Qin Shihuang And Han Wudi Compartive Research Of Cultural Policies

Both Qin Shi Huang and Han Wu Di are pioneering Emperors in the initial stagesof the feudal society and their establishments of the cultural policies have exertedprofound influence upon the later generations. Based on the previous researches, thepresent paper will take the cultural policies of Qin Shi Huang and Han Wu Di as thestarting point, and will further analyze the similarities and differences among theircultural policies by employing the comparative method. The purpose of the presentpaper is to obtain a systematic recognition of the cultural policies proposed by the twoemperors.The first part of the paper will concentrate on five aspects of the cultural policiesof Emperors Qin Shi Huang and Han Wu Di, namely the establishment of the officialphilosophy thoughts, the policies of books and documents, the policies of education,the policies of characters and the orchestra and the policies toward the intellectuals.Legalism takes priority in Qin Shi Huang's dominate thoughts while Han Wu Diadvocated" one hundred thoughts to ban, only Confucians revives." For the policiesof books and documents, Emperor Qin "burns books" and promulgated "the laws ofholding books";Han Wudi "collected the dying testament". For the educationalpolicies, Qin Shihuang "prohibit the personal study" and "taking officials as teachers"and also let the "three olds" to administer the religions. Han Wu di built the highestschool, set up "doctors of five classics". Also let the officials to administer the religion.concerning the policies of characters and orchestra, Emperor Qin unified characterswhile Han Wudi paid more attention to the orchestras and poems. On the policiestoward the intellectuals, Emperor Qin put legalists to the most important position, andcommanded that officials must learn laws; Han Wudi elected"xiao lian", built thehighest school, and appointed intellectuals to be officials.The second part of the present paper will make a comparison between the twocultural policies and figure out the similarities and differences. Firstly, both theircultural policies have the same goal: to safeguard the national unification. The fundamental purpose of their cultural policies was to consolidate their power.Secondly, both policies have the same pattern and both of them established theiroverculture. Emperor Qin ran the country with the thought of Legalism; Han Wuditook Confucianism as his guiding principle. When Qin Shihuang and Han Wudi usedthe culture to rule the nations, they have the same value orientation, that was thepolitical pragmatism spirit, which was reflected by that not only the legalists andConfucians were in their bureaucratic organization but also have other scholars ofdifferent schools. The differences of their cultural policies are represented asfollowing: the different methods of unifying ideology and culture—suppression andguidance; the different overculture—Legalism and Confucianism; different politicaland social effect—failure and success.The third part of the paper devotes itself to explore the causes behind thesimilarities and differences of the cultural policies. Concerning the similarities, thereare three major causes: one is the same social status—both Qin Shi Huang and HanWu Di were rulers of feudal dynasty, hence their cultural policies took consolidatingtheir power as goal; the other is lying in the same pragmatism attitude; the third one istheir similar personalities. However, there do exist differences in their culturalpolicies which are caused by three factors: different times; different cultural traditionand different characteristics Han Wudi could take Emperor Qin's experiences aswarning, and during the late period of his domination, he repented what he had doneand promulgated the "Zui Ji Zhao", which can explain that Han Wu Di possesseddifferent individual factors.The fourth part of the paper will analyze the influences exerted by their culturalpolicies—one is the impact on their own era and the other is the thought of "Da YiTong" which is represented by their cultural policies and exert great impact on latergenerations.In the conclusion part, through analyzing the two Emperors' cultural policies, thepaper points out that although there are differences in actual performance, thefunctions of their cultural policies, the contents of variable cultures and theirfundamental goals—to safeguard national unification are keeping same. The adoption of their cultural policies are in accordance with historical requirements andhistorical development trend. From the above, we can come to the conclusion: thechoosing of mainstream culture must keep consistent with the social economicfoundatiom, the historical cultural background and the need of the cultural tradition.