Atlas / Organisations / Chinese Legalism
Chinese Legalism
Fajia, Han Feizi · c.400–200 BCE · China · Statist · Doctrine / school · coding confidence medium
Each axis runs from −10 to +10, with zero a genuine mixed or balanced position rather than an absence of opinion. A score describes a stated position and a governing record; it is not a judgement of merit. What each score means →
Core principles
Human nature is self-interested, so order requires impersonal law, systematic reward and punishment, and a ruler whose authority is unquestionable.
Economic model
State monopolies on salt and iron, agriculture and war as the only honoured occupations, suppression of merchants.
Organisation of powers
Absolute centralised sovereignty; abolition of hereditary aristocracy in favour of appointed administrators; collective punishment.
Reading note
Two thousand years before Hobbes, and considerably more thorough. The Qin unification was built on it and it collapsed in fifteen years.
Check a claim about Chinese Legalism. The interactive atlas measures the distance between any two organisations across all six axes and shows which ones carry the disagreement.
Open in the atlasThe evidence for every score
All six cells are sourced. A rationale explains what the score is measuring and each artefact is something a third party can check without taking anyone's word for it.
EC · Economic organisation · scored −02
Coded −2: state monopolies and agriculture privileged over commerce.
- Documented act or statuteThe Discourses on Salt and Iron record the debate over state monopolies established under this doctrine.
CU · Social and cultural order · scored +07
Coded +7: hierarchy enforced by law rather than by ritual.
- Programme textHan Feizi rejects the Confucian claim that moral example governs, in favour of standards and penalties.
AU · Organisation of power · scored +10
At the ceiling: the ruler's authority placed beyond question by design.
- Programme textThe Book of Lord Shang argues that a weak people makes a strong state.
SC · Scale of decision · scored +10
At the ceiling: hereditary aristocracy abolished in favour of centrally appointed administrators.
- Documented act or statuteQin abolished feudal enfeoffment and established the commandery-county system in 221 BCE.
ID · Rule of membership · scored +02
Coded +2: status by conduct and merit rather than by birth.
- Documented act or statuteRank was awarded for military achievement rather than lineage under the Shang reforms.
CH · Method and tempo · scored +05
Coded +5: transformation imposed by statute and collective punishment.
- Documented act or statuteHouseholds were organised into mutual-responsibility groups liable for each other's offences.
Nearest organisations by measured distance
Straight-line separation across all six axes, out of a maximum of 49.0. Proximity means similarity of stated position, not endorsement and not resemblance in outcome.
- Estado Novo Brasileiro3.3
- Sahel Sovereigntist Juntas4.0
- Falangism4.8
- PFDJ5.1
- Saied Presidentialism5.2
- Ethiopian Prosperity Party5.3
Countries
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Scores are revised on evidence, so a citation should carry the version it refers to. Version 4.3.1 is current; the revision log records every change.
Free to quote and reproduce with attribution. This is a synthesis rather than a peer-reviewed dataset — where an authoritative figure is needed, cite the Chapel Hill Expert Survey, the Manifesto Project or V-Dem.