Communication and Cooperation in Early Imperial China

Publicizing the Qin Dynasty

Charles Sanft

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781438450360, 9781438450377
• eBook ISBN: 9781438450384
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: History

This revealing book challenges longstanding notions of the Qin dynasty, China's first imperial dynasty (221–206 BCE). The received history of the Qin dynasty and its founder is one of cruel tyranny with rule through fear and coercion. Using a wealth of new information afforded by the expansion of Chinese archaeology in recent decades as well as traditional historical sources, Charles Sanft concentrates on cooperative aspects of early imperial government, especially on the communication necessary for government. Sanft suggests that the Qin authorities sought cooperation from the populace with a publicity campaign in a wide variety of media—from bronze and stone inscriptions to roads to the bureaucracy. The book integrates theory from anthropology and economics with early Chinese philosophy and argues that modern social science and ancient thought agree that cooperation is necessary for all human societies.

1

Introduction

This book treats communication and cooperation in the function of political power in early imperial China, particularly under the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–207 BCE). In essence I am interested in the collective decision of a group to obey a government and respect its dominion. I argue creating common knowledge among the population through communication in multiple media was a necessary part of ruling processes in early imperial China and helped solve the coordination problem presented by the unified empire. Through their active and innovative communication, the Qin dynasty resolved these problems so well that the echoes of their success are still ringing today.

The Qin dynasty was the first imperial dynasty in China. The famous First Emperor of Qin (Qin Shihuang 秦始皇, r. 221–210 BCE) established the empire by uniting formerly separate polities to create a new state, a process that lasted years and ended in 221 BCE. He governed a territory much larger than any preceding sovereign of the area we now call China.¹ The rulers of Qin confronted a new situation, and they adapted existing practices and technologies to meet its exigencies.

The Qin were obsessed—already before unification—with making things as big as possible.² And during the reign of the First Emperor, the Qin were constantly doing. Their deeds were noticeable, and deliberately so. Mark Edward Lewis has written that the Qin were a model for later dynasties: “While the First Emperor’s actions became a topic for later censure, they also provided an unacknowledged pattern for imperial power, an ideal type at the origin that later rulers emulated.”³ As such, I hope the Qin case will be amenable to comparison with later dynasties in future studies. If nothing else, the tireless activity of the Qin dynasty makes it an interesting case study.

Despite my primary focus on the Qin, I draw from texts dating to the time before and after that period. This is necessary and proper: necessary because so little has been transmitted that links directly to the dynasty, and proper because the underlying ideas and forms of government inevitably grew out of what went before and reverberated in what came after.

The available sources do not directly relate the views of the common population, and as such the voices of ordinary inhabitants of the early Chinese realm are effectively lost. The study of material culture in conjunction with textual sources offers one way to counter the limitations of the textual record.⁴ Yet there is no way to directly prove the degree to which the communication I propose was perceived by the population of the realm—if by proof one means a written attestation from members of the population or their representatives. In the past, scholars have often assumed little or no awareness of higher-level governance on the part of commoners, combined with a passivity that would have made such information irrelevant. The theoretical framework I lay out in chapter 2 shows that aspects of those explanations are untenable. It also provides a way to make reasonable inferences about the role of the common population in government, which required their cooperation in various forms as well as the necessity of specific kinds of communication for that cooperation.

This theoretically informed approach recognizes the necessity of cooperation, and not coercion, as the basis of human society. Each member of a cooperating group is a strategic decision-maker whose individual choices, together with the choices of others, translate into high-level effect.⁵ Each individual member has power, which is limited and yet real. This was the case in early China as in other societies.

Theoretical work on communication, cooperation, and power allows me to draw new conclusions about what was going on during the years of Qin reign and explain the success, however short-lived, of Qin rule under the First Emperor. This analysis entails study of what Vivienne Shue refers to as the “social intertexture that forms the stuff of political life,” encompassing all fields of the social sciences and requiring simultaneous attention to detail and to overarching pattern.⁶ The conclusions I reach challenge current scholarly consensus on early China in significant ways.

Legacy Approaches

Previous accounts of imperial power in early China generally fall along a spectrum between two poles. At one end are those that stress the theoretically absolute authority of the ruler in imperial China. Those at the other end of the spectrum accept that proposition in the abstract, but they give greater weight to the constraints, especially practical constraints, that inhibited the exercise of the sovereign’s authority. Writers all along this spectrum present power in early imperial society as flowing from one part of society outward and downward.

Most historians agree that the emperor was theoretically the ultimate power and the wellspring of state authority in dynastic China. Ray Huang describes the emperor as residing atop a pyramid, “the source of power” and “the final authority on earth.”⁷ Benjamin Schwartz puts politics at the center of early Chinese society and the emperor at the center of politics. He notes that not all emperors engaged in the tasks of rule to the same degree but still posits the emperor’s supremacy, calling him “the universal king … [who] comes to embody within his person both the supreme political authority and the spiritual-ethical authority of the entire society.”⁸ Wang Yü-ch’üan expresses this clearly when he says the Qin emperor “was the head of the state, and so to speak, the state itself. As the Emperor possessed absolute power over state affairs and the people, the government of Ch’in [Qin] was, to use a modern term, authoritarian in form.”⁹ This sort of conception underlies Liu Zehua’s 劉澤華 assertions that “imperial power was superior to everything; there was no force that could restrict the ruler’s power, and the entire apparatus of the state was an apparatus for the sovereign to manage affairs.”¹⁰ Wan Changhua 萬昌華 and Zhao Xingbin 趙興彬 assert the First Emperor, founder of the Qin dynasty, “hijacked” power, then set up a stratified bureaucracy to surveil his officials and ensure their compliance with his will.¹¹ Vitaly Rubin takes a similar view of the Qin regime, presenting it, before and after unification, as a “totalitarian state” in conflict with the rest of society.¹²

Victoria Tin-bor Hui has written about state formation under the Qin dynasty. She asserts that Qin imperial rule was theoretically absolute, but that the available technology prevented full realization of this theory. She further suggests that the First Emperor actively enlisted the aid of the populace before unification, when he needed their support. Afterward, she says, “the imperial court entered into a state of war with … society.” Hui attributes tremendous influence to the changes carried out under the Qin, crediting them both with establishing a more unified culture as well as what she calls “the authoritarian tradition” in China.¹³

Michael Loewe, eminent historian of early imperial China, has written frequently on the power of Qin and Han emperors and the corresponding powerlessness of the common population.¹⁴ Loewe describes the emperor as the foundation of all power in the first centuries of imperial governance, saying, “From the outset, it was accepted that the emperor held supreme powers of government. … It was from him that all authority to govern the population and administer the land devolved.”¹⁵ Elsewhere he calls the emperor “the sole authority that could command recognition” and the “essential head from whom all power came.”¹⁶ Loewe acknowledges variations in the exercise of imperial power due to individual characteristics or other factors but insists that the person of the emperor was the foundation of the state. He emphasizes that the population of the realm was passive before the exercise of imperial power and played no active role in governance.¹⁷

Charles Le Blanc, like Loewe, notes that emperors differed in the ability to effect individual will; he furthermore distinguishes the limited power wielded by each emperor from the absolute power intrinsic to the position.¹⁸ Le Blanc refers to Hans Bielenstein’s work on Han bureaucracy, in which Bielenstein discusses institutional restrictions on the exercise of imperial power. Bielenstein asserts that one reason for this was the idea that “the empire belonged to the people, not the Son of Heaven.” Yet when Bielenstein discusses the function of power, he portrays it as existing only at the highest echelons of society:

Power flowed to and fro between the throne (empress or empress dowager) supported by the eunuchs, the cabinet … the imperial secretariat, and, when in existence, the regency. The relative balance between these institutions varied from period to period, depending on personalities, shifting alliances, and factional struggles.¹⁹

Bielenstein’s conception attributes ownership to the common people but no power.

Historians have long stressed constraints on imperial power in China. Already in the nineteenth century, Thomas Taylor Meadows (1815–1868) wrote that the Chinese emperor was “autocratic” but not “despotic”: although an absolute ruler, he was obliged to maintain broadly held standards of governance and behavior or face a rebellious populace.²⁰

Similarly, Karl Bünger has asserted that the Qin “were absolute rulers” but that their version of absolutism did not accord with widely held conceptions of rule, which led to their overthrow.²¹ Henri Maspero describes the emperors of Qin and Han as rulers whose power was “absolute, but not arbitrary,” in that they were obliged to consult with the high officials at the top of the bureaucracy.²² More recently, Enno Giele has written that the emperor was the theoretical head of the bureaucracy but that compulsory processes of deliberation and consultation checked the untoward exercise of his power. Giele notes that others sometimes arrogated the emperor’s powers, but when they did so, they acted—or claimed to act—in his name.²³

There is also a long tradition of emphasizing practical limitations on the exercise of imperial power. Max Weber (1864–1920) argued that the lack of rapid transportation and communication prevented centralization of the early Chinese state.²⁴ Jacques Gernet says, “The emperor occupies in China a truly central position; he is the person around whom everything is organized.” At the same time, Gernet points to limits on imperial power, distinguishing between the emperor, who was hemmed in by bureaucracy, and a state that was theoretically omnipotent while limited by concrete factors.²⁵

This sort of approach also appears in interdisciplinary work like that of Norman Yoffee, who attacks depictions of early states as “totalitarian regimes” that consolidated large geographical areas. Yoffee describes both curbs on central authorities’ power and the persistence of local diversity. He moderates his stance slightly when he writes that there were “linkages,” which “are quite often weak in the earliest states and also that centrality is mainly concerned with the creation of new symbols of social identity, ideologies of power, and representations of history.”²⁶ For Yoffee, those kinds of influence were of little real importance.

Historical research on later dynasties and modern times, too, often depicts checks on central authority. Leif Littrup has these checks in mind when he argues for the notion of “The Un-Oppressive State,” saying flatly that in Qing times, “[t]he emperor could give orders but he and the bureaucracy did under normal circumstances not have the means to penetrate into the subbureaucratic level of local society.”²⁷ John K. Fairbank argues that these limitations enabled imperial rule: he says that Chinese emperors were theoretically absolute, but their rule was possible “precisely because it was so superficial. The emperor remained supreme as a symbol of unity because his officials did not attempt to rule directly in the villages.”²⁸ For Fairbank, nominal ascendancy did not translate into a reality of control.

The hindrance of central power forms a major theme of Shue’s work on modern China. She rejects the idea of Chinese society as a “totalitarian monolith” and points to the lack of total control by its leaders. She considers specifically how central powers delegated authority to local authorities to act on their behalf, but those at the local level in turn used their power to thwart the state. Shue distinguishes between “modern states” and “classical states,” arguing that premodern states did not seek total penetration in the manner of modern states. Rather, she suggests, premodern states sought only to exploit existing local structures, without significantly changing them.²⁹

Although I challenge aspects of previous conceptions of power in early China, there have also been arguments made that bear similarities to my own. Herrlee Creel, for instance, noted that the Western Zhou did not rule its territory by military force alone but also through suasion. He gave credence to “the widely held conviction that the Western [Zhou] Kings could not, with the resources and the techniques available to them, organize and maintain a centralized administration. … But the [Zhou] rulers had one great advantage: they did not know this.” In the end, Creel proposed that publicity in the form of declarations of authority was one means by which the Zhou succeeded.³⁰

In his discussion of the emergence of the Chinese empire under the Qin, Robin D. S. Yates argues that the Qin dynasty sought to create “myths” across their territory, “the myth of cultural uniformity” and “the imperial myth.”³¹ I argue the Qin in fact created at least a degree of uniformity. In this regard, I am in agreement with Hui, who says, “The level of cultural homogeneity in present-day China is better understood as the product rather than the cause of Qin’s success.”³² I show that the Qin dynasty communicated messages about their rule corresponding to Yates’ imperial myth. But Yates dee...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Communication and Cooperation: A Framework
• 3. Communication and Cooperation in Early Chinese Thought
• 4. Mass Communication and Standardization
• 5. Progress and Publicity: Qin Shihuang, Ritual, and Common Knowledge
• 6. Roads to Rule: Construction as Communication
• 7. Law, Administration, and Communication
• 8. Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover