The
Chinese- The Chinese throughout the classical
period survived through Dynasties. Throughout this time frame there were three
major Dynasties; The Zhou, Qin, and Han. All three of these governments had
drastically different approaches to the governance of China, although each one had an emperor who claimed to have the mandate of heaven. The Zhou governed
through a system of feudalism in which they ruled through alliances with regional princes and
noble families. This later proved ineffective due to the individual power that
the princes gained for themselves. The Qin Dynasty was a dynasty of one: Shi
Huangdi. He consolidated his power, built the Great Wall, conducted a census,
standardized weights and measures, and extended the borders of his realm to
Hong Kong and northern Vietnam. Shi Huangdi ruled by a system of legalism and
totalitarianism, sparing no one and giving harsh and cruel mandates. The final
Dynasty in this era was the Han Dynasty. The Han rulers lessened the brutality
of the Qin but maintained its centralized rule. Early Han leaders, like Wu Ti,
expanded Chinese territory and set up formal training, based on Confucian
philosophy, for bureaucrats. By the end of the
Han dynasty, China had roughly 130,000 bureaucrats all trained by the
government to carry out the emperor’s policies. Tax collections and annual
mandatory labor services ensured the central government held some power over
almost every person in the Middle Kingdom, something no other large government
accomplished until the twentieth century.
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