Society of Imperial Power: Reinterpreting China’s “Feudal Society”

Abstract To call the period from Qin Dynasty to Qing Dynasty a “feudal society” is a misrepresentation of China’s historical reality. The fengjian system only occupied a secondary position in Chinese society from the time of Qin. It was the system of prefectures and counties (junxianzhi) that served as the cornerstone of the centralized power structure. This system, together with the institution of selecting officials through the imperial examination, constituted the centralized bureaucracy that intentionally crippled the hereditary tradition and the localized aristocratic powers, and hence bolstered the unity of the empire. Feudalism in medieval Western Europe shares many similarities with that of China during the Shang and Zhou dynasties, but is quite different from the monarchical centralism since the time of Qin and Han. Categorizing the social form of the period from Qin to Qing as “feudal” makes the mistake of over-generalizing and distorting this concept. It runs counter to the original Chinese meaning of fengjian, and severely deviates from the western connotation of feudalism. Moreover, the decentralized feudalism in pre-Qin dynasties and the later centralized imperial system from Qin onwards influenced the generation and evolution of Chinese culture in vastly different ways.