Pre-modern Chinese Politics

* Law

- administrative in nature

-> how things should be done

-> how to make life run efficiently

- not constitutional

-> didn’t limit emperor

-> high power could violate law to “improve” life

- no checks and balances

-> magistrates=detective, prosecutor, jury, & judge

-> family heads, village elders enforce local customs

-> no appeals, except by personal contact

- Confucian sense of good order and relationships

-> the emperor/patriarch always had last word

* philosophical/ideological traditions

- Taoism

-> spiritualism, religious whys and wherefores

- Confucianism

-> social and political relationships

- Legalism

-> how the State rules/administrates

- family spirits, sense of family tradition

-> communitarianism

=> group over individual

- inclusive, eclectic, and contradictory thinking

-> seems disorganized to us

-> intense flexibility

-> no holy wars!

* Isolationism

- Chinese were willing to trade on the Silk Road

- foreigners considered barbarians and closely watched

- trade always heavily controlled by government

- did not pay much attention to foreign technology

-> a serious mistake