While Yuandi's reign is not known as a period of imperial expansion, discussions of the major questions of the concept of imperial government and the administrative problems of the day were to be of long-lasting influence. The views put forward by scholars and officials such as Xiao Wangzhi, Gong Yu, Wei Xuancheng, Kuang Heng, Liu Xiang and Yi Feng led the way to the open adoption of Zhou as the ideal which Wang Mang and subsequent emperors claimed to follow. Yuandi himself played little part in government; his advisors raised matters of religious cults, economic practice, the standards of officials, the extravagance of the palace, relations with non-Han leaders, and the value of holding outlying parts of the empire.

According to the historical sources of the early Zhou dynasty, the of the Shang kingdom included and . In the late oracle-bone inscriptions, and were mentioned side by side, and so were and . In the Western Zhou period, were all princes. The in oracle inscriptions was considered by most scholars as a kind of prince too. The author of this paper does not quite agree with this point of view. According to the fact that were often mentioned as , and that some of the places where were staying were located in the fiefs of or the author believes that were originally officials who were sent by the king to be stationed at places beyond the capital of the Shang kingdom to engage in cultivation. But in the late Shang period, many became princes.

The situation of and , was similar to that of . They were often referred to as and respectively in oracle-bone inscriptions. The former was sent to be stationed at some place to engage in livestock husbandry, and the latter to defend the kingdom. A number of them also became princes afterwards.

There is no doubt that the discovery of the Zhouyuan oracle-bone inscriptions Is one of the most important achievements in recent Chinese archaeological work. It not only enables oracle-bone inscription research to develop a new branch but it provides sources for studying the history and culture of the early Zhou, even before they conquered the Shang empire. Consequently, as soon as they were found, the Zhouyuan oracle-bone inscriptions came under observation by scholars at home and abroad. Present research, however, has not yet reached a mature stage. Different views exist on quite a few questions. It is obvious that more research and discussion about the Zhouyuan oracle-bone inscriptions is still necessary.

The present paper aims to investigate the idea of “elevating the worthy” (shang xian 尚賢) as it appears in the newly found manuscript Zhou xun 周訓. This manuscript is part of the Peking University collection (Beijing daxue cang Xi-Han zhushu 北京大學藏西漢竹書), presumably copied in the first half of the first century b.c.e. In sharp contrast to most recently discovered manuscripts promulgating “elevating the worthy,” the Zhou xun introduces the meritocratic principle to support hereditary power transfer, by positing that the right to rule should be passed on to the most able son of a ruler. I argue that this position served several purposes. First, it provided a solution to the central problem of abdication discourse, namely, the conflict between the principles of “respecting worthies” (zun xian 尊賢) and “loving kin” (ai qin 愛親). Second, this interpretation of “elevating the worthy” entailed a significant extension of the number of potential contenders to the throne, challenging the system of primogeniture, the very cornerstone of political order in early China. This fundamental challenge appears to be deliberate and can be interpreted as an attempt to formulate a new paradigm for the ruling house of Zhou. The complete absence of the idea of Heaven's Mandate (tian ming 天命) from the Zhou xun certainly underscores its radical departure from Zhou conventional claims to power. However, I argue that, given the close association between the Zhou xun and the Lüshi chunqiu 呂氏春秋, it is also plausible that the former's theory was created to justify the Zhou's overthrow by the Qin 秦. In any case, the Zhou xun provides us with new insights into how the idea of “elevating the worthy” was applied to politics in early China.

With the publication of volume II of W Allyn Rickett's Guanzi: Political, Economic, and Philosophical Essays from Early China (Princeton University Press, 1998), a long-neglected and poorly understood text from China's classical period should now be much more accessible to a wider audience of students, teachers, and scholars in the West. The second volume completes the translation of the 76-chapter original, and, like volume I (Princeton University Press, 1985; 2nd, revised edition, Cheng and Tsui, Boston, 2001), includes brief chapter-by-chapter introductions addressing issues of dating and content. The Guanzi has much to offer, spanning as it does the entire classical period proper; the earliest portions of the text date to the fourth or even fifth century B.C., and the work as a whole was only fixed in its present form by Liu Xiang (97–8 b.c.) late in his life, after over three centuries of accretion. Rickett's translation is the fruit of a long career spent studying this text, and it is worthy of frequent and thoughtful consultation; many of the historical issues that this translation sets before us are crucial to a deeper understanding of social and intellectual history in the classical age. To judge from contemporary sources, Guan Zhong , namesake of the text, was a popular figure during this era, around whom formulations of political philosophy and conceptions of new institutions easily accumulated over time. Recognizing this process of accumulation is crucial to placing the text in its historical context, since the Guanzi, like so many of our texts from the classical period, is fraught with difficulties concerning authorship and dating.

Ji Xusheng's 季旭昇 account of the character 〈舜〉 as a derivative of 〈夋〉 and ultimately of 〈允〉 by reference to Warring States excavated manuscript evidence, recently elaborated by Adam Smith in these pages, appears to clear up the mystery of Shun's 舜 doppelgänger—Jun 俊—in the Shanhai jing 山海經. However, while Ji's observations are of value, there is danger in treating early orthographical variation of this kind with one eye on an interpretive problem from the received texts. In this case, attested variation shows clearly that the form 〈舜〉 was no such derivative, its peculiar origins arguably “large and useless” from a textual critical point view.

This article studies the promulgation of law in Qin and Western Han China (221 b.c.e.–9 c.e.) based primarily on excavated legal and administrative texts. It shows that a new law was handed down from the emperor to the relevant offices on the day of enactment. The article argues that, to an extent, the subject matter and function of a law determined for whom it was passed and promulgated. Depending upon the location, rank, and official duties of the offices, the laws known and used could be quite different. Although it was required that documents of imperial decisions be forwarded swiftly and safely by courier at the prescribed speed, delays in forwarding such documents to distant local offices were probably common in Qin and Western Han China. Evidence indicates that district- and prefecture-level officials publicized laws that needed to be made known by the common people, by reading them aloud in local gatherings, for example, or posting them in conspicuous places. The article further argues that a law came into effect in offices on the day it arrived at local courts or on the day it was enacted in the central court, depending on the existence of related extant laws. It concludes that a new law in Qin and Western Han China was ex post facto, as it reached backwards to a past action and retroactively attached liabilities to the action at the point when it was performed.