All peasants were provided with land, taxes and labor obligations were initially moderate, crafts and trade were given some leeway for development, the richest of merchants and craftsmen received the right to act as tax-farmers, thereby making the task of organizing the production of iron and wine and the extraction of salt easier for the state. The latter controlled prices of principal commodities — first of all, grain. A network of state-controlled enterprises and workshops was established, at which the best craftsmen were obliged to work for a term of time to fill the needs of the treasury and warehouses of the state. Peasants, as part of their corvee duty, and sometimes enslaved criminals, i.e., convicts, were employed in road construction — a sphere that enjoyed special attention of the emperor, — at mines, at the building of the new capital and the emperor's enormous tomb. Millions of peasants and convicts were mobilized for the construction of the Great Wall, which was completed in the shortest possible time and cost several hundred thousand lives.
On the whole, the rigid Legist system demonstrated great efficiency as regards economic matters. The unconditional Order, constantly upheld by the iron hand of the state, ruled the country. But — alas! — there was no Harmony, which the Confucians yearned for. Being unaccustomed to a life of daily hard work, the people sorely complained. Many malcontents, especially Confucians, protested openly, accusing the emperor of inhumanity. In 213 B.C., Ch'in Shih-Huangti reacted by ordering all ancient books burned (except those on such utilitari л subjects as medicine or mathematics). He also executed by burying alive 460 of his most ardent opponents. This inflamed the subjects to greater hatred toward the tyrant. Attempts on his life forced him to spend each night at a different palace. As if trying to justify his actions, the emperor took to setting up stone stelae with inscriptions, in which he "personally" addressed the people and, using the time-honored Confucian phraseology, tried to convince them that he acted for their own good. This hardly helped, however. China was on the brink of a crisis when, in 210 B.C., the emperor died suddenly during one of his tours.
The sudden death of the tyrant provoked a wave of insurrections. Neither the weak successor nor the top officials of the empire (Li Ssu and the eunuch Chao Kao) were able to control the situation that grew more and more complicated. They all shortly perished. In 207 B.C., the empire collapsed. Leaders of various military units started a civil war, which was finally won by a peasant leader called Liu Pang who became the founder of the new Han dynasty (202 B.C. — 220 A.D.). Liu Pang had the intelligence to realize that Order without Harmony degenerated into extreme and arbitrary rule and was doomed. Therefore he pursued a different policy. All severe practices of the former empire, especially punishments, were abolished. A general amnesty was granted in China. Each peasant who managed to survive the protracted blood bath was given a plot of land. Taxes became moderate once again and corvee became less exacting. For all that, Liu Pang preserved the basis of the Ch'in administrative apparatus, especially on lower and medium levels, while restricting its functions. His successors, notably Wen-ti (179–157 B.C.) and Wu-ti (140-87 B.C.), took further steps toward Confucianism and the much sought-after Harmony.
The Confucians, who at long last came to power, produced a favorable impression. They judiciously accepted those necessary methods of government which had been introduced by the Legists and which justified themselves. To these, they added everything that the Master once taught. This resulted in changes in "the rulers-the ruled" relationship. The process of a fruitful synthesis of Confucianism and Legism found its reflection in the official imperial Confucianism, which was introduced by Tung Chung-shu, the forth great Confucian of Chinese antiquity. That was an eclectic synthesis that absorbed everything valuable and beneficial to the land and the people from the legacy of the Chou sages. This variety of Confucianism exists in an almost unchanged form for more than two thousand years; and it is largely to it that the modern Chinese-Confucian world owes its achievements. At the turn of our era, the most exhaustive compendium of Confucianism — the systematized treatise Lichi— was created. Everything that Confucius taught, everything that constitutes the essence of the doctrine was collected and thoroughly described in it. By this time, Confucianism started performing the function of the dominant religion in a country that previously had no developed religious system.
Speaking of the foundations of the Chinese civilization, which were laid down in antiquity and continued to determine the norms of behavior of Chinese society and state to this day, one must pay attention to Chinese mentality and worldview. In other words, we mean the way the Chinese look upon certain things and the difference between their outlook and that of other peoples, primarily Europeans (or, more broadly, Westerners). Without going into detail, we offer here the main points:
First, what leaps to the eye immediately is the practical nature of thought resulting from many centuries of earthly orientation of the Chinese world outlook. Originally, the Chinese were not familiar with religion in any developed form, but they always revered Social Order and highly esteemed Harmony that was associated with it. Accordingly, they saw the ultimate goal of human existence in providing the well-being of ordinary people (which was the raison d'etre of the state), not in the extinguishing of nirvana or in the retreat of paradise. This is the welfare of the living and, naturally, of the deceased.
Second, they revered the authority of the sages of antiquity, who laid down the principles of Social Order and Universal Harmony. They also highly regarded those intelligent and capable, who are able to maintain that order and are therefore worthy to be promoted to the elite (subsequently, a system of competitive exams became the main tool for such promotion).
Third, this is the idea of natural equality of men. Widely accepted since Confucius' time, it became one of his greatest contributions. Chinese hierarchy is a function of that equality. One's worth on the whole corresponds to one's abilities; the more capable is man, the more fully he must exercise his abilities. This idea originates from the notion of Mandate of Heaven (t'ien-ming), from the practice of promoting the intelligent and the capable, though it was Confucius who applied this idea to all people.
Fourth, this is the cult of conservative stability and the readiness, for its sake, to reinterpret the past in accordance with the needs of today. Norm, ritual, ceremonies and seeing the past the way it is supposed to have been safeguard stability. Hence numerous texts full of interpolations and, sometimes, transparent falsifications.