled the implementation of social integration

policies such as the unification of track width of wagons, written Chinese characters,

currency and the unit of measurement, together with state-driven migration, mix

residency & marriage, which altogether contributed to the social integration across the

post-unification Chinese society.

7.2.4 An unsustainable Legalist-militarist state

Nevertheless, as argued previously in the findings chapters, the Legalist-militarist

nature of the Qin state eventually became a threat to the newly united Chinese

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community, soon after unification in 221 BC. Though the Qin successfully achieved

the first unification of China with a Legalist-militarist socio-political system, its post-

unification situation was not as ideal as anticipated. In the 207 BC, only fifteen years

after its unification of China, the Qin dynasty collapsed in a series of revolts against its

over-exploitation of civilians (Sima.Q, 1999; Sima.G, 2007). However, the sudden

collapse of the empire was closely related to its Legalist-militarist socio-political

system, which failed to resolve and compromise socio-political conflicts in what

transpired after unification (Sima.Q, 1999; Jia, n.d.). This later became a typical lesson

for successive Chinese imperial dynasties (Sima.Q, 1999; Liu, 2009).

According to Wu (1999), the primary reason for the Qin’s collapse lies in its over-

exploitation of people. After unification in 221 BC, various measures in terms of social

integration and consolidation were carried out in a drastic manner, while large-scale

projects were also carried out at the same time, with tens of millions of military services

levied (Wu, 1999). Qin’s rule was maintained by harsh legal punishments and heavy

corvee (labour paid to the government). Even though this was an inevitable result of

the Legalist-militarist mechanism, governmental policy characterised by a law-abiding

punishment system and paramilitary judicial practice stood in sharp contrast to popular

wish in the post-unification age – while the whole society was eager to recuperate and

live a peaceful and stable life, the Qin Empire drove them into massive corvee and legal

punishments (Sima.Q, 1999; Wu, 1999). Therefore, the Legalist-militarist model failed

to serve the purpose of safeguarding the unity of Qin society and intensified popular

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dissatisfaction in the post-unification era, which in turn led to social unrest at a rapid

pace (Wu, 1999).

Nonetheless, Xu (2005) suggests that the Qin’s collapse cannot be fully attributed to

the crude Legalist doctrine as the collapse of the empire is a complicated problem. The

Qin (221 – 207 BC) and Sui (581 – 619) dynasties, for instance, were both short-lived

dynasties in Chinese history with very similar situations (Xu, 2005). Both dynasties

reunited China after a long period of separation, and they both implemented a series of

measures to consolidate the unity of the Chinese community (Xu, 2005). Even though

both of them collapsed in a short period of time, only the Qin dynasty employed

Legalism, while the Sui dynasty instead employed Confucianism (Xu, 2005). “The

thoughts of various schools of thought in the pre-Qin age, such as Confucianism,

Mohism… all had an influence on the Qin dynasty. Among them, Confucianism, as a

prominent school in the era of Spring and Autumn and the Warring States, had a major

impact on the intellectual culture of Qin people” (Xu, 2005: 224). Because the Qin

adopted a Legalist ideology to govern the country, it soon became rich and strong,

leading to tremendous changes both domestically and internationally (Xu, 2005). At

that time, the Confucian thinker Xunzi was actually full of praise when he saw the Qin

kingdom was very well-governed (Xu, 2005).

Xu (2005) believes that the problem lay in the theoretical framework of Legalism – it

was not as complete as Confucianism, due to its comparatively short history. Xu (2005)

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notes through a long period of practical trial and error, Confucianism constantly

absorbed the thoughts of various different schools, including Daoists and others.

Consequently, it was being continuously enriched and was able to adapt to the

requirements of the ruling class in achieving a long-lasting regime (Xu, 2005). However,

the Legalist doctrine lacked this opportunity to develop and only existed for a short

period of time (Xu, 2005). Xu (2005) argues that if Legalist thought had had time to

develop as a ruling doctrine like Confucianism, it would have certainly evolved and

enhanced itself by incorporating thoughts from other schools (Xu, 2005).

Moreover, the Qin’s downfall could also be due to lack of experience in governing a

large, centralised state, as no precedent had been set. The Qin dynasty was a large

empire established after the military conquest of six Chinese states. Before the

establishment of the Qin dynasty, Chinese society did not have experience governing a

large empire with a centralised socio-political system (Sima.Q, 1999). Instead, previous

Chinese feudal dynasties had all run through enfeoffment (Sima.Q, 1999). According

to Xu (2005), after Qin’s unification of China, the whole country was financially

constrained and the state treasury was empty. If the Qin had been able to shift away

from the wartime strategy and turn to economic development, the whole dynasty may

not have collapsed under the second emperor (Xu, 2005). Qin’s Legalist-militarist

wartime strategy generated heavy burdens for its citizens, and its excessive conquests

abroad intensified social conflicts (Xu, 2005; Liao, 2005). Liao (2005:13) identified

this serious problem: "In the Qin dynasty, the population of the country was about 20

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million. A total of 1.5 million people were convicted in the palace, and 500,000 people

were guarded in Wuling; General Meng Tian defended the Huns with 300,000 people;

The Great Wall was supposedly built by 500,000 people, plus other chores. The total

number was no less than three million, accounting for 15% of the total population. The

use of civilian power is so huge and urgent that it is not capable of civil power".

In addition, part of the Qin’s post-unification dilemma may also have derived from the

resistance of former feudatory kingdoms (Zhang & Huang, 2000). Qin’s unification of

China was accompanied by large-scale warfare that generated a massive body count.

For example, the death toll in the Battle of Changping alone totalled more than 400,000,

which inevitably generated negative feelings among people from the six former

kingdoms and engendered strong feelings in terms of rebellion (Sima.Q, 1999). It

should also be noted that aristocrats from the six defeated states were unwilling to

accept Qin's rule, even though they had lost their political power following conquest

(Xu, 2005). Due to the two reasons above, the peasants’ uprising in the late Qin dynasty

soon evolved into restoration for the former aristocracy from the six defeated states

(Zhang & Huang, 2000). These aristocrats were unwilling to be wiped out by the Qin,

so they became a huge anti-Qin force (Zhang & Huang, 2000). When the peasant

uprising broke out, they rushed to recapture their lost territory (Sima.Q, 1999). In

essence, the peasant uprising in the late Qin dynasty finally became wars of restoration

(Wu, 1999).

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To sum up, the Legalist-militarist wartime strategy of the Qin helped found a unitary

Chinese community, but it soon became counterproductive for the unity and stability of

Qin society in the post-unification era. Not only could it not consolidate the newly

united Chinese community, but it also intensified social conflicts owing to an excessive

reliance on punishment. Even though the empire’s collapse should not be completely

attributed to its Legalist-militarist system, as the Qin was the first centralised Chinese

empire and hence had no previous benchmarks to refer to, its failure to transform from

a fully mobilised wartime society back to peace was a key reason for its collapse only

fifteen years after its establishment. Therefore, the Legalist-militarist model from

Legalism was an effective way in wartime based on Qin’s history, but it was

nevertheless a threat to social stability in a time of peace.

7.2.5 Summary: warfare and a united Chinese community

In summary, war performed four significant roles during the emergence of China’s pre-

modern ethnic foundation. First, frequent warfare against peripheral ethnic

communities provided Qin with more experience in dealing with surrounding ethnic

tribes. Following increasing engagement with these ethnic communities, traditional

Sino-centrism was weakened in Qin society, making Qin a more inclusive society

compared to its six rival states. These experiences of dealing with ethnic tribes became

a preliminary lesson for Qin’s social engineering projects in the post-unification age.

Second, warfare triggered the reforms of Lord Shang, one of the most important

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developments in Chinese history, which led to a professionalised legal system with

codified law and centralisation of power in the Qin state. This series of reforms

transformed Qin into a Legalist-militarist society that had a strong military advantage

over its rival states, which in turn fostered its eventual success in the unification of

China under a single, centralised state. Third, war played a key role in removing

resistance against social integration, owing to its coercive power. Peaceful measures are

sometimes unable to deal with the resistance of one state against another, which is when

coercive measures like warfare may be used to tackle these obstacles. Fourth, although

the Legalist-militarist socio-political mechanism was effective in wartime, it would

become counterproductive once territorial expansion came to an end. Therefore, the

Legalist-militarist doctrine could only be used in wartime, and subsequent socio-

political transformation was therefore necessary once wars ended. Failing to transform

a Legalist-militarist society from a wartime footing would ultimately lead to social

unrest and the collapse of the state.

7.3 What are the distinctive features of the Chinese ethnie?

This thesis, which explores the first true unification of Chinese society in 221 BC, is an

interesting case for the classification of ethnie. Smith (1991) identified three types of

pre-modern ethnic foundations – lateral, vertical and immigration nations. While the

ancient Chinese community was surely not an immigration nation, it is difficult to

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simply classify it as either a lateral or a vertical ethnie, as it acquired elements of both

the lateral and the vertical types of pre-modern ethnic core according to the findings of

this thesis.

According to Smith (1991), lateral ethnie is an aristocratic type of pre-modern ethnic

community that follows a top-down approach through bureaucratic incorporation,

consisting of people from the upper stratum only. Following the emergence of

bureaucratic states, a dominant ethnic culture from the ruling class is then passed down

through the bureaucratic hierarchy, spreading its influence to people in other social

classes and absorbing increasing number of people into a common ethnic community

built upon an elite culture. For this reason, it has wide coverage but shallow penetration

into ethnic communities, as it does not have enough social depth due to a lack of roots

among the vast majority of ordinary people. The vertical ethnie, by contrast, rises out

of demotic communities in a pre-modern society, and it is therefore a bottom-up

approach (Smith, 1991). As Smith (1991) notices, the vertical ethnie sustains its ethnic

persistence through organising chosen myths and symbols, sacred texts and scripts, as

well as clergies who protect communal traditions. In this kind of nation-building

process, the traditional ethnic culture of the collective community is often intertwined

with intelligentsia and religions among the masses (Smith, 1991).

In the case of China, it is interesting to note that the ancient Chinese community

exhibited features of both types of ethnie, and there seems to have more elements of the

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lateral ethnie than the vertical ethnie as time moves on, although China would be

classified as a vertical ethnie, like ancient Greece, under the ethno-symbolist framework

(Smith, 1991). As we can see from the findings of this thesis, the Chinese ethnie

evidently diverged before and after Qin’s unification of China in 221 BC. Prior to this

event, the ancient Chinese community had clear characteristics of a vertical ethnie –

there was an imagined Huaxia community across demotic communities living on

China’s Central Plain. Even though many states fought against each other over the

centuries, all of them conceived themselves as members of the imagined Huaxia

community with shared historical myths and symbols (Sima.Q, 1999). Intelligentsia

were also present amongst these competing Chinese states, spreading the ideas of

hundreds of schools of thought across the Chinese community (i.e. Confucianism,

Daoist, Mohism, Legalism, etc.), all of which were seen as part of the common Huaxia

civilisation (Sima.Q, 1999). However, as Smith (1991) acknowledges, this type of

vertical ethnie lacked a proper political roof such as a state, even though there was

consciousness of a collective national community.

Nevertheless, the ancient Chinese community may not have been a typical vertical

ethnie in Smith’s (1991) sense, as it did not have an organised religion that can be seen

in other pre-modern ethnies. The hundreds of schools of thought that emerged during

the chaotic Spring and Autumn and Warring States eras have all been seen as secular

social, political and philosophical theories rather than religious doctrines by the Chinese

community. Daoism, however, might be controversial in this regard, as it is split into

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philosophical Daoism and religious Daoism (Hansen, 2003). However, both, in reality,

are fairly different – philosophical Daoism is a school of thought in the later period of

the Spring and Autumn era, whereas religious Daoism is a religion that emerged 600

hundred years later in the East Han dynasty, based on an intensively modified Daoist

doctrine (Ren, 1998). Therefore, Daoism only became an organised religion 400 years

after the Chinese community transformed into a lateral ethnie, and hence it is irrelevant

to the discussion herein.

In the post-unification Chinese community, however, the situation changed. Increasing

bureaucratic incorporation followed Qin’s unification of China – the Qin government

implemented a series of policies aiming to integrate and homogenise the newly united

Chinese state, achieving unified social, political, economic and cultural patterns

through the bureaucratic hierarchy, such as the unification of track width of wagons,

written Chinese characters, a single currency and the units of measurement, together

with state-driven migration, mix residency & marriage. As a result, the vast majority of

people from the six rival Chinese states conquered by the Qin were all incorporated into

a united Chinese community.

To summarise, even though the ancient Chinese community would be classified as a

vertical ethnie by traditional ethno-symbolist perspectives, it also had features of lateral

ethnie according to the findings of this thesis. As we can see, there was an obvious

transformation from the vertical ethnie to the lateral ethnie following Qin’s unification

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of China in 221 BC, after which a bureaucratic system across the united Chinese

community was set up and the Legalist doctrine was then spread as an elite culture.

Moreover, the incessant wars across China during the Spring and Autumn and the

Warring States periods, as well as Qin’s incorporation of peripheral ethnic communities,

are a typical example of ethnic renewal in the form of ‘ethnic election’ – these ethnies

that did not have a myth were assimilated into the more competitive ethnic communities

(Smith, 1991).

7.4 Conclusion: Qin’s Wars of Unification and the Emergence of

China’s Pre-modern Ethnic Foundation

In conclusion, based on the findings of this thesis, the first unification of China into a

single, centralised state was directly caused by Qin’s wars of unification. It has also

been found that warfare performed three important functions: weakening traditional

Sino-centrism, triggering social transformation and removing unsolvable resistance

against social integration. Although the Qin’s over-reliance on its Legalist-militarist

socio-political system finally ruined the empire, warfare was definitely an inextricable

factor in the first true unification of the Chinese community, the formation of a

centralised Chinese state and the emergence of China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation.

However, following the development of human society, higher moral standards and

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rising requirements for human rights have limited the number of available choices

compared to Qin’s unification of China in the third century BC. Even though warfare,

or collective violence of any kind, has been viewed unfavourably by contemporary

social scientists (Malesevic, 2010), warfare and war-driven political conflicts have

remained a part of our global world order. Just as Kaspersen, Strandsbjerg & Teschke

(2017) pointed out, the emergence, development and transformation of a state can be

highly regionally specific and deeply dependent on the interplay between both external

and internal dynamics. Therefore, any generalisation of the relations between warfare

and socio-political integration should be done cautiously.

This research has made three original contributions to the study of collective identities,

nation and nationalism. First, by comparing and contrasting my findings with the

modernist and ethno-symbolist schools of thought, it is evident that China became a

proto-nation following its unification in 221 BC. Even though a shared national identity

did not fully emerge, due to the limited spread of literacy in ancient China, there is no

doubt that it contributed to the continuation of the Chinese civilisation from then until

the present day. Though the post-221 BC China can only be seen as a proto-nation, it

nevertheless established a solid foundation for the further development of a united and

integrated Chinese community. Therefore, the ethno-symbolist argument that some

modern nations do have pre-modern ethnic foundations, can be supported by the case

of ancient China based on the findings of this thesis – the united Chinese community

under the Qin dynasty was China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation.

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Second, based on Qin unification and the integration of China, this thesis demonstrated

that centralisation of power and its corresponding centralised bureaucracy were

essential in fostering successful social integration. Though Qin’s unification of China

was the result of the direct contribution made by Qin’s wars of unification, social

integration in post-unification China was actually achieved through a centralised

bureaucracy of the Qin dynasty. The centralized bureaucracy of the Qin dynasty had

reminded Chinese civilians of the existence of a state authority – the central government,

and also unified social, political, economic and cultural patterns down through the

bureaucratic hierarchy, such as the unification of the track width of wagons, written

Chinese characters, a single currency and units of measurement, together with state-

driven migration, mixed residency and inter-ethnic marriage. All of these policies,

implemented through this centralised bureaucracy, then triggered social integration of

China society on a greater scale and scope, hence sustaining and strengthening the unity

of the Chinese community.

Third, the geopolitical environment, though only slightly mentioned in the findings,

could have been a key factor in the formation of a vast nation and its corresponding

national collective identity. As illustrated in this chapter, the kingdom of Qin achieved

unification of China with the help of an advantageous geopolitical environment.

Following Qin’s unification of China, the Chinese core territory occupied the majority

of the best habitat in Asia along the north temperature zone, surrounded by natural

326
barriers such as mountains, plateaus and deserts, thereby establishing a dominant

geopolitical position of the Chinese community in East Asia for millennia. This is

highly significant for the formation, consolidation and development of a vast Chinese

community which subsequently led to the emergence of a national identity of China.

327
Conclusion

This chapter provides a conclusion for the whole thesis in general. By summarising the

key themes in this thesis, this concluding chapter revisits the major findings and

contributions of this thesis, stating that the formation of the first centralised state under

the rule of the Qin dynasty, together with the subsequent emergence of China’s pre-

modern ethnic foundation, exhibits both similarities with and differences in relation to

the existing theoretical framework on nation and nationalism (and ethno-symbolism in

particular), as well as previous studies on the sociology of war. In most cases, the

founding of the first centralised Chinese state and the emergence of China’s pre-modern

ethnic foundation were mostly in line with existing studies. However, due to convergent

historical backgrounds in which China and Europe went through two different paths of

social evolution, there are also some differences between the Chinese situation and

previous studies. Finally, this thesis concludes by evaluating the process involved in the

entire research – methodology, the scale and scope of the chosen topic, as well as the

generalisability of the research outcome.

This thesis has explored the emergence of China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation in the

third century BC. By conducting a historiographic sociological analysis based on

primary sources from ancient historical literature and government documents between

the fourth century BC and the first century AD, this thesis has attempted to establish an

328
original and comprehensive account of what ancient historians and government

documents can tell us about the first unification of China and its subsequent genesis of

its pre-modern ethnic foundation, thus answering the three research questions:

1) How did China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation take shape?

2) In what ways did war influence the emergence and development of a Chinese

ethnie in ancient China?

3) What are the distinctive features of the ethnie in the pre-modern Chinese

community?

The outcome of this empirical research demonstrates the reasons why the unity of China

can, in Delanty’s (1995: 101) words, “stand the test of time” – having been able to

sustain its unity for most of the time over the past 2,133 years, even after experiencing

massive nation-building movements in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as

well as the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Soviet Union

in the final decades of the twentieth century.

Research Outcomes

This empirical study establishes that Qin’s unification of China in 221 BC was

predominantly achieved through warfare. It was 140 years of warfare (361-221 BC),

329
and especially Qin’s wars of unification (230-221 BC), that led to the unification of the

Chinese community under a single centralised state, which then gave rise to the

emergence of China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation. However, although Qin’s wars of

unification were a direct cause of a united Chinese community, it was the Legalist-

militarist socio-political system employed by the Qin, as a result of the reforms of Lord

Shang (359 – 350 BC) that formed the basis for Qin’s unification of China in the third

century BC. The Qin dynasty attempted to forge a united Chinese community in the

post-unification era, but the new state did not stand the test of time and collapsed only

fifteen years after its inception.

Apart from founding the first centralised Chinese state, war made another contribution

that has had greater historical significance in terms of the endurance of a united Chinese

community – it triggered social transformation. Frequent warfare against both

peripheral ethnic communities and rival Chinese states not only reduced Sino-centrism

in Qin society, which in turn engendered a more inclusive society compared to its rivals,

but it also fostered the complete transformation of Qin society in the social, political,

economic and military spheres by introducing the Legalist doctrine. As a result of this

social transformation (reforms of Lord Shang), which fostered a professionalised legal

system with codified laws and centralisation of power, Qin became more advanced than

its rival states in almost all aspects: a better integrated and disciplined society, a

centralised administrative system based on meritocracy, which enabled the maximum

mobilisation of resources, a performance-based social mobility mechanism, motivated

330
peasants that were willing to increase agricultural productivity, etc., all of which led to

a greater capacity of Qin’s military forces on the battlefield. Therefore, it would be more

accurate to argue that it was the Legalist social transformation triggered by war in the

fourth century BC that fostered Qin’s unification of China in 221 BC, which then led

to the founding of the first centralised Chinese state – the Qin dynasty (221- 206 BC)

and served as the basis for the emergence of China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation.

Contribution of this thesis

By conducting historiographic empirical research on ancient historical literature and

government documents, this thesis hence makes three key contributions to the study of

nation and nationalism.

First, it extends our understanding of the Chinese community by examining the

development of ancient Chinese society under the ethno-symbolist theoretical

framework on nation and nationalism, and it confirms the existence of China’s pre-

modern ethnic roots, or in Smith’s words – the ethnie. By comparing and contrasting

my findings with existing ethno-symbolist studies, elements of the nation-building

process can be found in ancient China in the fourth and third centuries BC under the

rule of the Qin dynasty – the first centralised state in Chinese history. Nevertheless, as

I have demonstrated in the empirical study, ‘social penetration’ remains a question in

331
ancient China, both before and after Qin’s unification in 221 BC, although it is evident

that the Qin made intensive attempts to integrate and homogenise its newly united

Chinese empire, including the standardisation of written Chinese characters, standard

track widths of carriages, units of measurement, moral principles and ethics, state-

driven migration, inter-ethnic marriage and mixed residency. As the literacy rate was

low in the age of the Qin dynasty, it is highly possible that only literate people, most of

whom belonged to the elite class, had a sense of common collective identity in relation

to the Huaxia community, albeit ethno-symbolism does accept collective identity “at

least among their elites” (Smith, 1995: 57). Therefore, even though a shared identity

might not have been firmly established fully during the Qin dynasty, its success in

acquiring a clearly defined territorial basis, its success in uniting ancient Chinese people

of the imagined Huaxia community under a single, centralised Chinese state, the

already-existing Chinese culture and the homogenisation of the written Chinese

characters under Qin’s rule, plus the introduction of Legalism as the ruling ideology,

which brought about a professionalised legal system with codified laws and a

centralised socio-political bureaucracy across the Qin Empire, can all be seen as a

qualified ethnie in ancient China.

Second, this thesis enriches our understanding of the ideological aspects of Chinese

society. In contrast to previous studies, which posit the central role of Confucianism in

the Chinese community, this thesis finds that it was actually Legalism that fostered the

unification of China. For hundreds of years, through the Spring and Autumn (770 – 476

332
BC) and the Warring States (475 – 221 BC) eras, Confucianism, Daoism and other

Chinese traditional schools of thought did not halt incessant wars across the ancient

Chinese community, nor were they able to strengthen the military power of Chinese

states. It was not until around 400 BC that the kingdom of Wei became the first

hegemonic power, during the Warring States era, to conduct Legalist reform, although

it failed to sustain any achievements. Qin’s unification of China and the founding of the

first centralised Chinese state was triggered by the Legalist reforms carried out by

Shang Yang in the fourth century BC, which led to Qin’s military, political, economic

and social advantages against its rival Chinese states. This provided the basis for Qin’s

military conquests across China, making the founding of the first centralised Chinese

state possible. Though China’s first centralized state was predominantly achieved

through Qin’s wars of unification, the more important social integration and

homogenisation of the Chinese community were triggered by the Legalist doctrine.

Qin’s centralised socio-political system not only reminded Chinese people of the

existence of a powerful and coercive central government, but it also unified the social,

political, economic and cultural patterns through the administrative hierarchy, thus

triggered the social integration of the newly united Chinese community in greater scale

and scope, which eventually fostered the emergence of China’s pre-modern ethnic

foundation.

Nevertheless, it is also important to point out that perfect unity has never been evident

throughout Chinese history – every period of unity has then been followed by a

333
corresponding period of separation, rivalry and competition for leadership across China.

Moreover, periodic collapses, contests and reunification have continued to occur over

and over again throughout the past 2,000 years (Loewe, 1999b), which clearly indicates

the fragility of a united Chinese community and the difficulty in sustaining this

temporary, contested and fragile unity of China. It is interesting to notice in this context

that even though Legalism was highly effective in boosting the military strength of the

Qin and facilitating its unification of China, it was unable to sustain this unity in the

post-unification age. Instead of promoting social solidarity across the Qin Empire,

Legalism seemed to deteriorate social cohesion and intensify social conflict after Qin’s

unification of China (Sima.Q, 1999; Jia, n.d.). Therefore, in order to have a balanced

understanding of this history, it is important to reflect on the elements of fragility and

contest in the development of the pre-modern Chinese community and its ethnie.

Third, by examining the role of geopolitics in Qin’s unification of China, this thesis

identifies the geopolitical factor as having had a huge influence in the founding of the

Qin dynasty as the first centralised Chinese state, and the subsequent emergence of

China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation. It is evident from this empirical study that it was

Qin’s advantageous geopolitical situation that to a significant extent facilitated its

success, without which China’s unification in the third century BC would have been

much more difficult or even failed, although the geopolitical influence is barely

mentioned in previous studies. Following Qin’s unification of China, the Chinese core

territory enclosed by natural barriers (mountains, plateaus and deserts) contributed

334
greatly to consolidating and sustaining the unity of the Chinese community for

millennia. This provided a basis for a long-standing united Chinese community, upon

which China’s pre-modern ethnic foundation emerged.

Evaluation of this research

This research has focused exclusively on ancient historical literature and government

documents written by the Chinese ethnic majority – the Han, because no other sources

are available from non-Han ethnic groups at the time (third century BC). Hence, there

is no way to analyse the social integration of China from their perspectives.

Moreover, further research may be conducted on how external factors influence social

integration. This research has focused on the domestic aspects of Chinese society during

its unification and social integration, because at the time there was no obvious external

threat or influence during the Warring States period (Sima.Q, 1999). Nevertheless, as

the time-space distance has shrunk considerably following the development of modern

technology, especially in transportation and the Internet, external forces have become

increasingly capable of intervening in the social integration of other communities, in

order to maximise their own interests. Because of this, external intervention might

become increasingly important for those communities attempting to implement social

integration.

335
Furthermore, there is also a question of generalisability in this research. This research

has focused on the unification and social integration of China 2,000 years ago, and its

conclusion – which prioritises the importance of war and the centralisation of power,

could be debatable in Western democracies, especially in Europe, which has suffered

the disastrous consequences of two world wars. While this is a China-specific case study,

it does not mean that it advocates Sino-exceptionalism. In fact, every country in the

world is unique in its development and history while also connected with other societies

and histories. By examining the role of war in the unification of China, it has been

established herein that what really matters to the unity of China was the Legalist social

transformation of Qin society – the kingdom of Qin, backed up by the Legalist reforms

that generated tremendous social, political and economic progress in the course of

fourth century BC and attempted to integrate and homogenise this newly united Chinese

society with a series of measures similar to the modern nation-building process. This,

without intent, provided a basis for the genesis of a pre-modern ethnic foundation of a

united Chinese community, which would be drawn upon during the nation-building

movements of China in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

336
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