For Chinese people, “feudal power”, “feudal society”, “feudal superstition”, “feudal thinking “, “you are too feudal”, “after 1840, feudal China gradually became a semi-colonial, semi-feudal country”, etc. have long been permeated in daily life, and in the eyes of many people, “feudal” means closed and backward. In the eyes of many people, “feudalism” means closed, backward and old-fashioned, and they do not feel anything wrong with it. But in fact, Chinese people have fallen for the Chinese Communist Party’s trick again, because it is the Chinese Communist Party that has given such a meaning to “feudalism” and forcibly instilled it into Chinese people’s minds through education and media.
“The real meaning of “feudalism
The word “feudalism” was first used in the poem “Ode to Shang – Yin Wu”: “To order the lower state, to feudalize the blessings.” Mao said: “Feng” means “big”. Zheng Xuan wrote: “Then, he ordained a small state to be the son of heaven, and established its blessings. It means to appoint Tang to make the king of the world from seventy miles.” The word “fief” here means “great establishment”.
During the Western Zhou Dynasty, in order to consolidate his rule, the Son of Zhou granted territories to vassals on a large scale and exercised indirect rule over those areas through them. According to “Lv’s Spring and Autumn Annotations – Shensi” written by Lv Buwei and others in the Qin Dynasty, “Fengjian, or feudal state, was the ancient emperor who gave titles and land to his relatives or meritorious officials to establish states in their respective regions, i.e., to feudalize relatives to vassalize Zhou. According to legend, the Yellow Emperor was the beginning of feudalism, and the system was prepared by Zhou.”
Obviously, at this time, the meaning of “feudalism” has been “building a state”, and the feudal lords had the obligation to guard the territory for the Son of Zhou, to follow the battle, to pay tribute and to report to the court, and to govern the vassal state and defend the country. In turn, they had the right to set up officials, establish armed forces, and levy taxes and duties.
Xunzi – Confucian Effectiveness” records: “The world was ruled by seventy-one states. The Ji surname alone was fifty-three.” It means that during the period of the greatest Duke of Zhou Dynasty, 71 vassal states were divided, 53 of which were vassals of the same surname (Ji surname) of the Zhou royal family. By the Spring and Autumn Period, there were already more than 140 vassal states available for examination.
Within the vassal states, the vassals could continue to grant their territories to their descendants and meritorious officials, and they could “feudalize” them again. In Zuo Zhuan – The Second Year of Duke Huan, it is said, “The Son of Heaven established the state, the vassals established their families, the vassals set up side chambers, the great officials had two clans, the scholars had subordinate sons and daughters, the common people had industry and commerce, each had their own relatives, and all had equal decay.” The meaning is that the Son of Heaven gave land and people to the vassals to “build the state”; the vassals or the ruler of the state then gave land and people to the officials of the Qing Dynasty to “establish the family”; the officials of the Qing Dynasty then gave the land and people to the scholars to “establish the family The king then gave the land and the people to the scholar, which was called “II clan”; the scholar was subordinate to his sons; the commoners were no longer divided into classes, but were distinguished by affinity. Thus, the pyramidal “feudal system” was formed as “Son of Heaven – Vassals – Officials – Shi”. “feudal system”. A similar system was practiced in the Middle Ages in Europe.
It is also important to know that during the Zhou Dynasty, the throne of the Son of Heaven was inherited by the first son, who was the great patriarch of the world; the other sons were divided into vassals, who were lesser patriarchs in relation to the Son of Heaven and greater patriarchs within their own territories. The title of vassal was also inherited only by the eldest son, while the other sons were given fiefs and became the title of vassal. The other sons were given fiefs and became the Qing Dafu. The Qing Dafu was a minor clan to the lords, but a major clan within their own territories. This was also the case with the relationship between the court and the scholar.
The “feudal system” implemented by the Zhou Dynasty effectively controlled the territory, stabilized the political order at that time, and strengthened the rule of the Zhou Emperor over the local areas. The patriarchal system that accompanied the “feudal system” built the concept of “family”, i.e., “the whole world is one family”.
The CCP distorted the meaning of “feudalism” in line with Marxist-Leninist ideology
After the Zhou dynasty, from the Qin dynasty until the Qing dynasty, the system of centralized power, not feudalism, was practiced, and this was made very clear in all dynasties. For example, Yan Fu, a translator in the late Qing Dynasty, said in his “On the Retreat of Chinese Education and Culture”, “Qin merged the world, changed the ancient system, changed the well field into a road, abolished feudalism and set up counties, and deposed Confucianism and appointed names and laws.” The “feudal establishment” here is still a continuation of the meaning of each dynasty.
Moreover, “feudalism” advocated local decentralization, while “centralized system” opposed local decentralization. In other words, the feudal system has ceased to exist since the Qin Dynasty, so to say that all ancient Chinese societies were “feudal societies” is obviously ignorant of history. In fact, scholars in Taiwan and other countries around the world have been clear about the exact meaning of feudalism, except for the Communist-ruled mainland.
So, when did the CCP distort the meaning of “feudalism”? The exact time probably began with the acceptance of Marxist-Leninist ideas by some Chinese people. For example, in his “Chronicle of the Hungry Countryside,” which described the social situation after the October Revolution in the Soviet Union from 1920 to 1921, Communist Party leader Qu Qubai stated, “The tidal wave of freedom warfare inspired them to expel the landlords and to defeat the idols of the feudal legacy.” The word “feudal” here has the meaning of “feudal society” of the CPC now.
Marx, the originator of the Communist Party, had proposed the concept of five forms of ownership, namely, primitive society, slave society, feudal society, capitalist society and communist society; Engels proposed the “five social forms”, that is, the development of human history should go through the following five stages: primitive clan society, ancient slave society, medieval serfdom, modern wage labor (capitalist) society, and the future communist society. Lenin in the Soviet Union inherited the ideas of Ma and En and believed that human history developed along a single line sequence of primitive society, slave society, feudal society, capitalist society, and socialist society.
As Marxist-Leninist ideas were introduced into China and accepted by some Chinese, the followers of Marx and Lenin, the CCP, naturally accepted Marx and Lenin’s claims about social development – even if they were completely at odds with the historical development of China.
After the Communist Party came to power in 1949, in order to promote Marxism-Leninism and to match Marx and Lenin’s theory of five stages of social development, the society from the Qin Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty was forcibly renamed “feudal society”, while the original feudal system of the Western Zhou Dynasty was forcibly renamed “feudalism”. At the same time, the word “feudalism” was added with backwardness, superstition and other characteristics that were not related to it. After decades of education and propaganda, the term “feudalism” has been given a bad impression in the minds of Chinese people, that is, “feudalism” means backwardness, ignorance, and old-fashionedness.
Professor Fei Zhengqing of Harvard University pointed out that besides confusing feudalism with landlord exploitation, Marx used the term proletariat to describe the urban working class without the tools of capital, but the Chinese translation is proletariat, which means the poor peasants (in the countryside). The Chinese Communist Party has not only tampered with China’s 5,000-year history, but also with Marxism-Leninism. The repeated changes of Mao Thought, Deng Theory, the Three Represents, and the Scientific Outlook on Development, which are ostensibly “Marxism Chineseized”, are in fact just a sheep’s head selling dog meat. In this regard, the leaders of the Communist Party of China and the imperial writers are well aware of this.
Cleaning up the “feudal residue”
After the CCP forcibly renamed the society from the Qin Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty as “feudal society,” the CCP launched one campaign after another in order to prove that it was the most advanced and all ancient Chinese societies were backward, such as the campaign to eradicate religions at the early stage of the founding of the government, in which all religions were branded as “feudal superstitions”; such as the complete destruction of China’s religious system and the “feudal superstition. “The Cultural Revolution, for example, completely destroyed traditional Chinese culture. The “breaking of the Four Olds” at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution was the complete eradication of all the so-called “feudal” “old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits”. As a result of the madness of “breaking the Four Olds”, many cultural relics were destroyed and many of China’s best intellectuals died at this time.
According to the article “Ten Years of Catastrophe – Blood and Tears in the Capital” written by Tong Xing, among the 6,843 cultural relics and monuments preserved in the first cultural relics census in Beijing in 1958, 4,922 were destroyed, most of which were destroyed during the “breaking of the Four Olds” in August and September 1966. Most of them were destroyed in August and September 1966 during the “breaking of the Four Olds”. According to incomplete statistics, Beijing only from the various copper refineries to rescue all kinds of metal relics 117 tons; from the paper mills to rescue 320 tons of books and materials; from the various check the concentration of materials picked out 185,000 pieces of paintings and calligraphy, 2.36 million antique books, other miscellaneous cultural relics more than 530,000 pieces.
Let’s take a look at the list of monuments destroyed in the country: the main hall of the Yandi Mausoleum was burned, the mausoleum was dug up, and the bones were burned and raised in ashes; the cemetery of Cang Jie, the character maker, was destroyed and transformed into a “martyr’s cemetery”; the tomb of Emperor Shun in Shanxi was destroyed and the tomb was hung with a loud speaker; the temple of Dayu in Huijishan, Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province was demolished and the tall statue of Dayu was smashed, and the head was flush with the head. The statue of Dayu in the Huijie Mountain of Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province was demolished, the tall statue of Dayu was smashed and his head was cut off at the neck and put on a flatbed truck to be paraded in the street; the eight-year-old statue of the Buddha, the world’s first Buddhist treasure and one of the three holy statues personally opened by Buddha Shakyamun when he was alive, was smashed; the tomb of Confucius was leveled and the clay statue in the temple of Confucius was smashed; the temple of Xiang Yu, the temple of Yu Ji and the tomb of Yu Ji on the banks of Wujiang River in Hexian County were smashed into ruins; the Buddha Incense Pavilion in the Summer Palace was smashed and the Buddha was destroyed; the two groups of buildings, the Temple of Wang Yangming and the Wang Wencheng Temple, were The tomb of the sage of calligraphy Wang Xizhi and the 20-acre Jintingguan were almost completely destroyed; the tomb of “Bao Qingtian”, which was protected by the people of Hefei from generation to generation and swept every year, was also destroyed. “Tomb”, also destroyed; Hangzhou Yue Fei grave was plowed, its bones were burned to raise ashes; Alateng Gandeli grassland Genghis Khan’s mausoleum was smashed to pieces; Hainan Ming Dynasty famous minister Hai Rui’s grave was smashed; Hubei Jiangling famous minister Zhang Juzheng, Beijing City, Yuan Chonghuan’s grave, and Wu Chengen, Pu Songling, Zhang Zhidong, Kang Youwei and many other historical celebrities’ graves were dug, smashed, destroyed destroyed ……
In addition to the destruction of countless monuments, cultural relics and antiques have been destroyed in countless ways. In addition to this, countless intellectuals were abused, and they eventually chose to commit suicide.
Conclusion
As the Chinese Communist Party swept away these “remnants of feudalism”, the consequences of preferring and believing in them left an indelible mark on the minds of many Chinese people. In order to survive, people who experienced the CCP’s campaigns not only accepted the CCP’s rhetoric about “feudalism” but also practiced it to avoid being called “feudal” themselves. With the years of indoctrination by the CCP, the original meaning of “feudalism” has become completely unknown to most Chinese people. How deep is the scourge of the Chinese Communist Party!
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