Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
in other areas of China, the Qin escaped with its economy and polity
relatively unscathed.
The Qin government was also an aggressive recruiter of administra-
tive and military talent. The Qin early on saw the value of Legalists
and the political ideology they espoused and promoted, and the Qin
more than any other state in China actively recruited them into
government service. Legalist advisors helped the Qin transform itself
from a feudal government to a highly centralized, unitary state. The
Qin stripped feudal lords of their land and allowed common peasants
to use it. This may seem like a positive and progressive step for the
Qin to take, but the Qin, of course, did not do it for completely altruistic
reasons. Like the feudal governments it was dismantling, the Qin
government financed itself largely through agricultural taxation. What
distinguished the Qin from feudal governments was that the Qin
wanted all of the tax revenue from agriculture and was unwilling to
share a portion of it with any feudal hierarchy.
Legalist advisors reduced all formerly feudal regional and local gov-
ernments to levels of the central government. The Qin largely abolished
the system of hereditary nobility because it considered it a potential
threat, and in its place it instituted an administrative system staffed by
people who had proven their fitness for leadership by their tangible
accomplishments. Commoners who proved themselves competent in
civilian or military spheres were promoted and rewarded; incompetent
aristocrats in military or civilian leadership were dismissed from their
posts and deprived of their salaries. What mattered to the Qin was
individual merit, not family background or bloodline. In other words,
the Qin transformed itself from an aristocracy to a meritocracy. To
protect this new centralized meritocracy from challenges from within,
the Qin accepted the Legalists' advice and instituted a system of mutual
surveillance and responsibility on the local level. It also handsomely
rewarded informers.
One of the Qin emperors, known to history as Qin Shihuang, was
destined to emerge victorious against all other states and unify China
under an imperial system. Upon his success in 221 B.C. he imposed
new standards of uniformity on the Chinese. First of all, he standard-
ized ideology by making Legalism the Qin's guiding thought and
outlawing all other schools of thought. His adamantly anti-intellectual
state regarded Taoists and Confucians as subversive. In 213 B.C. he
had most non-Legalist topics burned, and the next year he buried alive
more than 400 intellectuals who would not recant their beliefs in
non-Legalist thought. He also imposed on China the Chinese script
and the Qin's standards for coinage, weights, measures, and even the
