Replacement of the clan system by the family system during the Eastern Zhou period

Reasons for the replacement of the clan system by the family system during the Eastern Zhou period:

During the Eastern Zhou period, as the control of the Zhou Emperor gradually weakened, the vassal states flourished, and the vassal states annexed each other, and the vassal states appeared one after another, breaking the situation in which the vassals were listed side by side, and the crown was the only one to be honored. In the process of annexation, the old system of the Western Zhou Dynasty was gradually replaced by a new system.

The transformation of the clan land ownership system, in which the sons of the clan could only be hereditary and were not allowed to buy or sell clan land, to the family land ownership system, in which individuals could buy or sell land privately, became the most basic change among the various changes in the Eastern Zhou society.

This change made the family system replace the clan system, that is, the land ownership system based on a family instead of the land ownership system based on a clan, and a family became a landlord if it occupied a lot of land, and a peasant if it occupied less land or planted other people's land.

Advantages of the family system

It was conducive to increasing everyone's motivation to work and to the development of the productive forces.

With the change of ownership, the tax system also changed, and the ruling class began to implement the tax mu system and the field tax system. The so-called tax mu system, that is, collecting tax according to mu, and the so-called field tax system, that is, according to the mu of the field to bear the military tax. Since the implementation of the two systems, the rulers only imposed taxes and taxes on the landed people, and no longer interfered with the landed people's behavior of buying, selling and dividing the land among themselves.

There was no more interference after the landowners paid the taxes and taxes, so the freedom to buy and sell land was naturally created. The private ownership of land stimulated people to reclaim the wasteland and develop production.