Ways of the World Chapter 5

Chinese society was uniquely shaped by state actions and the prestige of state officials.
For over 2,000 years, officials and bureaucrats represented the cultural and social elite of Chinese civilization.
Confucius advocated for selecting officials based on merit and morality, not birth or wealth.
Around 200 B.C.E., the Han dynasty required provinces to send promising men to the capital for official positions.

The system evolved into the world's first professional civil service.
In 124 B.C.E., Emperor Wudi established an imperial academy to train potential officials in history, literature, art, mathematics, and Confucian teachings.
The academy enrolled 30,000 students who underwent written examinations to select officials.
The system favored the wealthy due to the cost of education and family connections, but social mobility was possible for bright commoners.
Po Chu-I's poem "After Passing the Examination" illustrates the fame and fortune awaiting successful students.
Officials were privileged, with robes, ribbons, seals, headdresses, polished speech, cultural sophistication, and political authority.
They experienced tension between official duties and personal inclinations towards a reflective cultural life.

The social hierarchy of China during the second-wave era can be described by its elite officials and the landed aristocracy.

Most officials came from wealthy families, wealth meant land ownership.
By the first century B.C.E., population growth, taxation, and indebtedness led to a class of large landowners.
Land accumulation in sizable estates was a persistent theme in Chinese history, opposed by state authorities.
Landlords avoided paying taxes and raised military forces, challenging the emperor's authority.
Wang Mang launched reforms to counteract the power of large landowners, nationalizing and dividing estates.
His reforms included government loans to peasant families, limits on land ownership, and an end to private slavery.
Opposition and natural disasters led to the collapse of Wang Mang's reforms and his assassination in 23 C.E.

Large landowning families remained a central feature of Chinese society.
The term "scholar-gentry" reflected their education and membership in the official elite.
The scholar-gentry class lived luxuriously in urban and rural areas.

The vast majority of China's population consisted of peasants living in small households.
Some peasants owned enough land to support their families, while many others barely survived.
Nature, the state, and landlords made the life of most peasants extremely vulnerable.
State authorities required taxes, labor, and conscription for military service.
Many desperate peasants had to sell out to large landlords or become sharecroppers.

Class conflicts disrupted Chinese society, such as peasant rebellions.
Li Shen's eighth-century poem reflects on the hardships of peasant life.
Periodic peasant rebellions punctuated Chinese history.
The Yellow Turban Rebellion, a massive peasant uprising in 184 C.E. of 360,000 armed followers, was due to floods and epidemics.
Featuring supernatural healings and collective trances, the Yellow Turban movement sought a golden age of equality and common ownership of property.
The rebellion was suppressed but contributed to the overthrow of the Han dynasty.

Yellow Turban Rebellion class antagonisms of Chinese society led to the collapse of ruling dynasties.

Peasants were honored, but merchants were not well-regarded in China.
Merchants were viewed as unproductive, greedy, and materialistic.
State authorities sought to control merchants, forbidding them from wearing silk clothing, riding horses, or holding public office.
State monopolies limited merchant opportunities, and dynasties forced merchants to loan money to the state.
Merchants became wealthy and sought elite status by purchasing land or educating their sons.
They had relationships with state officials and landlords, who profited from business connections.

India's social organization shared features with China, including birth-determined social status, little social mobility, and religious justification for inequalities.
Ancient Indian society, was embodied in the "caste" system with Portuguese origins meaning "race" or "purity of blood."

Cultural and religious ideas underpinned India's caste-based society. This included the notion of performing one's dharma.

The origins of the caste system are hazy, emerging from interactions among South Asia's varied cultures.
Economic and social differences contributed to the development of caste.
By around 500 B.C.E., Indian thinking was that everyone was born into one of four ranked classes, or varnas, for life.
The Brahmins (priests) were at the top, followed by the Kshatriyas (warriors and rulers), the Vaisyas (commoners who cultivated the land), and the Sudras (native peoples in subordinate positions).
The first three classes were “Aryan," or