He Created a Centralized Bureaucratic State
The newly proclaimed First Emperor set out to consolidate his nascent empire by reforming its politics, economy, and culture. A political debate erupted in the imperial court about how best to organize the new empire. Confucian scholars called for a return to traditional feudalism, and urged the Chin Shi Huang to appoint his sons princes of provinces, and grant fiefs to his loyal generals, relatives, and retainers.
The sole voice of oppositions came from the emperor’s minister of justice, Li Ssu, who pointed out that feudalism had caused the downfall of China’s last major dynasty centuries earlier. The rulers in those days had granted fiefs to their relatives, and when those nobles eventually started fighting amongst themselves, the government was powerless to stop them.
When the emperor asked how else he could reward his relatives and loyal followers if not with fiefs, Li Ssu advised him to simply keep them in the imperial capital, and grant them pensions and fancy titles. That would keep them under the emperor’s gaze and under his thumb. Dependant and pliant, they would be unable to create an independent power base out in the provinces that might threaten the imperial throne.
Chin Shi Huang revolutionized China’s political landscape by siding with Li Ssu and abolishing feudalism. Following Li Ssu’s advice, the nobility were transformed from an uncontrollable warrior class with independent power bases, and into tame and dependent courtiers. All aristocratic titles and ranks were abolished, except for those created and bestowed by the emperor. Former aristocrats who had not won imperial favor were either killed, or put to manual labor.
Feudalism was replaced with a centralized bureaucracy, in which all power flowed from the emperor. China was divided into provinces that were subdivided in turn, in descending order, into counties, townships, and hundred-family units. Streams of officials flowed out from the capital and into the provinces, from which they sent back a stream of reports and recommendations. The flow of information from the provinces to the imperial throne, and of orders from the throne back to the provinces, was remarkably efficient. The emperor was a hardworking ruler and an avid reader of his officials’ reports, and set for himself a daily quota of 120 pounds of documents to peruse.
To further unify the new empire economically, Chin Shi Huang abolished the Warring States’ weights, measures, and currencies, and replaced them with Chin units as the standard. To accelerate communications between the imperial capital and the provinces, a network of roads and canals were built. All carriages on those roads had to have axles and gauges of the same size. Culturally, all local variants of the Chinese script were abolished, and replaced with the Chin script as a standard. It remains the basis of Chinese script to this day. Within a decade, the First Emperor had successfully converted China from a fractured feudal society, and into an efficient centralized bureaucracy.