Breaking The Lineage: On The Evolution Of The Population Control System In Ancient China

The Population Control System(PCS)is the major measure to encourage its people to work hard and to offer the production to the state.The existing research on PCS in ancient China,especially in Shang state and Western Zhou state,is relatively inadequate.Based on the previous research,therefore this paper applies comparative history methods,which include and synthesize available sources:transmitted texts,excavated inscriptions,archaeological discoveries and ethnographic materials,to thoroughly study the evolution of PCS from Shang Dynasty to Han Dynasty.This dissertation consists of five chapters as follows.The first chapter is introduction,including the personal original reasons of choosing it,the review of its academic history,researching methods,major concepts and themes,and the key-points involved.The second one is concerning PCS in Shang and Western Zhou states.It is argued that in Shang and Western Zhou states,the lineage is the control unit in PCS,called Zhong-shan-fu Model in the existing literature,with six features:specificity,indirectness,specificity,ethicality,hierarchy and compulsory;which caused by the level of productive forces at that time,the form and structure of the state,and the degree of commodity economy development.Moreover,this section finally concludes with thorough analysis,instead of dual-system of social organization in Western Zhou Dynasty,a popular idea in scholastic circles,there is only one system of social organization then,whereby the form is as follows:since there was one or two lineage in one village with population made of a blood group as well as a geopolitical group.Then,the number of the lineage in the village was getting larger in late Western Zhou Dynasty and the village had turned into a geopolitical group.The third section focuses on the change of Zhong-shan-fu Model in late Western Zhou Dynasty,in early Spring-and-Autumn Period and late Spring-and-Autumn Period when Registration village Model was established.It is claimed that the growing and strengthening of elements of state institution in Shang and Zhou have destroyed the foundation of Zhong-shan-fu Model,whose first circle was broken in the late Western Zhou Dynasty when the population statistics made by the government of Xuan king.Though the Qiu-jia regime,a newly developed recruiting system on the basis of geopolitical units in the mid-Spring-and-Autumn Period,which also based on Registration village Model.Hence,the specificity and the indirectness of PCS in Shang and Western Zhou states have also developed in Spring-and-Autumn Period.However,since the specificity of PCS has been shattered and then turned into a universal way of levy,the ethicality has been tortured while the compulsory of the state strengthened.The fourth section mainly studies the control system of family as a vital unit in the Warring States Period,Qin Dynasty and Han Dynasty.It is suggested that in the Warring States Period the tendency to war against one another from time to time leads to the government of those states to choose PCS aiming to cultivate and farm between wars.With agricultural technique development,it has boosted the independence of individual family and thus made family diversity policy possible in the state.After the collapse of the community of lineage,village foundation,it then starts to make the military system more like civilian system,with a vital unit of family and strict system of family member registration,to follow the rules of collective punishment,and to interfere with the farmers' production and livelihood,then to make sure the population and the sources of troops for the state,has featured by autocratic military despotism.Later on,Han Dynasty,inheriting the system of Qin,tends to be daily administration.In a word,the control system of family as a vital unit has many characteristics,such as individuality,immediacy,unity,hierarchy and compulsory,and meanwhile ethicality is formally fading away from the stage of history.The last but not least,it compares the PCS in early China with it in Athens and Rome,and this is also the conclusion.It is held that the changes of PCS from Shang Dynasty and Zhou Dynasty to Qin Dynasty and Han Dynasty reflect the features of the evolving path in early China,from the foundation of blood relation to space relation,and the government's tendency to reject blood relation connection,which is just identical to that in Athens and Rome.