Fengjian

Fengjian, literally "demarcation and establishment" but often (controversially) described as Chinese feudalism, was a governance system and political thought in Ancient China and Imperial China, whose social structure formed a decentralized system of confederation-like government. The ruling class consisted of the Son of Heaven (king or emperor) and aristocracy, and the lower class consisted of commoners categorized into four occupations (or "four categories of the people", namely scholar-officials, peasants, laborers and merchants). Elite bonds through affinal relations and submission to the overlordship of the king date back to the Shang dynasty, but it was the Western Zhou dynasty who enfeoffed their clan relatives and fellow warriors as vassals. Through the fengjian system, the king would allocate an area of land to a noble, establishing him as the ruler of that region and allowing his title and fief to be legitimately inherited by his descendants. This created large numbers of local autonomous dynastic domains.

The earliest description of fengjian was in the Classic of Poetry, which portrayed an image of prosperity, peace, and order:

At Heaven’s bidding they looked down;

The peoples below were awed,
There were no disorders, no excesses;
They dared not be idle or pause.
Heaven’s charge was upon the lands below (命於下國; ming yu xiaguo),

Firmly were their blessings planted and established (封建厥福; fengjian juefu).

The rulers of these vassal states, known as zhūhóu (諸侯; 'many lords'), had a political obligation to pay homage to the king, but as the central authority started to decline during the Eastern Zhou dynasty, their power began to outstrip that of the royal house and subsequently the states developed into their own kingdoms, reducing the Zhou dynasty to little more than a prestigious name. As a result, Chinese history from the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BC) to the beginning of the Qin dynasty has been termed a "feudal" period by many Chinese historians, due to the custom of enfeoffment of land similar to that in Medieval Europe. However, scholars have suggested that fengjian otherwise lacks some of the fundamental aspects of feudalism.

Each fengjian state was autonomous and had its own tax and legal systems along with its own unique currency and even writing style. The nobles were required to pay regular homage to the king and to provide him with soldiers in a time of war. This structure played an important part in the political structure of the Western Zhou which was expanding its territories in the east. In due course this resulted in the increasing power of the noble lords, whose strength eventually exceeded that of the Zhou kings, leading to dwindling central authority. The vassal states started to ignore the orders of the Zhou court and fight with each other for land, wealth and influence, which eventually disintegrated the authority of the Eastern Zhou into the chaos and violence of the Warring States period, where the great lords ended up proclaiming themselves as kings.

During the pre-Qin period, fengjian represented the Zhou dynasty's political system, and various thinkers, such as Confucius, looked to this system as a concrete ideal of political organization. In particular, according to Confucius, during the Spring and Autumn period the traditional system of rituals and music had become empty and hence his goal was to return to or bring back the early Zhou dynasty political system. With the establishment of the Qin dynasty in 221 BCE, the First Emperor unified the country and abolished the fengjian system, consolidating a new system of administrative divisions called the junxian system (郡縣制, "commandery-county system") or prefectural system, with the establishment of thirty-six prefectures and a rotational system for appointing local officials. There are many differences between the two systems, but one is particularly worth mentioning: the prefectural system gave more power to the central government, since it consolidated power at the political center or the top of the empire's political hierarchy. Tradition narrates that the Burning of books and burying of scholars was a result of Confucian scholars promoting the revival of the fengjian system. From the Qin dynasty onward, Chinese literati would find a tension between the Confucian ideal of fengjian and the reality of the centralized imperial system.