Why was the feudal system eliminated when it lasted for thousands of years? What are the disadvantages of the feudal system?

Why was the feudal system eliminated after thousands of years? What are the disadvantages of the feudal system? Today brings you some relevant content to share with you.

China's authoritarian centralization should begin in the Warring States and end in the land reform). It officially began in 221 BC and ended in 1911. The authoritarian centralization system continued in China for more than 2,000 years, and had a profound impact on the formation and development of China's united multi-ethnic state, statehood and polity, bureaucracy and administration, culture and education.

Times always move on, and relatively advanced systems or technologies are gradually eliminated by the times. China has experienced thousands of years of development and ups and downs. From the primitive and ignorant slave society to the slightly more advanced feudal society to today's modern society. This system has existed in China for thousands of years. Theoretically, it has also been proven that the feudal system has its merits, but why was it wiped out in the tide of time? What are the disadvantages of the feudal system today?

It can be said that the feudal system in China began in the Qin Dynasty, when Ying Zheng established the first feudal centralized state. What is being discussed here is not the feudal land system, but the feudal political system. As far as land is concerned, the feudal system refers to the land system of allocating land to ministers and princes. Qin Shi Huang broke with this tradition and became a more centralized state with the establishment of the county system. The emergence of feudalism was also a result of the development of the times. There is no doubt that it was also appropriate and beneficial to the productive forces of the time. However, the feudal system also revealed its drawbacks in the long run. After all, there is no perfect system in the world.

First, the feudal system was characterized by autocracy.

Dictatorship was actually the best way to go in China at that time because China was a large country with a large population. For today's China, everyone has a certain level of education, but for the people in ancient times, most of them were actually uneducated people, and people like that were prone to unrest. Therefore, autocracy was actually the best way to manage such a large country. However, this is only one aspect. The most prominent drawback of autocracy is that it concentrates all the power in the hands of one person, which puts a high demand on the ability of the ruling party.

Because if you have a wise ruler, that's fine, but if you have a do-nothing person who, when faced with the responsibility of an entire nation, will abuse those powers he holds to serve his own interests. The result is tyranny, and history is full of examples of tyranny.

Like the example of Qin II, which we all know, after inheriting supreme power, it began to dictate and cause great discontent. He turned the whole country into a tool for his own entertainment and eventually conquered it. Of course, there were people like Qin Ershi, but many emperors could do nothing about it. The result of dictatorship was the maximum concentration of power in the hands of one person, with no way to ensure that this person was actually capable of picking up the responsibility.

Another feature of the feudal system was the unity of thought and culture.

The fusion of various ideas during the Spring and Autumn Period led to the emergence of a large number of thinkers, which further enriched China's intellectual civilization. However, we can find that Chinese culture and its ideology have not changed much since the Qin Dynasty. Basically, some fine-tuning has been done on the basis of Confucianism. In general, Confucianism still has no scope and no substantial innovation. Successive emperors attached great importance to controlling people's minds. Only by controlling people's thoughts could the stability of the country be ensured.

So, since the Han Dynasty, Confucianism has established its orthodox status. The rulers, in order to strengthen their control over ideas, only allowed readers to study and read Confucian classics. Of course, exams were based only on these books. This kind of thinking was passed on from generation to generation. Over time, people's ideas became fixed. Confucianism or traditional feudalism was so y rooted in their minds that no one would think it was right or wrong. No one wants to learn and create new things. Even learning and accepting new things makes them resistant.

So in the Qing Dynasty, when some advanced ideas from the West were introduced to China, few people could accept them, and no one was willing to learn from them. People just stubbornly stuck to what they had inherited for thousands of years without changing, so they would eventually fall behind the West.

The feudal system particularly emphasized the importance of agriculture.

The feudal economy was based on agriculture, so it regarded the peasants as a class second only to the scholars, especially the merchants and traders. It regarded merchants as a group of undutiful vermin who would disturb the foundations of the state. Therefore, since ancient times, the government had suppressed merchants with great vigor. For example, it forced merchants not to ride in horse-drawn carriages, not to wear clothes made of better materials, and suppressed merchants in all aspects. Undeniably, this policy of emphasizing agricultural development was beneficial to the stability of the country. After all, people still need to eat when they are alive.

When productivity was underdeveloped, it was natural to allocate a large portion of manpower to meet the needs of agricultural production. But with the advancement of agricultural tools and further proficiency in agricultural production, there was actually a gradual decrease in the number of people engaged in agricultural production, but the government still bound all the people to the land. To put it bluntly, as big as China is, and more importantly, there are not many apprentices who can be used in agriculture. By doing this, the government has made it impossible for many farmers to support themselves through agriculture alone.

On the other hand, the government's suppression of commerce not only delayed the emergence of a Chinese economy, but unfortunately it eventually died out. As a result, China's productivity lagged far behind that of the West, and its level of economic development was lower than that of other countries. China had such great prospects but was not driven by a well-developed commodity economy and lagged behind in economic development.

Under the fire of the invaders, the feudal system finally came to an end. A country's system must be adapted to its economic situation. Of course, a more advanced system can also promote its own economic development. The feudal system was no longer the most appropriate system at that time. It was pulling China back, out of tune with that era. Elimination was its inevitable fate. We need to move with the times today as well!