China’s Legalist System

Han Fei and other Legalists were offensive realists on steroids, dedicated to the proposition that “he who has the most power wins.” In pursuit of power, they helped to design and implement the series of political “reforms” that were enhancing the authority of the monarch, building and maintaining strong armies, increasing agricultural production, building up an appointed bureaucracy to replace an unreliable hereditary aristocracy, increasing state revenues, improving the state’s ability to regulate commerce, intimidating the people into subjection, and crushing any and all dissent.

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The essence of Legalist doctrines was the supremacy of the ruler: “The ruler occupies the position of power; [he] dominates the people and commands the wealth of the state.” Power could only be concentrated in the hands of the ruler by weakening the nobility and further subjugating commoners, so this is what the Legalist program consciously and with great rigor set out to do.

To strengthen the state at the expense of the nobility, the Legalists advised their sovereigns that they should no longer share power with a class of hereditary feudal lords. Within the court, aristocratic officials serving in inherited posts found themselves replaced by appointed bureaucrats, often ordinary gentry-scholars or non-natives, whom the ruler could discharge, or even execute, at will.12 In the countryside, feudal lords were displaced by appointed magistrates who served at the pleasure of the ruler.

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To strengthen the ruler’s hand over the people, the Legalists recommended such policies as:

• accumulation of people as an indispensable component of power: “Therefore the ruler of men desires to have more people for his own use. . . . The ruler loves the people because they are useful.”
• suppression of all voluntary associations: “The early kings always made certain that the interests of their subjects diverged. Thus under perfect governance, spouses and friends, however close to one another, can neither refuse to report another’s crimes, nor cover up for them.”
• establishment of informer networks: “The wise ruler forces the whole world to hear and to watch for him. . . . No one in the world can hide from him or scheme against him.”
• use of punishment instead of reward: “A well-governed state. . .employs nine punishments to one reward; whereas a weak state employs nine rewards to one punishment.”
• harsh punishment for violations according to set laws: “If crimes are punished by execution, then the law wins over the people and the army is strong.”
• mutual surveillance and collective punishment: “The people were commanded to be organized into groups of fives and tens. They must be under mutual surveillance and punished for crimes committed by other members of their group. Those who failed to inform against a crime were to be cut in half at the waist.”

Source: Bully of Asia: Why China’s Dream Is the New Threat to World Order (2017) by Steven W. Mosher.