34 Qin Shi Huang's Theory of Merit

I began to talk about it in a big way: "When talking about Qin Shi Huang's contribution to the Chinese nation, I would like to give a brief introduction to history. The place we are in is the eastern continent of Asia, and the country where we are located is a little south of the eastern continent, and his current name is China, but in ancient times he was very chaotic and had no order, and the whole society was to restrain his behavior with the primary moral standard of the individual. After someone began to manage, there were tribes and tribal alliances, and the tribes that gradually developed and grew continued to annex small tribes and become more powerful, such as the ancestors of our nation, Yan and Huang, and later the Xia Dynasty, the Shang Dynasty, and the Zhou Dynasty, and the end of the Zhou Dynasty was also called the Warring States Period, and finally the Qin State unified the country and officially became a country. You can also understand it this way, before the Qin State, it was not called national history, to be precise, it was the history of the continent, or the history of the nation, and after the Qin State, it could be called national history. Because Qin was the first unified country with a rudimentary state on this continent, this was the first contribution of Qin Shi Huang, so he was called the First Emperor.

The second contribution is to create a precedent for the rule of law. Before the Qin State, the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties were all loose feudal dynasties, that is, sub-feudal vassal states, and the fiefs became a "country" of their own, while each small country actually existed in the form of a large tribe, and it cannot be said that it was a country by the standards of the current state;

During the Warring States Period, the two schools of Legalism and Confucianism had fierce debates and collisions on whether the country should implement the rule of law or implement benevolent governance, and its representative figures were Han Fei and Confucius, Shao Zhengmao, who advocated the rule of law, was killed by Confucius, and ruled the country with benevolence and virtue, and only Qin chose to govern the country according to law among the seven heroes of the Warring States, and the other six countries chose to govern the country with benevolence and virtue. Among them, the first to establish the idea that everyone is equal before the law, the first to have a relatively perfect legal system, involving political, economic, military, and other aspects, the first to implement the system of civil prosecution of officials, the first to implement the system of supervision and patrol supervision, the first to implement the system of rewarding military merits, and so on. Therefore, the people of Qin have a strong sense of law, and abiding by the law made the Qin State orderly, never closed its doors at night, and became more and more powerful, thus unifying the other six countries and completing the rule of this continent. So far, the idea of governing the country according to the law and the strong executive power have been advocated and implemented by the managers of various countries in the contemporary era, and is this not a great contribution to human history?

As for saying that the law was too harsh, this was also a fact; in the environment at that time, first, people did not know how to abide by it at all, and they did not have the consciousness to abide by it, so how could they make people afraid if they did not use harsh laws and strong means of enforcement? Only by being afraid could we obey the law; second, only by using heavy codes in troubled times could we achieve the effect of quickly rectifying social order. Of course, after several generations, law-abiding and law-abiding are deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and later generations have developed the habit of complying with them, and excessive laws can also be amended, but this process is long. Therefore, I think it is very inappropriate for you to use the law-abiding thinking that has been formed by contemporary people to measure the Qin State, when the law was still in the initial stage of mankind. It's a pity that Qin Shi Huang died too early, only lived to be 49 years old, and the younger generations were incompetent, so that Chinese history took many detours in vain, such as the various dynasties after the fall of the Qin State, advocating Confucianism, all of which were benevolent in the political world, and the rule of law was only used as an auxiliary form, and the implementation was very flexible, and the nobles and commoners were both heavens. Imagine if Qin Shi Huang had lived for 20 more years and the rule of law had been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, what would have become of society? It was not until more than 2,000 years later that people realized the importance of the rule of law, advocated the rule of law, and ruled the country according to the law to occupy a dominant position.

The third contribution is to unite the Chinese nation. The main thing is to unify the text, unify the weights and measures, unify the currency, and unify the tracks. Don't underestimate these four unifications, let me talk about the first one, the meaning of unified writing: the unified writing makes the chaotic and disorderly writing and language among various ethnic groups and tribes on this continent simpler, and the unification of writing promotes linguistic unification, so that language exchanges and written exchanges are convenient, and the process of national integration is accelerated. The super-large tribe that speaks the same language is the Chinese nation, which has united the hearts of the Chinese people, which is why in the next few thousand years, although the country has changed and the name has been changing, and the Chinese nation is scattered all over the world, the heart of the same language, the same species and the same nation has never changed. In other words, the unified script at that time laid a solid foundation for the reunification of the Chinese nation in the future. Please imagine that if there were dozens of written languages and dozens of languages on this continent, would there be dozens of small countries on this continent like the European continent? As for the three reunifications in the future, I don't need to elaborate on their significance, right? If you are engaged in economics, you should understand it.

The fourth great contribution was the abolition of feudalism, the establishment of counties, and the establishment of a complete centralized structure and management system. As mentioned earlier, the Xia, Shang and Zhou before Qin were all fiefdom-built loose large tribe management models, and such disadvantages are huge, so we won't discuss him. Why can Qin be said to be a country in the true sense of the word? It is because he abolished feudalism and set up counties. For example, the emperor has set up a prime minister, the prime minister manages various ministries, there are counties in various places, there are counties under the county, and there is a pavilion chief under the county (equivalent to today's township-level police station), and the pavilion chief is set up under the pavilion chief (equivalent to today's village head), and officials are stationed by the central or competent agencies, and officials at all levels are responsible to the central government and their superiors in accordance with the law. Think about it, is it basically this kind of management pattern in every country in the world now?

After the Han Dynasty overthrew the Qin, including the subsequent dynasties, abolished the Qin system, and restored the feudal system, which led to the chaos of the country's civil war, and then adopted the elimination of the feudal domain, such as the Sui, Tang, Western Jin, Ming, and Qing dynasties, all of which had the rebellion of the vassal kings, resulting in constant wars in the country and the people were in dire straits. And only the Qin Dynasty and the Song Dynasty did not have a rebellion of vassal kings. Practice proved the foresight of the Qin State.

The above four great contributions are all contributions to mankind and the nation across the ages, and they were all completed under the leadership of Qin Shi Huang thousands of years ago. Many of them are still being implemented in the current world and cannot be abandoned, so may I ask you: Are these deeds enough for you to worship?"

My mouth was dry when I said this, but unfortunately the kettle was still in the car, so I had to purse my lips.

I saw that Miss He was still pondering, and she didn't say a word, and after a while, she asked again: "Then how do you explain his burning of books and building the Great Wall?"

I had no choice but to say again: "You only saw him burning books, but you didn't think about why he did it." At that time, after the Warring States period, a hundred ideas bloomed and a hundred schools of thought contended, which was a good thing in modern terms, but from the perspective of the state administrators at that time, it was extremely disadvantageous. Because the Qin state practiced the rule of law rather than the rule of benevolence, these two concepts of governance were completely opposed. The country has just been reunified, and the concept of governing the country with benevolence is still deeply rooted in the hearts of the people in the other six countries that have just been reunified, and the state needs to implement the idea of governing the country according to law, and it is necessary to have a general environment for unified thinking, concerted efforts, and joint efforts to build it, and those Confucian ideas and the phenomenon of a hundred schools of thought contending have become an obstructive force that confuses people's thinking and undermines the rule of law and the building of the country. Just imagine, if the central authorities issue a certain kind of order, and the executors below have different ideas, then they will have different views, and the direct result will be mutual restraint, passive execution, or direct confrontation. At the same time, several representative Confucian figures were killed by iron-blooded means to have a deterrent effect. As for what posterity will say, as a strong leader with foresight, he will not take these things into account.

Speaking of Confucianism, it is necessary to mention Confucius, the representative of Confucianism, I personally believe that Confucius is only worthy of being a great educator to educate the people on what is etiquette, righteousness and shame, and governing the country, he is a little white sweet. Governing the country with benevolence has made the country take a detour for more than 2,000 years.

Speaking of building the Great Wall, at that time, the northern nomads were constantly going south to rob and harass, and you couldn't have sent a large number of troops over to kill all the Huns in the north, right? Even if the Qin State had the ability to kill them all at that time, how many years would it take? How much food would it cost the country? How many soldiers would have to die? Do you dare to calculate this account? And country building needs a stable environment, so we chose to build a defensive line against the northern nomadic tribes with the least amount of money and food. Shouldn't that be?"

I pursed my lips with difficulty, and continued: "Don't be confused by historical legends or the records of later generations, look at any problem, you have to put yourself in the shoes of the people, to be able to unify the six countries and become the first emperor of a generation, is not something that ordinary people can understand and evaluate." Because the height of the station is different, the ideological realm is even more different. ”

Seeing that she still looked thoughtful, she didn't say a word. I was anxious: "Miss He, I'm so thirsty, I'm going out to drink water, you continue to walk, I'll wait for you outside." Then he turned and left.

To be honest, when I was in high school, I was very fond of history, and I admired the emperor in my hometown very much, so I studied more about him, and I was very disgusted by the unfair evaluation of this emperor by some so-called experts or scholars in history. With their vision and the height they stand, how can they be qualified to evaluate and belittle this emperor of the ages, who has made great contributions to the history of mankind and the history of the nation? Therefore, when I saw the articles and remarks about belittling Qin Shi Huang, I couldn't help but be angry and disdainful.