When grading your work, I am aware that excerpts in the exam contain a considerable amount of matter and thus I do not expect your answers to be comprehensive in coverage. The performance indicators below suggest areas that you may choose to focus on, but should not be treated as a checklist of points you are expected to cover. I also allow for the fact that this is a complex document that you have not encountered before, even though the broader context and issues should be familiar to you from our class lectures and readings. For this reason, I will reward answers that engage with the document’s ambiguities and gaps and make reasonable inferences without drawing conclusions that are overly rigid or simplistic. Finally, I understand that you are writing under timed pressure and thus only expect a first draft.
Primary Source: Dowager Zhao’s Story
“Chu Long Speaks to Dowager Zhao” is a famous chapter from “Strategies of the Warring States.” This article describes how, in a critical situation where a powerful enemy was pressing the borders and Dowager Zhao sternly refused advice, Chu Long skillfully guided the situation to persuade Queen Mother Zhao with the principle that “loving one’s child means planning for them in the long term.” The story recounts how he convinced her to send her beloved son as a hostage to Qi in exchange for reinforcements, thereby resolving the national crisis. It praises Chu Long’s quality of prioritizing national interests and his talent for ideological work.
High-level Indicators
- Contextualizes the ferocity and frequency of interstate warfare during the Warring States period, noting common tactics such as hostage-taking.
- Analyzes concessionary strategies employed by smaller states like Zhao in response to the rising hegemon Qin, and evaluates whether negotiation was a viable alternative.
- Explores the role of women, especially widows like Dowager Zhao, in pre-Qin politics; despite prevailing gender norms, these women exerted significant influence through political marriages and their mentorship of young monarchs.
- Examines the figure of the shi (men of worth), exemplified by Chu Long, who emerged as a distinct, meritocratic elite valued for their rhetorical skills and contributions to state-building. This can be connected to other shi, such as Lord Shangyang of Qin.
- Investigates the rise of city-states as centers of political identity, highlighting how subjects began to see themselves as descendants of their respective polities.
- Assesses what made Chu Long’s rhetoric particularly effective—his understanding of the psychology of the elderly Dowager Zhao, his empathy for her interests, and his ability to align the interests of Lord Chang’an with those of the State of Zhao.
- Explores the tension between personal and collective interests, explaining why prioritizing the latter was praised and how this shaped political culture in pre-Qin China.
- Analyzes the gendered dimensions of the narrative, noting that the passage gained fame partly due to Chu Long’s success in persuading Dowager Zhao to set aside her maternal “selfishness” for the sake of the kingdom.
- Connects the family debate to Confucian thought, arguing that although Chu Long’s stance appears anti-family, it aligns with Confucianism through its emphasis on the mother’s social duty to her son and subject to the kingdom.
- Considers the later editing and canonization of the Strategies of the Warring States during the Han dynasty, exploring why this passage was valued and how its emphasis on long-term state interests influenced Han imperial ideology.
Low-level Indicators
- Neglects the role of Dowager Zhao and the gender dynamics influencing women’s political agency.
- Provides little context about the warfare of the Warring States period, including brutal tactics like hostage-taking and the impact on smaller states.
- Fails to connect the text to Confucian discourses on parental authority or to competing ideologies such as Legalism during the period.
- Overlooks the contribution of men of service, like Chu Long, to the competitive process of state-building.
- Offers minimal analysis of the moral message advocating self-sacrifice for the collective good and draws no connections to related readings or the passage’s legacy in Chinese political culture.
- Makes ahistorical or overly generalized claims, such as asserting that Chinese culture inherently prioritizes collective interests over personal ones, or male interests over female, without sufficient qualification.
Secondary Source: On the People as the Root
Traditional Chinese political culture is often seen as paternalistic and hierarchical, portraying commoners as passive recipients of elite benevolence with little political participation. However, popular protests — rooted in the historic overthrow of the Shang by the Zhou — endorsed the right to depose tyrannical rulers, providing ideological justification for insurgents. Historian Yuri Pines examines the concept of the people as the foundation of political legitimacy (minben), highlighting a paradox: while rulers were urged to heed the people’s sentiments, no thinker proposed institutional means for popular political participation. This reflects a deeply rooted elitism, where intellectuals spoke on behalf of the people, whom they deemed incapable of unmediated political expression.
Despite this exclusion, protest and rebellion became vital outlets for commoners to express discontent. Such actions, though illegal, were seen by both elites and people as signs of Heaven’s disfavor toward unjust rulers, thus politically legitimizing rebellion. Although originally intended as a warning for rulers, this notion empowered numerous rebel movements, who frequently claimed Heaven’s sanction. Ultimately, the right to rebel became the sole recognized means by which the oppressed could challenge political authority in traditional China.
High-level Indicators
- Acknowledges Pines’s argument that there is no inherent contradiction between the paternalistic nature of Chinese political culture and the occurrence of popular protests: while rebels asserted their right to rebel, they did not fundamentally undermine the core basis of political legitimacy. In this framework, physical rebellion is distinct from intellectual dissent.
- Explores the concept of the “Mandate of Heaven” and its role in maintaining continuity of legitimacy despite frequent, often violent regime changes. This doctrine of popular legitimacy requires challengers to the political order to frame their opposition in the state’s own language to claim legitimacy.
- Places intellectual elites such as Confucius in context, highlighting their articulation of social hierarchies (e.g., between “gentlemen” and “petty people”) alongside their conviction in the fundamental improvability of the human condition through education, suggesting a nuanced view of social difference.
- Analyzes the rise of the men of service—bureaucratic elites born out of competitive state-building—and how they came to perceive themselves as representatives of popular sentiment amid ongoing political fragmentation and strife.
- Notes the presence of intellectual alternatives, such as Daoism, which posed more radical critiques of intellectual elitism and hierarchical social structures.
Low-level Indicators
- Overlooks the author’s central thesis regarding the coexistence and co-optation of popular uprisings within elite discourses of popular legitimacy.
- Fails to address how the concept of popular sovereignty emerged during the Warring States period, marking the decline of traditional Zhou aristocracies and the rise of meritocratic elites.
- Neglects engagement with Pines’s discussion of intellectual elitism and the formation of the men of service class during the Warring States era.
- Does not consider the tension within Confucian thought between the ideal of the “noble person/gentleman (junzi)” and the belief in universal self-cultivation and improvement.
- Ignores the role of popular uprisings as a weapon of the weak, capable not only of challenging rulers but also of shifting the balance of power between monarchs and ministers.
- Assumes stagnation within Chinese political culture or dismisses popular sovereignty outright (e.g., the claim “there is no democracy in China”).
- Fails to recognize the complexities, contradictions, and nuances present in the writings of Confucius and other classical thinkers.
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