China’s history of despotism did not begin with the Communist regime. Drawing on an essay by Sekihei, this piece traces the emperor-centered system since Qin Shi Huang, revealing how arbitrary power normalized cruelty, executions without trial, and the denial of human dignity across successive dynasties.

2017-07-27

In Chinese history, the tyranny exercised by absolute rulers did not begin with the Communist regime.
The following is a continuation of a genuine essay, a true work of scholarship, by Sekihei.

The Brutality of China’s Successive Dynasties

In Chinese history, the tyranny exercised by absolute rulers did not begin with the Communist regime.
Looking across successive dynasties, one finds a great many governments and tyrants whose very nature was brutality and a penchant for slaughter.
Since Qin Shi Huang, the imperial autocracy has been strictly inherited, with political power concentrated in the emperor, who became an absolute sovereign as the master of all under heaven.
All the people under heaven were “the property of the emperor.”
If they were property, then it was easy for the emperor, at his sole discretion, to take the lives of anyone from commoners to ministers.

When one looks at the deeds of the tyrants of China’s successive dynasties, the first to be killed were the officials.
There was no reason.
There were no laws and no trials.
On the contrary, those who were killed were expected to express gratitude to the emperor for their execution.

To give an extreme example, during the Ming dynasty, ministers entered the court every morning.
At the morning audience, ministers and officials gathered before the emperor.
It became customary for these ministers to bid farewell to their families every morning.
Why?
Because they did not know whether they would return home safely after completing their duties.
They might return as corpses.

That is because if, at a privy council, they did something that touched the emperor’s wrath, even a minister would have his trousers stripped off on the spot and be beaten on the buttocks.
This went far beyond any notion of human rights.
Honor and pride, and at times even life itself, were all taken away.
Moreover, the emperor decided on the spot how many blows would be administered.
In some cases, people were beaten a hundred times and beaten to death, and such cases were by no means rare.

There is a term called tingzhang.
It means beating a person with a stick.
In other words, at a court audience, one would be beaten with a stick until death.
There was no reason for it; it depended solely on the emperor’s mood.
Of course, there was no such thing as a trial, and the punishment was carried out immediately on the spot.
Even someone who had passed the imperial civil service examinations and become a minister could be killed on the spot at the emperor’s whim.
In such a world, how could ordinary people possibly have any human rights?

To be continued.