Qin Hui: What is a big country, strong country

The title of my talk today is "What is a Great Power". As we all know, the recent "Rise of the Great Powers" has been aired in our country, causing a lot of discussion, which should be said to be a cultural event of great significance in recent years. What is a great nation? What kind of a great power do we seek to be? Many Chinese are concerned about this question.

I think there are a lot of intriguing perspectives in terms of the TV series' choice of a great power. For example, we have this TV series, we all know that there have been many great powers throughout history, many empires since ancient times, moving across Europe, Asia and Africa, jingoism, many such stories in history. But the TV series "Rise of the Great Powers" did not choose these great powers in history. My understanding is that the TV series is trying to place the rise of great powers in a modernized perspective, so the ancient military powers are not included in this perspective.

But it is also worthwhile to study whether some of the great powers are considered great powers in the modern perspective. For example, at the beginning of the modernization period, we all know that in the three continents of Europe, Asia and Africa, there was a great power, the Turkish Ottoman Empire. We know that the process of the rise of the Turkish Ottoman Empire was almost simultaneous with the great geographic discoveries and the age of navigation, which are more reflected in the rise of great powers, and that the capture of Byzantium by the Turks in 1453 has always been regarded as two major markers of the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern era in traditional European historiography.

As you know, history books, nowadays, understand the Middle Ages and the Modern Age as a change in social form, from a feudal society to a capitalist society, so we set the dividing line at the English Revolution. But according to the traditional concept of Europe, they did not have this concept of evolution of social form at that time. In the traditional historiography of Europe, the so-called Middle Ages referred to the period before the fall of Byzantium by the Turks. The fall of Byzantium and the discovery of the New World were the beginning of the modern era and the end of the Middle Ages. That is to say, this event is very significant, and since the fall of Byzantium in 1453, until the seventeenth century when the Ottoman expansion was at its greatest, the army fought all the way to the city of Vienna, can be said to occupy the whole of West Asia, North Africa and a large part of Southeast Europe, to form a large empire across Europe, Asia and Africa.

It can be said that the maritime hegemony of Spain, Portugal, Holland and other countries depicted in this Rise of the Great Powers, and the land hegemony of the Ottomans, were two things that existed at the same time. But in the series Rise of the Great Powers talks about Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands, but not Turkey. According to my understanding, this is because the editors believe that the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, in essence, and the expansion of these military empires in the pre-modern era is no different, that is to say, it is basically the Persian Empire, the Arab Empire, the Mongolian Empire, such a type of traditional military empire, and does not have the West, Portugal, the Netherlands, the so-called rise of these countries, the kind of so-called modern significance of the rise of these countries. But here I would say that the difference is mainly for these countries, that is to say, the Turks, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the significance is very great indeed. And for the conquered people, in fact, the distinction between traditional and modern is not very significant, the Chinese were massacred by the traditional Mongol army back then, and later by the so-called modern Japanese army, and the Native Americans were converted to Christianity as a result of that kind of pressure from outside during the modern colonization process, and the former Persians, Central Asians, and the Balkans, who were formerly the Native Americans, and who were Islamized as a result of Arab and Ottoman expansion, at least at the time for the conquered, both were, shall we say, tragedies.

But what is the difference between the two? Why do we say that there were some like the Ottoman Empire, which was a traditional great power? What about these that rose later, which are modern powers? I think there are two main differences. One lies in the influence of the founding "system" on the world, on later generations. To put it simply, it is the influence of the modern system, including the economic system - modern market economy, political system - modern democratic constitutional system, on these systems. To put it simply, it is the significance of the establishment of modern systems, including economic systems - the modern market economy, political systems - the modern democratic constitutional system. But more importantly, we know that the key to evaluating whether a system is good or bad is what the people get out of it, first and foremost in the relationship between the rising power and its people, which of course means first and foremost the relationship with its own people. Many people say that in the process of the rise of the Western powers, the conquered, the invaded suffered greatly, and this is something that we Chinese certainly know all too well. But in the exaggerations of traditional military empires, this situation is also very serious, and it can even be said that there has been more, and this point is not the difference between modern and traditional. There is a lot of rampant fact of modern colonial expansion, and there is no shortage of such facts at all in the expansion of military empires in ancient times, including our oft-mentioned pride of the generation, Genghis Khan. Power politics have been around since ancient times, not just in recent times.

But what is the difference between recent times? The first is the context of the system I just mentioned, and the second is the relationship that this system brings to the people, meaning first and foremost to their own people. Of course the suffering of this colonial conquest on the conquered areas is a separate issue, which I think we can discuss later if there is an opportunity.

We are now discussing the rise of great powers, what exactly will their own people get out of it? On this point, I would say that under a certain social system, in a certain system, the power of a country will of course enable its nationals to get a lot of benefits, but we can't say the other way around that the nationals of a country get benefits, it must be or can only be when that country, territorially, is in a period of great expansion. Historically, we have seen many examples of nationals benefiting from the expansion of the State under this kind of national-based institutional arrangement, and of nationals still benefiting when the State stops expanding. Therefore, in this sense, the rise and fall of the so-called great powers is not just about the size of the territory, the strength of the force, but also about how much the people's rights, welfare, and interests can be promoted.

On this issue, I think the great powers listed in the movie "Rise of the Great Powers" are quite interesting. For example, many commentators have suggested that some of these countries spoken of in "The Rise of the Great Powers" are countries that you would hardly call great powers, whether in terms of force or in terms of the territory of the country, such as the Netherlands. Let's say the Netherlands proper, it's always been a small country, it's never been a great power. And some people say that Spain and Portugal proper were also small, but it had very large colonies, but even in that sense, I think the Netherlands can hardly be considered a great power, and while the Netherlands has expanded overseas, the Netherlands' overseas expansion has been, frankly speaking, limited in scale. The real meaningful colonies in the history of the Netherlands is the Dutch Central India, which is also known as Indonesia today. Of course, he has occupied some places in history, but only some very small places can be stably occupied, and there is no some too significant, such as the Netherlands Antilles, Dutch Guyana and other small insignificant. While we say that the Netherlands had maritime hegemony, we mainly mean commercial hegemony, as far as fighting wars was concerned the Dutch were actually quite incapable.

About this the Chinese know well, because back then it was us Chinese, and not the Chinese government army, is a Chinese anti-government military outfit, a businessman as the main body. We all know that during the Revolutionary period there was a merchant rebellion in Guangzhou, Zheng Chenggong was a maritime merchant group, based on the maritime commercial power of such a force. Was Zheng Chenggong's army considered powerful at that time? We know that it was not, he could not stand on the mainland, frankly speaking, if he could stand on the mainland, he would not have fought in Taiwan, the reason why he marched into Taiwan at that time was because he suffered a major defeat in the battle with the Qing Dynasty on the mainland, and at that time, his base was only left in Kinmen and Xiamen, and these two places were already in a precarious situation. But such an army, one that had lost many battles on the mainland, defeated Holland at sea. Holland lost to Zheng Chenggong in East Asia, as it did elsewhere.

Today's New York, which was first called New Amsterdam, also became New York soon after because of the Dutch defeat. If the Netherlands is a great power, this is not said in a military sense, much less in a territorial-population sense. If the Netherlands as a political subject of the country, I think the Dutch people are more casual, he does not have a strong sense of homeland, the Dutch immigrants ran to a place, often there is not much of a sense of homeland. A typical example is the Dutch who went to Africa. Soon after they went to Africa, they called themselves "Africans" and their language "Afrikaans", but we know that they were actually South Africans of Dutch descent, and they were called "Boers". But we know that they are actually South Africans of Dutch descent, and others call them "Boers". Recently, there are "Boer goats" in China's sheep farming industry, which are a very famous breed, and they are cultivated by these "Boers". These people never say they are Dutch, they arrived in South Africa soon after the mother country from the independent state, and then the British to fight them, the very famous "Anglo-Boer War", the Boers and the British compared to that is obviously very weak, but they are indeed more united, so they are mainly guerrilla warfare, and also the British to clean up a lot of trouble. The Boers were also able to clean up the British enough, and of course they were defeated by the British in the end. But it is also strange to say that although they were defeated, and the Boer country has since perished, but the Boers in British South Africa, can still be said to be in charge, and later on in South Africa also still, the Boer's power has also been very strong, the British South Africans on the contrary, has always been the power of a relatively small.

Here I would like to interject that it is precisely because of this that the British South Africans were more progressive on the issue of apartheid and were more inclined to oppose the apartheid system, and it was the Boers who insisted on the apartheid system being the most powerful. Or in their own words in South Africa, the Afrikaners. Some of our history books nowadays interpret the Anglo-Boer War as an imperialist war between Britain and Holland over South Africa. I think this is a little bit puzzling, it can be said that Britain fought over South Africa, but Holland didn't come to fight over South Africa, there was a group of Dutchmen, but that Dutchman didn't even recognize that he was of Dutch nationality, they were simply Afrikaners. were simply Afrikaners.

So, the Netherlands cannot be called a great power, either in terms of its territory or in terms of its sphere of influence. On what basis can we say that the Netherlands was a great power? But there is no doubt that Holland was undoubtedly a great nation with world-wide influence then, and still is, shall we say, to this day. Not only did some of the systems created by the Dutch, such as the Joint Stock Company, the United Provinces*** and others, have a great influence on later generations, and its commercial power knew no bounds. And its cultural influence had also been widely spread in the world, so much so that Japanese Rangaku had long been a synonym for Western learning and all modern knowledge. And there is also a very interesting phenomenon, the Chinese translation of barbarians, often is considered to use more derogatory words, but in modern times there are some good words appeared, like the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany and so on are some of the more positive translations, some people say that in fact, in the Ming Dynasty there is a more positive references, that is, refers to the Netherlands. I have to say that the translation of Holland was not popular in China at that time, you only need to look at the history of the Ming Dynasty, the history of the Ming Dynasty did not call today's Holland as Holland, but called what the Red Hair country, the real Holland was the Japanese at that time, and later the Qing Dynasty, the Qing government once joined hands with the Netherlands to fight Zheng Chenggong, if today Zheng Chenggong is a national hero, the Qing government is colluding with foreign countries to suppress our national hero. The Dutch were Zheng Chenggong's enemies at that time, but allies of the Qing Dynasty, so the Qing Dynasty introduced Holland, a beautiful sounding name, lotus and orchid, into the Chinese language from the Japanese, but none of the Ming Dynasty people said that, and the name Holland is not in the Ming history.

My main point here is the influence of Holland in the world at that time, so much so that in this part of Japan, people use Holland as a synonym for the West. Now according to the Rise of the Great Powers, Dutch hegemony ended after the Anglo-Dutch War. But although the hegemony of the Netherlands has long since come to an end, today's Netherlands is still a rich, civilized country that is still the envy of the world, and the national and ethnic pride of the Dutch is no less than it was then. I have to ask, in what sense did the Netherlands rise to be a great power back then? Is the Netherlands today even in decline? This is a question.

There are some other countries that are interesting, but not mentioned in the "Rise of the Great Powers" movie, there is another country in Northern Europe, Sweden, "Rise of the Great Powers" is not mentioned.

Sweden is very interesting, Sweden at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, military and political power used to be very strong, at that time in Europe, probably second only to Britain, and Russia is not comparable to Russia, once several times will be defeated by Russia, of course, in the end he was defeated by Russia. During this period of time, he had defeated many powerful countries in Europe, I am referring to the powerful countries at that time, including Russia, Poland, Denmark, and many of the great vassals of Germany, we all know that Germany was not united at that time, and at that time, there were some vassals in Germany that were more powerful, such as Austria, Prussia, and so on. At that time the Baltic Sea was called the Swedish Lake, because the whole Baltic Sea was conquered by Sweden. The Swedish army once pushed straight to Moscow, turned Poland into his vassal, interfered with the Austrian succession, once swept across Europe and Asia, and Peter the Great fought in Poltava, Ukraine, where Sweden was finally defeated, the king didn't flee back to Sweden, but ended up fleeing to Turkey, which is very close, and their armies were very far away from Sweden because of their expansion.

The Battle of Poltava ended Sweden's military hegemony, but before Poltava, Sweden had a lot of military and political power. But at that time Sweden in the world's people have no position at all, but 1708 Poltava defeat, the king fled to Turkey, the peace treaty signed after the war so that Sweden lost its division, the hegemony completely collapsed, and has not been restored since then. Sweden's position in the world's civilization, the real rise after this, after the defeat of Sweden abolished the authoritarian system, began the Swedish history of the famous "era of freedom", the establishment of its political stability and social harmony are among the forefront of Europe's constitutional democratic system.

With this system in place, Sweden has no colonies and no sphere of influence. Now some people say that all the Western powers started by plundering colonies, here I would say that the plundering of colonies does have a certain position in the primitive accumulation of capital, which is undeniable. But it should be said that this is not a major factor, because many modern industrialized countries do not have colonies, including Germany, and certainly Sweden. Sweden does not have any colonies, nor does it have any sphere of influence, but Sweden's industrialization has since risen to the top, and its per capita production value and income now even exceeds that of the United Kingdom and the United States, which is among the highest in the world. Sweden's culture this I do not need to say, we all know, we are now Chinese people are very regrettable is that up to now did not get the Nobel Prize, this Nobel Prize is assessed by Sweden, in the world of various disciplines Nobel Prize is almost always the highest award, in addition to mathematics.

Sweden's social welfare system can be said to be unique in the world, the world **** with the rich countries who have no one more than Sweden has a model role, "from the cradle to the grave" of the Swedish socialist model, the first to become a democratic socialist model of the world. Later, when the Soviet Union collapsed, Sweden became a model of socialism with a global appeal, and the phrase "always refer to Sweden" became a common refrain of the leftists in various countries. Do any Swedes today miss the glory of the great king before Poltava's defeat? Of course there are, but I should say very few, but the honor and pride of today's Swedes is not comparable to that of the subjects of those days. So I say as long as the subjects of a country can really stand up, the country is strong they are standing, even in the period of the country's so-called decline, Sweden and Holland can be said to be as far as the hegemony is concerned, they both declined later on, but the so-called decline of these two countries and the situation in China and India and these countries in the recent times are two completely different things, that is to say, their subjects are still dignified. And a strong country, of course, often brings about the dignity of its nationals, and there should be no problem with that. As Chinese, we all hope that our country will be strong, including politically and militarily, because in many cases a strong country can enhance the dignity of its nationals. However, I have to say here that this is the case in many situations, not in all situations. In some cases, a strong country not only fails to bring about the dignity of its nationals, but on the contrary, it brings about the humiliation of its nationals.

One example I want to give is that, as we all know, our country has recently aired a lot of imperial dramas, and the most recent one on the air is "Qin Shi Huang". Qin was undoubtedly a powerful country, and a very powerful one at that. The Tang Dynasty used to have a line in a Tang poem, "Moreover, the Qin soldiers endured bitter battles, and being driven was not different from dogs and chickens." Let us take a look at what the Qin people said about himself. Was there any opposition in Qin? I don't know, but what I'm listing here is not any opposition, what I'm listing here is those theorists of the strong Qin, how they argued for the Qin's power and the status of the common people, and what I'm talking about here is entirely official people. As we all know, the Qin State was powerful thanks to the Shang Yang Change of Law. The traditional history books used to speak very highly of the Shang Yang Change of Law because it enabled the Qin State to realize the wealth of the country and the strength of the army. Later, Qin Shi Huang unified the country, relying on the theory of Legalism, and the master of the theory of Legalism was Han Fei. It can be said that Shang Yang and Han Fei represent the official theory, the orthodox theory, that made Qin powerful, and it can also be said to be the basis of the ideology of Qin, and this is not some kind of opposition speech, this is totally their official statement.

How did the rulers of Qin say they were powerful, how did those Qin rulers, the Qin authorities, how did they summarize their power. In the book "The Book of the Lord Shang", which is said to have been written by Shang Yang, it is now generally believed that some of its chapters may have come from Shang Yang, and other chapters may have come from the latter's school. The Book of the Lord Shang and the Book of Han Fei Zi are recommended to be read if you are interested in them. It is indeed a wonder of the ages that it is difficult to understand what is going on in China by reading only the Four Books and the Five Classics, and it is impossible to know what is traditional without reading the Book of the Lord Shang and the Book of Han Fei Zi. There is a chapter in the Book of Shangjun called "The Weak People", which openly proclaims that "if the people are weak, the country will be strong, and if the people are strong, the country will be weak; for a country with a way of doing things, it is important to have a weak people". After the broadcast of "The Rise of a Great Power", I read some articles saying that the democratic system in the West is actually not a good thing. Why? Democracy started in Greco-Roman, because Westerners are aggressive, they want to conquer foreign countries, so they want to unite their own people, so they made a democratic system, which is very good for their own people, but very bad for foreigners. China is a peace-loving country, we don't want to conquer, so we don't need a democratic system, we can be bad to our own people because we don't want to conquer other people, so we don't care too much about giving some benefits to our own people to unite and conquer foreign countries, we Chinese don't have this kind of tradition. Qin Shi Huang's system was later considered more humane than democracy, because while democracy is good for the people at home, it's bad for the people abroad, whereas our country used to have this system, as if it was not good for our own people, but it was a sample of peace in the world.

But if you look at Han Fei Zi and the Book of Shang Jun, why emphasize a strong country? It's all about militarism and foreign expansion. I would also like to mention one more thing, during the late Qing era China once many people vowed to learn from the West to make China so powerful that it would regain the kind of military power that Qin and Han had. At that time, many Chinese people, including Liang Qichao and so on, used this term, telling us to build up militarism. Later, when we fought with Japan, militarism became a derogatory term. But during the Meiji Restoration, there was a time when militarism was used as a positive word. As we all know, Liang Qichao once said that from Zhou to Qin, China had developed from a feudal society to a military society. Therefore, if we say that Westerners need to have democracy internally in order to conquer externally, assuming that this argument is valid, I think this argument is actually not valid, because frankly speaking, including the Greco-Roman people, of course, they also had external conquests, but external conquests did not necessarily require democracy, for example, the Persian Empire, and the basic impetus for democracy came from within the country, not from outside the country. The first thing that you need to do is to get rid of all the people in the country.

But the doctrine of Legalism really says that if we want to be strong and conquer, we first need to put our own people in order, which is what Shang Yang said, and he said that if you can't even put your own people in order, then you can still conquer the outside world. That was his logic. In order to conquer the enemy, we must first conquer our own people, so the Book of Shang Jun has this sentence, "He who can rule the world must first rule his people, and he who can win over the strongest enemy must first win over his people". The people almost become their enemy, I want to defeat the enemy, first of all, we must defeat the people of their own country, therefore, the book of Shangjun explicitly said that the ruler must not let the people benefit, the people must be trampled underfoot, this words naked, let us read it very surprised, Shang Yang is indeed ruthless enough, not at all cover up, he explicitly said that "the people win its politics, the country is weak; the politics win its people, the military is strong. If the government wins over the people, the country will be weak; if the government wins over the people, the army will be strong." Therefore, he put forward a point of view, in order to "control the people", we must not be merciful, he said that the more merciful you are, the more the common people will rebel, he said, "no loyal ministers for the ruler, no filial sons for the father". In order to "win the people" must not let the people smart, from Shang Yang to Han Fei repeatedly said, the way to strengthen the country lies in fooling the people, "Foolish farmers do not know, not good to learn, then the service of the disease of agriculture," that the people are stupid mess, only know how to pay food and taxes, and do not know anything else. The people are stupid, they only know how to pay grain and taxes and nothing else. If the people are stupid and I am smarter than they are, I can be king, but if they are smarter, it's not a good idea.

Then a strong country must be weak, in order to weak people must not let the people have more than enough food and clothing, Shang Yang said, "farmers have more than enough food, then thin Yan in the year", as long as there is more than enough food and clothing, they will not work hard, so we must scavenge them to penniless. Shang Yang had a saying, "How can the people be ruled with enough money?" Only when the people were poor would they want the state to come to their rescue, but if they were rich, would they still care about you? He believed that the country to be strong, is to make the people "home does not accumulate corn, on the Tibetan also", the people's homes do not accumulate food, all the food is in the king. And also have a very strict household registration system, "no escape between the line, no migration into the line of governance, even the five, to identify the chapter, bound by the order of the poor no place, no place to strike". In the end, he himself died on this system. When Shang Yang was fleeing, he had to stay in an inn, and the owner of the inn said that he had to have a certificate, and that he would be implicated if he received anyone without a certificate, so Shang Yang sighed a long time and said that it was a law of self-destruction, and in the end, he didn't escape, and he was captured and split into five parts by five horses. But although Shang Yang died, but his system is still, not to say immortal, at least still maintain a long time.

The Book of the Lord Shang explicitly said that the people are some lowly bones, never let them have a good time, if the people's wishes are met, they will be treacherous, let them get rich they will not know the sky and the earth, and only when they are poor and desperate they will work hard, that is, "let the people of the good, so treacherous more. If the people are poor, they will be powerful; if the people are rich, they will be obscene". The people must be humiliated so that they will know the honor of the lord, they must be lowly so that they will know the power of the official, and they must be poor so that they will work for your reward. That is to say, "if the people are humiliated, they will be honored; if they are weak, they will be respected; if they are poor, they will be rewarded". Therefore, in order to "enrich the country and strengthen the army", we must let the people sink into humiliation, weakness, poverty and stupidity.

What good is such a strong country to the people? But I think some of our previous history books, it often has a one-dimensional judgment, always think that a country to be strong, in all aspects of the strong, for example, Qin we know that in the military is indeed very powerful, so we say that his economy, politics and other aspects must be relatively good, so we say that the Qin conquered the six countries is the economic basis, because after the change of the law of the Shanghahang Qin's economy is indeed got a big development. I would say that this statement is not entirely unreasonable, and it is not true that Qin's economy did not improve after the Shang Yang Reform, but up to the time of Qin's unification of the six kingdoms, Qin's economy was still very backward in the whole of China at that time, and the previous history books often had a wrong judgment on this point. This misjudgment may have arisen from a passage in the Records of the Grand Historian, which used to say, "The land of Guanzhong is one-third of the world, and the population is but Shisan, while measuring its wealth, Shijiu is six." But over the past few decades, scholars who study economic history, scholars who study geography and history, many of them have pointed out that this statement of Sima Qian is the language of a literary scholar, not the historical reality of that time. According to the analysis of the data of the counties and states in the Qin and Han Dynasties in the books of "Records of the Grand Historian" and "The Book of Han", the so-called Guanzhong, the Guanzhong that Sima Qian talked about at that time, was not the small Guanzhong that we talk about today, and did not just refer to the Guanzhong Plain, but the Guanzhong, which was one-third of the world, the big Guanzhong that included all of the Qin's homeland during the Warring States Period that Sima Qian talked about, was indeed about one-third of the world's boundaries of the end of the Qin and the beginning of the Han Dynasty, but the population of it. Even in the Western Han Dynasty many times immigrants Guanzhong, so that the proportion of its population has increased, but also accounted for less than 17%, and even so, its economy is still not self-sufficient. On the other hand, Wei, Zhao, Han and Qi in the eastern part of Guanzhong accounted for only 11.4% of the area of their homeland, but their population accounted for 60% of the area, and in the case of self-sufficiency in food, they exported at least 4 million stones to Guanzhong every year, and a large number of textiles and other handicrafts were imported from the eastern part of Guanzhong. In fact, Qin's economy was very backward, and Qin's people were very poor. But of course he was militaristic and his army was really powerful.

The economy of Qin was very underdeveloped, and the politics were even more harsh and violent. Shang Yang and Han Fei, I think, were very rare and frank people in Chinese ancient and modern history. Shang Yang openly said, as a politician, I just want to make the people unhappy, I just want to specialize in doing what the people hate, and never do what the people are happy, so that the country will be strong. "When the government does what the people hate, the people are weak; when the government does what the people enjoy, the people are strong. When the people are weak, the country is strong; when the people are strong, the country is weak. ...... When the people are strong and strong, the soldiers are heavy and weak. ...... If the people are weak, the soldiers will be strong." The more you oppress the people, the stronger the country is, and the more you obey the people, the weaker the country is. If you follow this logic of his, then it is really the country is strong, the people this day is more difficult.

In fact, the autocrats of the past and present, I think there are not many people who think this way, but those who dare to say so nakedly, Shang Yang, Han Fei may be the most unscrupulous, and in such a situation, although the Qin state is powerful, you say that the people of the Qin state can be better off? Here I do not want to list the specific examples of tyrannical Qin's tyranny, we just want to understand a simple truth, if the ruler of a country openly said, my rule is to make the people humiliated, weak, poor, stupid, is to do what the people hate, you can do anything about it, Shang Yang, they were so bullish, not to do the people's pleasure, what can you do to me, I am a rogue I am afraid of. Today there are some books that say how happy the people of the Qin Dynasty were, I don't think it's necessary for anyone to refute that at all, Shang Yang and Han Fei, the theorists of the strong Qin Dynasty, refuted it themselves, and they said themselves that the reason we are strong is because we trampled the people under our feet.

Recently, there is a historical drama, the theme song says "the one who wins the hearts and minds of the people will win the world", I read it, I really was dumbfounded, I believe it does not matter, but Shang Yang, Han Fei believe it? But did Shang Yang and Han Fei believe in it? Did they believe that they won the world by winning the hearts and minds of the people? Only under a certain system is this the truth, that is to say, under a democratic system, it is true that those who win the hearts and minds of the people win the world. Democracy is the simplest way to talk about it, that is, to rely on the votes, and if people don't vote for you, you can't win the world, and to put it bluntly, it's just as simple as that. If under democracy, how can the unpopular win the world? But under the Legalist system, if he really won the hearts of the people, why did he have to do such a thing? He clearly knew that the people were unhappy, and Shang Yang made it very clear that the ruler was trying to disgust the people, and Shang Yang made it clear that I was unpopular, but I won the world, so what are you going to do about it?

So, I think if we take this kind of good intentions as historical facts in the authoritarian era, it will become a success of the king and a failure of the thief, won't it? Is the phenomenon of "barbarian conquest", which has become almost a rule in ancient history, also the "will of the people" of the conquered people (who are usually overwhelmingly outnumbered)? Is that a valid view of history? Honestly, I think it's a good thing that those who win the hearts and minds of the people win the world, but it's precisely because it's a good thing that democracy is a good thing. In fact, if you look at what Han Fei and Shang Yang said, it is very clear that these theorists never believed that the people would support them, and they never expected that. Han Fei even put it to this extent, that is, a ruler, you should not think that other people would like you, and that perhaps your wife and your children would be counting on you. He said, you as a ruler, all the people are going to count on you, including your wife and children, but you have the ability, that is, in the case of all the people hate you, you can crush all the people into submission, even if all of you are unhappy, but I want to make you not dare to oppose, or unable to oppose. The first thing is that I am able to monopolize organizational resources, destroy civil identity, exploit human weaknesses, and so on, and this is the highest state that the Legalists revere.

This kind of strong Qin, I should say that today when we see these two books, it will make people feel creepy, but I have to say, then is it better to be a weak state in such a situation? As I said earlier the six Guandong states, that is, they were richer than Qin, and in times of peace the people of the six Guandong states just had a better time than the people of Qin, and there's probably nothing wrong with that. But since you have such a strong Qin as a neighbor, to be defeated that of course the suffering is also very deep. As we all know, Zhao was defeated by Qin, hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war were killed by Qin, resulting in the whole country's sorrow, few young men survived, orphans and widows of the country is really a sea of bitterness. So the tyrannical Qin's "strong country, weak people" way is certainly abominable, the Guandong countries do not know self-improvement can also be a lesson, and in that case advocate "let their own government in the war to lose" Lenin-style stance, I think it is also not desirable, too much.