Quick questions on Imperial China - Qin Shi Huangdi and the Legalist state 221 to 210 BC: HSC Ancient History

The Qin had been shaped by Legalism (fajia) for well over a century before unification. In the fourth century BC the reformer Shang Yang remade Qin under Duke Xiao (major reforms around 356 and 350 BC), abolishing hereditary aristocratic privilege, tying rank to military merit, registering the population into mutually responsible groups, and enforcing a strict, uniform law. The First Emperor and Li Si inherited this tradition and gave it its most complete theoretical form through the writings of Han Feizi (Han Fei, died 233 BC), a prince of the state of Han and, like Li Si, a student of the philosopher Xunzi.

Legalist theory became a machine for governing people through three linked instruments. First, the census: households across the unified empire were registered, giving the state the information to levy taxes, conscript soldiers and mobilise corvee labour on a scale no previous Chinese state had managed. Second, the mutual-responsibility groups inherited from Shang Yang: households were bound into registered units of five (wu) and ten (shi), collectively liable for one another's conduct, so failing to denounce a neighbour's crime brought shared punishment while denunciation was rewarded. Third, universal law: the varied codes of the former states were swept away for a single Qin law applied everywhere, so the same offence carried the same graded penalty from one end of the empire to the other.