Fengjian

Four occupations

The four occupations were the shì (士) the class of "knightly" scholars, mostly from lower aristocratic orders, the gōng (工) who were the artisans and craftsmen of the kingdom and who, like the farmers, produced essential goods needed by themselves and the rest of society, the nóng (農) who were the peasant farmers who cultivated the land which provided the essential food for the people and tributes to the king, and the shāng (商) who were the merchants and traders of the kingdom.

Zōngfǎ (宗法; "Clan Law"), which applied to all social classes, governed the primogeniture of rank and succession of other siblings. The eldest son of the consort would inherit the title and retained the same rank within the system. Other sons from the consort, concubines, and mistresses would be given titles one rank lower than their father. As time went by, all of these terms lost their original meanings, yet Zhūhóu (諸侯), Dafu (大夫), and Shi (士) became synonyms for court officials.

The four occupations under the fengjian system differed from those of European feudalism in that people were not born into the specific classes, such that, for example, a son born to a gōng craftsman was able to become a part of the shāng merchant class, and so on.

Beginning in the Han dynasty, the sizes of troops and domains a male noble could command would be determined by his rank of peerage, which from highest to lowest were:

1. gōng 公
2. hóu 侯
3. bó 伯
4. zǐ 子
5. nán 男

While before the Han dynasty an aristocrat with a place name in his title actually governed that place, it was only nominally true afterwards. Any male member of the nobility could be called a gōng zǐ (公子), while any son of a king could be called a wáng zǐ (王子; 'prince').

Well-&-field system

The well-&-field system (Chinese: 井田制度; pinyin: jǐngtián zhìdù) was a land distribution method existing in some parts of China between the ninth century BC (late Western Zhou dynasty) to around the end of the Warring States period. Its name comes from Chinese character 井 (jǐng), which means 'well' and looks like the # symbol; this character represents the theoretical appearance of land division: a square area of land was divided into nine identically sized sections; the eight outer sections (私田; sītián) were privately cultivated by peasants and the center section (公田; gōngtián) was communally cultivated on behalf of the landowning aristocrat.

While all fields were aristocrat-owned, the private fields were managed exclusively by individual families and the produce was entirely the farmers'. It was only produce from the communal fields, worked on by all eight families, that went to the aristocrats, and which, in turn, could go to the king as tribute.

As part of a larger fengjian system, the well-&-field system became strained in the Spring and Autumn period as kinship ties between aristocrats became meaningless. When the system became economically untenable in the Warring States period, it was replaced by a system of private land ownership. It was first suspended in the state of Qin by Shang Yang and the other Chinese states soon followed suit.

As part of the "turning the clock back" reformations by Wang Mang during the short-lived Xin dynasty, the system was restored temporarily and renamed to the King's Fields (王田; wángtián). The practice was more-or-less ended by the Song dynasty, but scholars like Zhang Zai and Su Xun were enthusiastic about its restoration and spoke of it in a perhaps oversimplifying admiration, invoking Mencius's frequent praise of the system.

"Feudalism" and Chinese Marxism

Marxist historians in China have described medieval Chinese society as largely feudal. The fengjian system is particularly important to Marxist historiographical interpretation of Chinese history in China, from a slave society to a feudal society. The first to propose the use of this term for Chinese society was the Marxist historian and one of the leading writers of 20th-century China, Guo Moruo in the 1930s. Guo Moruo's views dominated the official interpretation of historical records, according to which the political system during the late Zhou dynasty saw the gradual transformation of society from slave society into feudal society. It is argued that during the Warring States Period, society had started to develop institutions comparable to the feudalistic system in medieval Europe. Adhering to Marx's theory of historical materialism, Guo argues that models of society progress under the impact of technological advancements. For example, with the discovery of bronze and the emergence of bronze tools, society progressed from primitive communism into slave society. Similarly, with the introduction of iron metallurgy around the 5th century BCE, Chinese society gradually saw the centralisation of authority, the emergence of total war, and the departing from slavery as society's primary mode of production. Guo therefore argues that with the unification of China under the first emperor Qin Shi Huang, China officially progressed into feudal or fengjian society. With Guo's work however, fengjian no longer referred to the classical system of 'demarcation and establishment' but was equated with the western historical stage of feudalism. Certain historians have identified the "near-pseudohistorical" nature of Guo's assessment and argue that Guo's use of fengjian was an intentional misusage in order to deprecate decentralist societies in support of a centralized state.

Comparisons

Under the Zhou fengjian society, the delegation of authority was based on kinship and there was a single direction of obligation, whereas in the European model, the lord and vassal had clearly specified mutual obligations and duties. Medieval European feudalism realized the classic case of the 'noble lord' while, in the middle and latter phases of the Chinese fengjian society, the landlord system was instead to be found. In Europe, the feudal lordships were hereditary and irrevocable and were passed on from generation to generation, whereas the Zhou lordships were not always hereditary, required reappointment by the king, and could be revoked. The medieval serf was bound to the land and could not leave or dispose of it, whereas the Zhou peasant was free to leave or, beginning in the Eastern Han dynasty, to purchase the land in small parcels.

Moreover, in Europe, feudalism was also considered to be a hierarchical economic system in which the lords were at the top of the structure, followed by the vassals, and then the peasants who were legally bound to the land and were responsible for all production. In Zhou rule, the fengjian system was solely political and was not responsible for governing the economy.

Furthermore, according to China: A New History by John K. Fairbank and Merle Goldman, dissimilarities existed between the merchant class of the two systems as well. In feudal Europe, the merchant class saw a marked development in towns located away from the influence of the manors and their attached villages. The European towns could grow outside of the feudal system instead of being integrated into it since the landed aristocrats were settled in manors. Thus, the towns and their people were independent of the influence of the feudal lords and were usually solely under the political authority of the monarchs of the European kingdoms. In China, these conditions were non-existent and the king and his officials depended greatly on the regional lords for all governance, within towns and without, except in the royal demesne. Thus no independent political power existed to encourage the growth of the merchant class in an independent manner, although exceptions existed and some private individuals could become very wealthy. Chinese towns and villages were part of a fully integrated political system and the merchants remained under the political control of the aristocracy instead of setting up an independent trading or mercantile economy.

Regardless of the similarities of an overwhelmingly agrarian society being dominated by the feudal lords in both societies, the application of the term 'feudal' to the society of the Western Zhou has been a subject of considerable debate due to the differences between the two systems. The Zhou fengjian system was termed as being 'protobureaucratic' and bureaucracy existed alongside feudalism, while in Europe, bureaucracy emerged as a counter system to the feudal order.

Therefore, according to some historians, the term "feudalism" is not an exact fit for the Western Zhou political structure but it can be considered a system somewhat analogous to the one that existed in medieval Europe. According to Terence J. Byres in Feudalism and Non European Societies, "feudalism in China no longer represents a deviation from the norm based on European feudalism, but is a classic case of feudalism in its own right." According to Li Feng, the term "feudalism" is not at all an apt descriptor for the Western Zhou political structure, due to differences in the relationship between the monarch and regional lords, differences in governance of regional states, contrasts in military organization, and the absence of an ordered system of ranks.