Who Has Power in China?

 

 A10 Even before its unification China has always been a growing, fast-moving nation. Its size, diversity, and volatility make it a country of constant change and evolution. As a people, the Chinese have always been interested in their past as insinuated by the fact that the Chinese people are rabid record makers (Heinz 1999). Worship of ancestors is worship of origins, this is the basis for the high veneration the Chinese gave to their dead. The regard the Chinese gave to their ancestors is so high in fact that they ultimately believed in "one supreme deity or moral force" which dominated the world and held a personal interest in the matters of humanity (Bary, Chan and Watson 1960). This supreme being is the complex structure of the collective dead, everyone who has passed, Heaven. The early Shang rulers of China only had beautiful symbolic ritualized jade tools to claim their power. The late Shang rulers however sought diviners to perform oracle bone divinations. These diviners performed intentionally elaborate rituals using specific animal bones and interpret the codes and cracks written in them as a prophecy and an extension of the will of  Heaven (Mair 2001). The lack of standardization of bone preparation tells us that access to this kind of knowledge was limited as it was used to support the existing social hierarchy. This is how  rituals like oracle bone divination were crucial cr ucial to the maintenance of the Shang state’s political power.  After the Zhou Dynasty overthrew the last Shang Emperor the new ruling clan had to convince the nobles that they had the right to rule. Although the Zhou rulers still employed diviners to perform varieties of pyromancy techniques they invented the concept of Mandate of  Heaven, Tiānmìng to further their claim to rule. In Tiānmìng whoever is favored by Heaven’s orders is given supreme power and authority after prestige and religious importance. To further convince the aristocrats the Zhou added that Heaven dictated that one would rule as long as he  was a good ruler. To keep an emperorship emperorship the dynasty must be prosperous and everyone is happy or else Heaven would appoint another ruling family. Whenever an emperor becomes stagnant and a dynasty begins to fall apart the diviners and the people would interpret this as a sign from the heavens that the current ruler has lost Tiānmìng and a new emperor is needed, hence the Dynastic Cycles. In China therefore, whoever is able to successfully prove that he (a male) is favored by  Heaven is rewarded with authority over the state. This is of course a lot more complex than it sounds because of the needed factors that would have to conspire against a current ruler. But in the end the one who is able to convince the people of Han that he is chosen by the Ancestors, the Mandate of Heaven, by Tiānmìng would be the one to hold the ultimate power over China.

 

 A10 Bibliography  Bary, William Theodore de, Wing-tsit Chan, and Burton Watson. "Sources of Chinese Tradition." 9. New York: Columbia Press University, 1960. Heinz, Carolyn Brown. "Asian Cultural Traditions." 225. Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc., 1999. Mair, Victor H. "The Case of the Wayward Oracle Bone." 42. Pennsylvania: Penn Publishers Inc., 2001.