The Constitution of Ancient China: Not Assigned (Princeton-China) - Hardcover

Su Li, Su

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691171599 ISBN 13: 9780691171593

Verlag: Princeton University Press, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

How was the vast ancient Chinese empire brought together and effectively ruled? What are the historical origins of the resilience of contemporary China's political system? In The Constitution of Ancient China, Su Li, China's most influential legal theorist, examines the ways in which a series of fundamental institutions, rather than a supreme legal code upholding the laws of the land, evolved and coalesced into an effective constitution.

Arguing that a constitution is an institutional response to a set of issues particular to a specific society, Su Li demonstrates how China unified a vast territory, diverse cultures, and elites from different backgrounds into a whole. He delves into such areas as uniform weights and measurements, the standardization of Chinese characters, and the building of the Great Wall. The book includes commentaries by four leading Chinese scholars in law, philosophy, and intellectual history—Wang Hui, Liu Han, Wu Fei, and Zhao Xiaoli—who share Su Li's ambition to explain the resilience of ancient China's political system but who contend that he overstates functionalist dimensions while downplaying the symbolic.

Exploring why China has endured as one political entity for over two thousand years, The Constitution of Ancient China will be essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the institutional legacy of the Chinese empire.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Su Li (Zhu Suli) is a professor at Peking University Law School and a pioneering scholar in the sociology of law, law and economics, and law and literature in China. His many books include Rule of Law and Its Indigenous Resources, Sending Law to the Countryside, and Law and Literature.

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"Su Li is, by many measures, the single most influential Chinese legal academic of the past twenty years. This is one of the most important works on historical Chinese constitutionalism to come out in years, and will most certainly be a milestone work against which future research in this area will be constantly measured.--Taisu Zhang, Yale Law School

"A bold theoretical exploration and systematic reinterpretation of ancient constitutionalism, this book forms a new space for the analysis of the Chinese political-legal system that encompasses the ancient in the modern."--Xiang Feng, Tsinghua University

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The Constitution of Ancient China

By Su Li, Zhang Yongle, Daniel A. Bell, Edmund Ryden

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2018 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-691-17159-3

Contents

Editors' Acknowledgments, vii, 
Editors' Introduction Zhang Yongle and Daniel A. Bell, 1, 
Introduction Su Li, 16, 
PART I, 31, 
CHAPTER 1 The Constitution of the Territory and Politics of a Large State Su Li, 33, 
CHAPTER 2 Ancient China's Cultural Constitution: A Unified Script and Mandarin Chinese Su Li, 66, 
CHAPTER 3 Scholar-Officials Su Li, 98, 
PART II, 139, 
CHAPTER 4 The Mixed Han-Tang-Song Structure and Its Moral Ideal: A Reply to Professor Su Li's Account of the Chinese Constitution Wang Hui, 141, 
CHAPTER 5 The Symbolic and the Functional: Su Li on the Constitution of Ancient China Liu Han, 177, 
CHAPTER 6 The Ideal of Civilization and Formation of Institutions in Ancient China: A Reply to Su Li Wu Fei, 191, 
CHAPTER 7 History, Culture, Revolution, and Chinese Constitutionalism Zhao Xiaoli, 198, 
PART III, 209, 
CHAPTER 8 Response to My Critics Su Li, 211, 
Glossary of Key Terms, 231, 
Notes, 235, 
Bibliography, 269, 
Contributors, 283, 
Index, 285, 

CHAPTER 1

The Constitution of the Territory and Politics of a Large State

Su Li

Under the wide heaven, there is no land which is not the king's; Within the land's sea-coasts, there is no one who is not the king's subject.

— BOOK OF POETRY, "NORTH MOUNTAIN"

A State must rely on its mountains and rivers.

— SAYINGS OF THE STATES: ZHOU

The Problem Posed by a Large State

It is very difficult to form a state in a traditional rural economy of small self-sufficient villages. First, it is hardly necessary to do so. "At sunrise we set out to work; at sunset we return to rest. We bore wells and drink; we plough the fields and eat. Of what use is the emperor's beneficence to us?" These lines, which are said to come from one of the earliest folk songs recorded in China, express the idea that peasants have no need for a political system or an emperor. Even though government may be necessary to avoid the occasional conflicts and wars that might break out between agricultural communities — there may be a need for an arbitrator whose power transcends that of the particular villages — living in villages "where the sound of chicken and dog carries and the people do not ever meet each other," people have very little need of a large state or even any idea of what one might be like. It is even difficult to form a large state, not only because — more so than in a commercial society — it is very difficult to collect the taxes that are needed to support an effective administration, and because it is very difficult to support the administrative apparatus of a large state, but also because heaven is high and the emperor far off, so the administration has great difficulty in entering into the villages. Thus, how can the hearts and minds of the people be led to identify with a state? Information about the change of a dynasty could not be passed on even six hundred years after the event — "they had no knowledge of the Han dynasty, let alone the Wei and Jin," Tao Yuanming ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) says. Although the Peach Blossom Land described by Tao may be an exception or even a figment of the author's imagination, it nonetheless sets out the issues.

As I mentioned in my introduction, regulating the Yellow River demands a unified coordination of an even larger area. There is also conflict, opposition, and unification between the agricultural civilization of the central plain and the pastoral civilization of the north. These two major factors led the agricultural communities in this area to establish and uphold a unified administration. The two areas involved were not only very large but also virtually overlapped. Management of the water was largely focused on the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, but competition with the pastoral peoples led to this area expanding ever further westward, across the plain formed by the River Wei to the south-central section of present-day Ningxia and Gansu. The two factors of the regulation of a long river and the clash of two civilizations were ongoing issues in premodern times, and so the need for administration was ever present.

Historical records that predate modern archaeological discoveries show that during the time of China's first three dynasties — the Xia, Shang, and Zhou (ca. twenty-first century BC to 256 BC) — the territory under central rule was already significant and the population not small. Political rule was maintained for a sufficiently long time and each dynasty was a direct successor of the preceding one and built on its foundations. They conquered and absorbed small states on the borders, expanded the influence of the soft and hard power of their political culture over the territory under their sway, and gradually increased their actual rule over several areas. By the time the Western Zhou adopted a feudal system for royal princes, the area controlled by the Zhou, as can be seen from the territories assigned to the princes, covered the modern province of Shandong, most of Henan, the west of Hebei and Shanxi, the center of Shaanxi, the east of Gansu, and the north of Jiangsu, Hubei, and Anhui, a total area of nearly one million square kilometers. Since it is not possible to determine the borders of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou with great accuracy, there can be no sensible estimate of the total population. Yet the area and population both exceeded those of the thirteen colonies that formed the United States, at which time America was already a large state by European standards, and only then did the issue of being a large state arise.

Although various dynasties rose and fell over this area of land and there were revolutions such as from the feudal system to that of commanderies and counties, and even long periods of war and chaos, division and separation, with bordering tribes entering into the central plain, gradually bringing about an integration of peoples, by the Qing dynasty China's borders encompassed an area of thirteen million square kilometers and a population of 450 million. Therefore, on the basis of the size of its territory and population, this broad area of land called China from the Western Zhou onward showed an overall tendency to seek the kind of administration a large state needs. In general, since the foundation of the empire by the Qin and the Han, it never lost the status of a large state with centralized power unifying many peoples. The main dynasties generally ruled for two to three hundred years and, objectively speaking, provided a long period of peace for ordinary people. From this we may postulate that the people of this land had their own inherent and sustained reasons for creating the administration of a large state, since from an empirical point of view the administration of this large state was created by the dynasties and politicians throughout history. It was something that they imposed on the people of this area.

A large state is not a small state writ large; the administrative requirements of a large state are not the same as those of a small state. While not denying the special wisdom and organization of some small states wedged between large states — the practical wisdom of the ancient Greek city-states is indeed widely consulted by scholars of many countries even today...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Princeton University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0691171599
• ISBN 13: 9780691171593
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 304
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchbär; info@buchbaer.de; ; Weberstr. 67; Osnabrück; 49084; Deutschland