Under the Chou, China began to call itself “the Middle Kingdom.” The Chinese—though they did not yet call themselves that—saw their country as the center of the world.
Despite their view of their nation as the Middle Kingdom, however, the Chou rulers were strong only during the Western Chou period. The end of that phase came because a king fell in love with one of his concubines (KAHNG-kyoo-bynz), and the relatives of his queen formed an alliance with the "barbarian" nomads beyond China. From that point on, various nobles competed with the king for power.
By the time of the Chou Dynasty, China had developed an extensive feudal system (FYOO-dul) not unlike the one that would prevail in Europe during the Middle Ages. In a feudal system, a nobleman, or feudal lord, owns vast areas of land that are worked by peasants. The peasants may own a small portion of the land that they till, but they do so only if the feudal lord allows them to. Much of their harvest goes to the lord, who in turn provides the peasants with protection against outsiders. The feudal lord is in turn subject to the king, turning over part of his wealth in exchange for the stability offered by a central government.
The feudal system implied a set of shared obligations between people lower on the social scale and those higher up. In the Spring and Autumn Period, however, the mutual obligations between the feudal lords and the king broke down, primarily because of the Chou monarchs' weak leadership. The nobles began to fight amongst themselves as well as against the waves of nomads who continually invaded from the north. Meanwhile, the kings spent most of their time in Loyang, the only area where they held real power.
This situation would become much worse during the Warring States Period, which saw the rise of a new class structure to replace the feudal system. The class structure of China was a little different from the one that prevailed in most ancient societies. The Chinese came to be divided into four groups, as the Indians were under the original caste system. However, the Chinese classes were far less rigid than the system of castes—or even the feudal arrangement that they replaced.
At the top of the social ladder were the shih (sounds like "she"), composed of nobles, aristocrats or wealthy people, warriors, priests, and scholars. Most ancient societies, by contrast, placed the last two categories in a separate class, just beneath the nobles, aristocrats, and warriors. Another differ-
Ence from typical class structures was the high status accorded to peasants, or nung (NOONG), the next group. Chinese peasants, like their counterparts in other countries, were far from wealthy, but they came to hold much more respect because they tended the farms that fed the rest of the population. Next came kung (KOONG), who were tradespeople or artisans (AHR-ti-zuhnz). At the bottom were shang, or businesspeople.
The low status of merchants was yet another ironic fact of ancient Chinese history, because in the twentieth century, the Chinese would emerge as some of the most successful businesspeople in Asia. But in ancient China, the shih tended to oversee big business, meaning that the shang operated only small shops. Business itself was considered a necessary evil, a fact that would place the Chinese at a disadvantage against other cultures in the future.
At the time of its development, however, the Chinese class structure represented a triumph of social progress. It would prevail, largely unchanged, for more than 2,000 years, thanks in part to one of history's most outstanding individuals, the philosopher Confucius.
World History
