A 9th Century Historian’s Account

CASE 5:  Popular Belief in Ancient China

“After only a few years, the Qin Empire was ruined. There was a cause for this. The Qin government had set tens of thousands of people to hard labor, forced their tyrannical laws upon them, and exhausted their wealth. The people, along with the exiled and conscripted, grasped their hoes and batons, looked around, followed one another and, in one mighty shout, formed an alliance. And so at that time there were rebels among the people, but not among the officials. The people grew embittered below while the officials lorded it over them from above. (Finally) the people of the empire united, killed their governors, raided their magistrates’ offices, and rose up, as one!” Liu Zongyuan (773-819), “On Feudalism.” Therefore when later officials hinted that an emperor’s policies resembled those of the First Emperor, it was in fact a thinly veiled threat that the present regime might meet an untimely end just as did the Qin dynasty.

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