Standardisation as a tool of rule
Conquest is only half of building an empire. After 221 BCE the Qin government had to rule lands that had been separate states for centuries, with different scripts, currencies, measures and customs. Traders, tax collectors and officials moving between regions would have met a confusing mixture of standards. The Qin response was to impose common ones, a policy that became one of the best-known features of the dynasty.
The standard picture comes mainly from the Shiji, written about a century later, and from Han period writers. Archaeological finds confirm much of it, but they also show that change was uneven.
One writing system
Warring States China had regional variants of the written characters, and some were hard to read for outsiders. The Qin chancellor Li Si is credited with promoting a standard form, usually called small seal script, based on the Qin form of writing. Clerks also used a faster and simpler style that developed into clerical script, which was practical for the huge volume of administrative paperwork. This shift matters for the later history of brush calligraphy, since the move from complex seal forms to more flowing clerical forms shaped how Chinese was written for centuries.
A single script did not mean a single spoken language. Its value was administrative: an order written in the capital could be read in distant commanderies. Most historians see this as one of the most durable Qin reforms.
Weights and measures
Qin officials issued standard bronze weights and capacity measures. Many surviving examples carry an inscription of the imperial edict of 221 BCE, which ordered the standardisation. They have been found across a wide area, which shows that the policy reached far beyond the old Qin homeland. The roughly one quarter of a kilogram weight called the jin was the base for heavier units, though regional differences did not vanish overnight.
Standard measures were not wholly new. A bronze capacity vessel associated with the reformer Shang Yang, usually dated to 344 BCE, shows that Qin had been working on such standards well before the empire. The First Emperor extended an existing practice across new territory. Common standards are a recurring problem of early states, and the historical record on ancient economies shows how much trade and taxation depend on predictable units.
Coinage
Before unification the old states used different forms of money, including spade-shaped and knife-shaped bronze coins, cloth, and cowrie shells. Qin made a round bronze coin with a square hole, usually called the banliang, the standard coin of the empire, and gold was treated as a higher denomination. The round coin with a square hole was convenient to string together and became the model for Chinese cash coins for about two thousand years.
The government still depended on grain and labour as well as coin. For the history of metal money, coin minting as practised in other regions followed quite different traditions, but Qin’s decision to centralise issue was an important step in creating a common monetary space.
Roads, canals and cart gauge
The Shiji says that cart axles were made to the same width so that wheels would fit the ruts of the main roads. Whatever the exact figure, the principle of a common gauge is plausible, since a vehicle that can travel on every major road is much more useful to the state.
Qin also built or improved long-distance routes. The best known is the so-called straight road, begun around 212 BCE and running north from the Qin heartland towards the frontier for several hundred kilometres. Its military purpose is clear. Roads allowed fast movement of troops and messengers, and they allowed information to travel. A canal known as the Lingqu, built about 214 BCE, linked rivers in the south to support campaigns there. The motives were more military than commercial, but these works also helped integration. It is a very different system from the Qhapaq Nan road of the Andes, but the underlying logic of the state controlling movement and communication is similar.
Law and paperwork
A standard measure only works if officials apply it. Bamboo slips found in tombs at Shuihudi in the 1970s contain Qin statutes covering matters such as agriculture, storage and official duties, and a much larger body of administrative documents was found at Liye in a well in the early 2000s. They show a bureaucracy that recorded grain, labour, travel and punishments in remarkable detail. Rules for officials sometimes specify penalties for errors in measuring and weighing. Compared with other ancient legal systems, the surviving Qin texts give an unusually detailed view of day-to-day administration.
The same system required tight control of people. The state ran a household registration system and used conscript labour on a large scale. Many historians see the heavy demands of this system as a cause of the revolts that destroyed the dynasty in 209 BCE.
Limits and legacy
It is easy to overstate how fully these reforms took effect. Local customs, languages and practices continued. Some standard measures were adopted unevenly, and the empire lasted only fifteen years, which is a short time to remake a territory. Many of the policies were nevertheless kept by the Han dynasty after its rise, often with softer rhetoric, and they became part of the basic toolkit of Chinese government.
The Qin story shows that a large state needs administration as much as armies. Standards for writing, weights, money and roads did not guarantee the survival of the dynasty, but they made it far easier for successors to govern a unified China.