Ancient China and the Responsibility to Protect: An Under-Studied Topic of Legal History

Abstract

While the Responsibility to Protect (“R2P”) doctrine synergizes modern international law against atrocities, its legal underpinnings formed in Europe much earlier. Scholarship thus attributes R2P's origin to the Just War traditions as early as the fourth century, which particularly endorsed external interventions against tyranny. The Ancient Chinese had championed similar ideas of Just War, encompassing jus ad bellum recognition of war against unworthy sovereigns and jus in bello. Nevertheless, the Chinese traditions charted a different course. While in Europe, Just War rationalized the interventionist protection of co-religionists during the Reformation and later of oppressed Christians ruled by the Ottomans; the Chinese humanitarian expedition was discontinued by the advent of the Qin Empire. As R2P literature largely ignores ancient Chinese doctrines and practice, this paper investigates how they veered away from the pre-Qin traditions. It particularly illustrates how “tyranny” was perceived differently, and why “atrocity” and “minority protection” appeared alien concepts.

“If one must attack a state out of love for their people, then attacking it is permissible. If one must stop war with war, although it is war it is permissible…”

The Methods of the Sima: Benevolence the Foundation (ca. 400 bce)¹

The Responsibility to Protect (“R2P”) is a twenty-first century doctrine that confirms the sovereign state's primary responsibility to protect its population from atrocities.² When a state manifestly fails to discharge this duty, R2P further requests the international community to protect the victimized populations. To do so, this community needs to employ various intervention measures, including diplomatic, humanitarian, economic, and military, as a last resort.³

Since its formulation in 2001, R2P has remained contentious partly due to its perception as a “liberal western construct”.⁴ The literature on R2P has done little to help contest this presumption, especially because the study of R2P's conceptual components rarely spotlights their counterparts in non-Western societies.⁵ International law scholars, including Simon Chesterman and Peter Hilpold, have thoroughly examined R2P's genealogy from humanitarian intervention and the latter's origin from Just War, both having their roots in Europe.⁶ In contrast, ancient Chinese heritage reflective of R2P has hardly been mentioned.

This article seeks to address this gap through a comparative historical lens. After reviewing R2P's genealogy, originating from the Christian Just War tradition (Part I), I will first demonstrate how the pre-Qin Chinese articulation of Just War closely resembles its Western counterpart, and where it differs (Part II). Like Just War proponents in Europe, the ancient Chinese before the Qin Empire (221–207 bce) believed that wars in general should be avoided, but those for upholding righteousness would be justifiable under certain circumstances. In particular, deposing “unworthy kings”, a Chinese rendering of “tyrants”, was a distinct cause of righteous war. Yet, humanitarian expeditions rationalized by Just War stopped around the time the Qin state established the first Empire. Why did Qin's unification mark the watershed for humanitarian expeditions? After noting the lack of practice within post-Qin China and in her encounter with other countries, I will lay out five normative reasons (Part III).

I. R2P'S Genealogy: A Narrative Framework for Comparative Analysis

A. R2P's Precursors Rooted in European History

Just War emerged as the earliest doctrinal framework in Europe for legitimizing wars against tyranny. A set of criteria, including just cause, right intention, right authority, and using force as a last resort, were posited to determine when forcible intervention might be justifiable. For example, writing in the thirteenth century, Saint Thomas Aquinas regarded tyranny as the worst crime, which could be legitimately opposed by other princes, even by military action.⁷ During the Reformation that divided Christendom over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Just War doctrine was invoked to support the interventions of rulers on behalf of their foreign co-religionists who were persecuted on confessional grounds.

Throughout the Enlightenment, individual identification with the sufferings of fellow human beings continued to trigger a surge in humanitarian thinking and action, which brought the language of atrocity into public discourse.⁸ Meanwhile, the long-established Just War tradition fed into the Humanitarian Intervention doctrine (HI) emerging in the nineteenth century, which operated as a legal principle in justifying European interventions in Greece, Lebanon, and many Balkan areas on behalf of the Christian minorities oppressed by their Ottoman rulers. In these contexts, common understanding defined HI as threats or the use of force against a state to stop widespread and grave persecution of its citizens.⁹ Thus, HI could be understood as applying the Just War framework to one specific cause: preventing sovereigns from persecuting their subjects. But compared with Just War, HI became controversial because of the increasing recognition of non-intervention as a competing principle.¹⁰

Since the Second World War, states have signed treaties aimed at preventing, prohibiting, and punishing atrocity crimes.¹¹ Meanwhile, specific legal regimes have been set up to address the root causes of atrocities targeting minorities and other vulnerable groups.¹² However, protective intervention was challenged by the overarching values assigned to the principle of non-intervention¹³ and the general limit on the inter-state use of force in the United Nations (UN) Charter.¹⁴ Thus, when atrocities did transpire and the UN Security Council (Council) did not authorize forcible measures, international law was mired in bitter debates about whether external actors could respond militarily. In 1999, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bombed the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia allegedly to stem the latter's ethnic cleansing against Kosovar Albanians. Without first acquiring the Council's approval, this operation quickly divided the international society, as the right to humanitarian intervention invoked to justify the action was criticized by many former colonized countries as violating the UN law,¹⁵ but interpreted by some states as reconcilable with international law in general.

In 2001, a blue-ribbon panel, the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) presented the R2P doctrine as a new discursive framework for curbing humanitarian catastrophes, and R2P's scope was later narrowed down to four types of atrocities, viz. genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing. After R2P's endorsement by world leaders at the 2005 World Summit, this new doctrine has seen wide acceptance within the international society, and it thus has gradually replaced the old HI framework.

While R2P has inherited HI's rationale of external intervention in the case of atrocities,¹⁶ these two doctrines are remarkably different. First, R2P is premised on the concept of “sovereignty as responsibility”, which confers the primary protection responsibility on sovereign states themselves. This important conceptual starting point is missing in HI. Second, R2P prioritizes peaceful measures to persuade a state to accept its own responsibility, and it has an extended focus on atrocity prevention and post-atrocity rebuilding in addition to responding to atrocities. These two aspects altogether identify R2P's purpose as allocating and enforcing the responsibility towards vulnerable populations instead of justifying a right to intervene, as is the case for HI.

B. The Unexplored Links to R2P in Ancient China

Modern China has maintained an uneasy relationship with R2P and rejected HI due to its distaste for intervention through the use of force. When drafting the 2001 report, the ICISS commissioners received feedback from the Chinese analysts who said that “[h]umanitarianism is an admirable virtue, but interventionism is a red herring and widely condemned by the world”.¹⁷ Given the centrality of interventionism to its formulation, any proposals of HI would be non-starters for the Chinese government. On the other hand, the idea of R2P received China's principled acceptance, specifically because military intervention has been brought within the UN Collective Security framework, where China can veto related proposals.¹⁸

Despite extensive research on the Chinese government's attitudes towards R2P or HI, there has been little inquiry on ancient China's rendering of the norms.¹⁹ Exceptionally, Luke Glanville, a leading R2P expert, identified the ancient Chinese concept of the “Mandate of Heaven” as equivalent to R2P's constituent notion, “sovereignty as responsibility”.²⁰ In his 2010 article, Glanville illustrated how the Confucian concept on the responsibilities of legitimate rule justified benevolent rulers’ punitive war against tyrants. However, as he argued, the idea of sovereign accountability declined due to its theoretical incoherence and the victory of legalism during the third and fourth centuries. Similarly, Chinese international criminal law scholar Zhu Wenqi linked the concept of “sovereignty as responsibility” with the “Mandate of Heaven”, and therefore deemed R2P as “not new to Chinese culture and the Chinese society”.²¹

As to the practice of intervention, Daniel A. Bell, a professor of political philosophy, pointed out the similarity between Mencius’ punitive expedition and Just War.²² The Chinese political scientist Wang Qingxin also argued that the ethical principles underlying HI have much in common with the Confucian world order. His analysis, however, stopped before the Qin Empire.²³

In brief, although a few pieces have identified the common grounds between the Chinese intellectual traditions and R2P, together with its normative precursors, this literature is fragmented and truncated. The above highlighted scholarship often focuses on some particular aspects: either the concept of responsible sovereignty as R2P's innovative component, or forcible intervention as a critical means of implementing R2P or HI. Moreover, since most authors limit their inquiries to the pre-Qin era,²⁴ a fundamental question is left unanswered: why did humanitarian expeditions disappear by the end of the Warring States period? What happened over these two millennia remains a blind spot in research, but is critical for understanding how modern China can be related to its ancient traditions.

Thus, apart from unpacking the similarities between the ancient Chinese ideas and R2P, this paper will trace the decline of “humanitarian expedition” in China, which corresponds to R2P's interventionist aspect. Based on this descriptive survey, I will further consider possible reasons for the change in practice. These include that sovereign responsibilities required by the Mandate doctrine fall short of that in R2P. As a result, the Chinese perception of “tyranny” is different from its European counterpart, and “atrocity prevention” and “minority protection” thus did not independently constitute a cause for just war. In addition, since the Han dynasty, the pre-Qin understanding of Mandate was turned into a justifier instead of qualifier, of authority. Meanwhile, when institutionalized inequality was normalized through ethics and law, small-scale persecution became acceptable, which then precluded mutual intervention between rival regimes during periods of division. Last but not least, the solidarity that motivated humanitarian expeditions in the pre-Qin era can essentially be reduced to family bonds among “family states”. The absence of these affective ties explains the non-intervention against unworthy rulers abroad.

Because the historical review stretches approximately over two millennia, the post-Qin narrative is subject to a remarkable degree of generalization and may lack precision and comprehensiveness. That said, by outlining a general picture and analysing some critical materials, this paper seeks to invite a more in-depth examination of the topic from interested researchers.

The original sources for historical survey include three types of references: military strategists’ writings, philosophers’ essays, and documents intended as historical records. Specifically, philosophical writings feature topics on righteous war and legitimate rule, primarily from Confucius and his disciples, Mencius and Xunzi. Cases of humanitarian expeditions come from historical records. In this regard, the primary literature that was consulted includes the earliest existing documentary records in The Book of History, which contained speeches of rulers and ministers during the archaic dynasties of Xia, Shang, and Zhou, and The Spring and Autumn Annals, which was the court chronicle of Confucius’ home state regarding events during 722–481 bce.²⁵ To clarify the records in the Annals, I will frequently refer to its commentary, Zuo Tradition, as well as the collection of speeches in The Discourses of the States, which was compiled in the fourth century bce.

II. Humanitarian Expeditions in Pre-Qin China: Just Wars in Restoring the Mandate of Heaven

This part will first present an overview of the pre-Qin order to contextualize the intellectual traditions introduced later. It then will demonstrate how Just War served as a general discursive framework for deposing unworthy kings. Importantly, the political tradition of deriving sovereign legitimacy from the Mandate of Heaven supported the Just War rationale that sovereigns ruled “with conditions” and were therefore removable. This political idea parallels the notion of responsible sovereignty as part of R2P's theoretical foundation.

The arguments will proceed in three steps. It first introduces the reasoning in support of the exceptional use of force against another state. In particular, wars were deemed necessary to stop carnage and tyranny for the purpose of “loving others”. The second section focuses on deposing unworthy kings as one particular cause under the Just War framework. Here, punitive expeditions are examined in detail. The last section discusses other Just War criteria in the case of humanitarian expeditions, including the right intention, the right authority, and humane conduct during war.

A. Historical Contexts: A Poly-Centric System before the Qin Empire

The advent of the Qin Empire in 221 bce marked a watershed in ancient China. Since it inaugurated the first centralized government, rulers in the following two millennia followed in each other's footsteps. The situation was different for the pre-Qin polities. The Shang dynasty (1600–1046 bce) and its successor, Zhou (1046–256 bce),²⁶ ruled through their enfeoffed states, which from time to time enjoyed quasi-independence from the reigning house.²⁷ In such circumstances, vassal states themselves at times interacted on an equal footing. Hence, as said, before the Qin unification, there had been “inter but no nations”, and afterwards, there was only “a ‘nation’ but no ‘inter’”.²⁸

While rulers of Shang claimed to be the everlasting recipient of the Heavenly Mandate, founders of Zhou opposed its corrupt rule and argued that the Mandate was in fact delegated to the ruler simply for the benefit of his subjects. Emerging from this successful revolution, the Western Zhou (1046–771 bce) was organized as a feudalistic system consisting of loosely connected clans.²⁹ Under the new feudal structure, vassal states took on the duty to defend the Zhou Court against defiant feudal lords and aggressive barbarians.³⁰ As a common code of conduct, the royals and vassals shared a set of rituals (li). These rituals, as recorded in the canon Rites of Zhou composed around the second century bce,³¹ governed numerous aspects of an individual's living, ranging from the daily routines to the offering of sacrifices. Through formalistic rituals, it was deemed, individuals would then internalize norms of propriety, namely, appropriate behaviour taught by fathers, clan elders, and state officials. Eventually, virtues such as filial piety, brotherliness, and loyalty would be inculcated within the patriarchal hierarchical order.

After two centuries of peaceful rule, the western Zhou was weakened by feudal lords and in 771 bce, after King You was assassinated, his successor moved the capital to Luo Yi, thus marking the start of the Eastern Zhou period. Departing from the Western Zhou tradition that All under Heaven follow one true king (tianxia gongzhu), the Eastern Zhou matured into a multi-state system, spanning from the Spring and Autumn period to the greater part of the Warring States period.

These five hundred-odd years, from the eighth century to the third century BCE, constituted an intermezzo in ancient China's history, with virtually independent and equal states living side-by-side. Their peoples had the same blood, a common civilization, and one shared language.³² When the East Zhou king increasingly lost control over his vassals, the Mandate doctrine served to support inter-state interventions among feudal lords. These demographic and political conditions provided the necessary context for the opening quote from the Methods of Sima (Simafa), which captures a stunningly detailed rendering of R2P's interventionist aspect.

Still, the transit from the Spring and Autumn (770–476 bce) to the Warring States period (475–221 bce) featured a gradual degeneration. Throughout the first part, while Zhou's rituals (li) still held sway and a sense of kinship remained, warfare between lords mostly respected the norms of propriety as a common reference.³³ Meanwhile, since the enduring conflicts loosened state control, private education became prevalent and intellectuals travelled across borders for preaching.³⁴ “The Hundred Schools of Thought” thus flourished, including Confucianism, Mohism, Daoism, and later Legalism. Identified more as a “cosmopolitan” than belonging to a specific state,³⁵ philosophers and military specialists converged on the doctrine of Just War (yizhan), which contained both a jus ad bellum standard of righteous war-waging and a jus in bello standard of appropriate behaviour of war.

After three centuries of struggle for hegemony, warfare became a matter of elimination. Consequently, military strategists expounded less on war ethics but more on the technical aspects of efficient defeat.³⁶ At times of survival, the Confucian ideal of benevolent rule also became less palatable for states than the Legalist claim of strong and effective rule.

B. The Ethical Foundation for Just Wars

How war can ever be justified precedes the question of when a war appears just. Hence, in ancient China, a shift in attitudes from valuing the war-free utopia to taking war as the necessary evil laid the foundation for the Just War theory. According to Simafa, the earliest extant Chinese military classics composed in the fourth century bce, former Sage Kings ruled by the law of nature. Under the reign of Sage Virtue, namely, taking benevolence as the foundation (ren) and employing righteousness to govern (yi), punishments had no reason to exist, neither did the causes of war.³⁷ The second-best type of ruler was the Worthy Kings, who “ordered the rites, music, laws, and regulations and established the five punishments, raising armoured troops to attack the unrighteous”.³⁸ In particular, Simafa spelled out nine prohibitions whose violation demanded collective punitive expeditions led by the Kings or rulers. Among the nine injunctions, those who “murder the Worthy or harm the people” would be attacked and deposed, those who are “brutal within their state” would be purged, and those who “act like animals” would be extinguished.³⁹ In this archaic Chinese vision, war became a punishment tool following the loss of the “Golden Age” under the rule of Sage Kings.

Idolising the Sage Kings, Confucius (551–479 bce) recognized that the nature of wars differed according to their purposes and motives. A Duke once asked: “using force, it seems to be a terrible thing?” Confucius replied: “why is it so? Sages used force to stop carnage and tyranny. It was simply that later on, the greedy used it to slay the people and jeopardize the country.”⁴⁰

Influenced by the Confucian ethics, military essayists also recognized righteous war. Wuzi (440–381 bce),⁴¹ a learned Confucian scholar and military strategist whose eponymous book is studied together with Sunzi's Art of War, categorized wars by their nature into the righteous, aggressive, enraged, wanton, and insurgent. As he claimed, wars are righteous when used to suppress violence and quell disorder.⁴² Similarly, Mozi (ca. 476–390 bce), the founder of Mohism, while condemning aggressive wars, also gave cautious support for punitive wars aimed at deposing tyrants and restoring peace.⁴³

Why are punitive wars serving particular purposes considered justifiable? Xunzi's teaching pointed to some fundamental moral responsibilities as a potential reason. One of the three great early Confucian philosophers, Xunzi (ca. 300–230 bce) once faced a question: “when debating military affairs, you, sir, always take ren and yi as what is fundamental. One who is ren cares for the others, and one who is yi follows good order. If this is so, then what use does one have for military forces?” Ren (benevolence) and yi (righteousness) are at the core of Confucius’ teaching, and they were revered as the Sage Virtues in the previous quote from Simafa. The meaning of ren, Confucius remarked, consists of loving others.⁴⁴ Yi captures a categorical imperative to do what one ought to do.⁴⁵ So, Xunzi explained:⁴⁶

[t]he person of ren indeed cares for others, but it is because he cares for others that he hates for people to harm them. The person of yi indeed follows good order, but it is because he follows good order that he hates for people to throw it into chaos. Indeed, military forces are that by which one prohibits violence and does away with what is harmful. (Emphasis added)

In essence, a war may be justified because it is fought for the love of others. Since appeals to meritorious rulers crossed borders and became universal, the perceived duty to shield other people from tyranny then made humanitarian expeditions a viable option.⁴⁷

Xunzi's explanation highlighted the foundation of the Chinese Just War as partly emanating from a sense of moral responsibility towards the mistreated people. This understanding can be confirmed by the semantic analysis of the Chinese concept of Just (yi) War (zhan). Following its modern usage, yi is now commonly understood as “just”. But as Japanese sinologist Tomiya Itaru argued, at least dating back to the Qin and Han periods, yi was often used as a suffix to words expressing virtues such as loyalty (zhongyi) and familial piety (xiaoyi). Here, yi captures an obligation to fulfil the said virtues.⁴⁸ Accordingly, righteous wars are those including a duty to fulfil certain virtues. This reading is quite close to the idea of R2P, which bases protective intervention on the international community's collective responsibility.

C. Restoring the Lost Mandate as a Just Cause for War

1. Just cause: saving the Mandate of Heaven

Wars can be just (yi) depending on different causes for waging it, including for the removal of tyrants. Writing in the fourth century, Weiliaozi, one of the Seven Military Classics, declared that wars should be used only to “punish those guilty of committing violence, cruelty, and tyranny, and to stop unrighteous actions”.⁴⁹ Near the end of the Warring States period, Lü Buwei (291(?)–235 bce), prime minister to the ruler of Qin, who was to unify China within two decades, invited scholars from different schools of thought to a debate on good governance. When summarizing the pre-Qin military studies, these scholars divided wars into the righteous and the barbarian. A righteous war must meet three conditions: it is directed against a ruler without Dao (Way) or a people without righteousness;⁵⁰ the purpose is to save the people;⁵¹ and the battle follows principles of humanity.⁵² Again, the righteousness of a war lies first and foremost in its cause.

Within various accounts of Just War, punishing tyranny, or by the Chinese concept, deposing “a sovereign without Dao” was particularly legitimized by a long-standing Chinese belief in “the Mandate of Heaven” (tianming). Similar to the medieval Divine Right of Kings, the Mandate was to explain where the monarchical power came from. For the ancient Chinese, “[l]aws are derived from political power and political power is derived from the Way (Dao)”.⁵³ The recipient of this ultimate Way was the sovereign who was selected as the “Son of Heaven” to maintain on earth “a cosmic status” reflecting the order of the celestial universe.⁵⁴

To begin with, the Shang and Zhou dynasties believed in the Mandate of Heaven as “an eternally determined and imposed order or relationship between the superior and inferior and between the ruler and the ruled”.⁵⁵ The people of Shang particularly believed in “God” (di) as a supreme being reigning over the cosmos. Later, the decedents of Zhou transformed this worship of God into a belief in Heaven (tian), which favoured virtuous deeds (de).⁵⁶

Linking the Mandate with moral excellence was initially a strategy used by the founders of Shang and Zhou to justify rebellions against their tyrannical kings. As recorded in The Book of History, Shang's first king, Tang, assembled his alliance with a public indictment against the tyrannical Jie: “[i]t is not that I, the humble man, have the audacity to declare war. It is because the prince of Xia has committed monstrous crimes that Heaven has given me the Mandate to exterminate his kingdom”.⁵⁷ More than that, Tang justified his rebellion as a “punitive mission” for “not daring to disobey the orders from Heaven”.⁵⁸ Likewise, when the first King Wu of the Zhou dynasty challenged Shang's corrupted rule, he reiterated that it was for the heavenly goal of protecting the people that the king was appointed as the sovereign and the educator. Given Heaven's command to expel the tyrant due to his countless crimes, “my offence will be as grave as his if I disobey the order”.⁵⁹ In short, dethroning immoral kings like Jie and Zhou⁶⁰ was not only justified, but demanded by Heaven.

In history, this shift from spiritual to moral fulfilment of the Mandate took some time to sink in, and was best illustrated in times of war. Initially, fortune telling and sacrifice were the key to receiving instructions from Heaven when preparing for war, a belief that continued to influence King Wu of Zhou during his revolution.⁶¹ Three centuries later, in 706 bce, when the small state of Sui was tricked into pursuing the large state of Chu on the battlefield, Lord Sui felt confident because of his faithfully prepared sacrifices. His Chancellor Ji disagreed: “[t]he Way of Heaven relies on being loyal towards one's own people and faithful towards gods, who listen to the people. Therefore, the Sage Kings in antiquity served the people first, and gods later.”⁶²

Thus, through the literati's pedagogical reading of the Mandate, three ideas were established: the Mandate is changing (tianming wuchang), it only rests on moral excellence (tianming weide), and it lives in the people (tianyi zaimin).⁶³ Accordingly, a ruler's ability to uphold the Mandate depends on “[h]is personal virtues and wisdom in governing.”⁶⁴ By logical extension, the ruling class became the focal point of the Empire's moral strength.⁶⁵

Given that Heaven grants its Mandate by virtue of merits, revolution seems the natural response to substandard performance. After all, geming, which is the Chinese concept of revolution, literally means the removal of the Mandate. In this sense, Confucius even compared revolution against the tyrants Jie and Zhou to the evolution of Heaven and Earth in his elaboration of the Book of Changes. ⁶⁶

Apart from Confucius himself, the idea of revolutionizing the Mandate was enthusiastically developed by other Confucian scholars. For example, Mencius was recorded as having justified tyrannicide by characterizing offenders of humaneness as outlaws, in which case a ruler is equally subject to punishment as other fellows.⁶⁷ Similarly, Xunzi prioritized the Way (Dao) over the Sovereign (Jun): “To follow the Way but not one's ruler, and to obey rightness but not one's father…were behaviours of great significance.”⁶⁸

In practice, not only was righteous revolution accepted, but external intervention to assist the expelled rulers was also rebuked. Such was the case when the king of Jin planned to restore the king of Wei, banished in 559 bce, but was later dissuaded from doing so by his aides. In particular, the music master Kuang cautioned him:

If he ruins the livelihood of the people and deprives the spirits of sacrifices, so that all the clans lose hope and the altars of the domain have no master, of what use is he? What is to be done but have him expelled? Heaven gives birth to the people and establishes rulers to oversee them and take care of them, not let them lose their livelihood…⁶⁹

2. Collective campaign against irresponsible rulers

Apart from by revolution, the removal of tyrants could also take place through external intervention including collective campaigns. As previously discussed, Simafa enumerated nine categories of misdeeds triggering collective interventions for offending common perceptions of the ritually and morally acceptable. Once the violation was noticed, Worthy Kings would first “publicize it among all the feudal lords, making it clear that [the wrongdoer] had committed a crime”. After that, the Prime Minister would order the feudal lords to assemble troops, announcing, “a certain state has acted against Dao. You will take part in the rectification campaign on such and such a year, month, and day.” The coalition army would then convene accordingly to apply “the punishment of rectification”.⁷⁰

While parts of the accounts cited appear to be anecdotal, including the references to the legendary Sage Kings of Yao, Shun, and Yu, the description of the “rectification campaign” arguably reflected contemporaneous practice. This is substantiated by the records in the Annals and its commentaries, Zuo Tradition. In 576 bce, several princes met on the occasion of the arrest of the Liege of Cao, who was presented at the Zhou capital.⁷¹ As Zuo's note explained, the Annals “implies that a ruler who failed his people should be arrested by leaders of other domains”.⁷²

In the fifteenth year, in spring, the princes met at Qi: this was to confer about chastising Lord Cheng of Cao … The text says, ‘The Prince of Jin arrested the Liege of Cao’: it was because the punishment did not extend to his people. In all cases when a ruler violated the proper way with his people, and the princes chastised and arrested him, the text would say, ‘A leader of such and such a domain seized the prince of such and such a domain.’ If it were not so, no such formulation is used.

Collective campaigns as such were possible because inter-state interventions existed in practice. For example, the Agreement of Kuiqiu, concluded in 651 bce, regulated issues considered to be “domestic affairs” by present-day standards, including restrictions not to “build dykes on a river”, to “store grain for speculation”, or to “let women be involved in state affairs”.⁷³

D. Other Criteria of Just War in Deposing Unworthy Kings

Apart from just cause, the Chinese Just War tradition contains other criteria,⁷⁴ including the jus ad bellum requirements of right intention and right authority, as well as the jus in bello standard of humane conduct. While corresponding to the enumerated list in its Western counterpart, the Chinese Just War doctrine has some specifics unique to its historical context.

1. Right intention

In assessing the nature of war, the initiator's intention was a decisive factor. In fact, a just (yi) war (zhan) depends on the fulfilment of being righteous (yi). In Confucianism, “righteousness” and “profit” are diametrically opposed terms, and acting for righteousness is applauded as much as fighting for profit is condemned.⁷⁵

As an example, Zuo Tradition noted that the state of Chu intervened after Lord of Chen's assassination in 598 bce. King Zhuang of Chu then assured leaders of Chen, “do not be alarmed! I am going to chastise the lineage of Shaoxi.” He entered Chen, executed the murderer, and turned Chen into a Chu dependency. King Zhuang's minister disapproved of the seizure of Chen and stated “that the princes followed you was because you said you were chastising the guilty. Now to turn Chen into a dependency is to covet its riches. To summon the princes in the name of chastisement and then to let it end in covetousness—is this not unacceptable?” The King then relinquished his claim to Chen.⁷⁶ Based on the studies of the inter-state practice, modern scholars pointed out that not aiming at profiting from the intervention was an essential element to maintain its righteousness.⁷⁷

The requirement of the right intention also applied when someone within the state expelled a tyrant. At one point, citing Yi Yin's situation as an example, Mencius was asked whether a worthy minister could banish an unworthy ruler. Yin was revered as an early sage who had helped the first King of Shang, Tang, to overthrow the tyrannical King Jie of Xia. After Tang's death, Minister Yin once banished his young master Taijia, saying “I cannot stand by while someone goes against what is right.” When Taijia lived up to the expectation of a responsible ruler, Yin brought him back. Referring to this event, Mencius answered: “[i]f he has the intentions of a Yi Yin, then he can. If he lacks the intentions of a Yi Yin, then it would be usurpation.”⁷⁸ The prerequisite of having the right intention was an important guideline for senior ministers who were one step away from saving the Mandate or staging the usurpation.

2. Right authority

Many Confucian philosophers believed that just wars could only be rightfully waged by those with superior moral authority. Thus, the initiators of punitive campaigns against unworthy kings could only be those who governed their states with benevolence and also treated the tyrannized people with kindness.⁷⁹ In this regard, Mencius’ comments on state Qi's intervention illustrated his interpretation of proper authority. When Qi defeated the badly ruled Yan, King Xuan of Qi justified it as a sign of divine providence because Qi could not otherwise possibly defeat the equally powerful Yan within fifty days. Mencius then suggested that if the people of Yan were happy, then Qi might take it over.⁸⁰

But later Mencius was shocked at the way the people of Yan were mistreated. Therefore, when asked if he indeed suggested that Qi should attack Yan, Mencius replied in the negative:

Shen Tong asked whether Yan might be chastised; I replied that it might… Had he asked, ‘Who may chastise it?’ I would have replied that a minister appointed by Heaven might chastise it … How would I have advised that one Yan should chastise another Yan?⁸¹

As “ministers of Heaven”, interveners were sometimes also responsible for assisting a post-war state. As Simafa notes, after punishing the offenders, “the King and feudal lords rectified the state, recommended the Worthy, supported the enlightened ruler and restored its original feudal position”.⁸² This precedent became an ideal for later generations, expressed through Confucius’ passionate exhortation to “revive the fallen states, restore the imperilled lineage and re-elect the hidden men of merits”.⁸³

In addition to “ministers of Heaven”, military commanders in charge of the operations had their share of responsibility. In the pre-Qin era, the functions of the prime minister and the commander-in-chief were not separated. Therefore, someone who served in peacetime as a ruler's advisor changed to lead the army in wars. Given the growing influence of Confucianism, the prime minister-cum-general was often a learned Confucian who could easily translate their political tasks into military directives. In this way, the ethics of war, epitomized by “virtues”, figured prominently in most military classics.⁸⁴ Further through the chain of command, martial virtues extended to all actors involved in the intervention.⁸⁵

3. Humane conduct in war: benevolence, precaution, and proportionality

As discussed, a righteous war first needs to be initiated in a proper manner, such as one initiated by a “minister of Heaven” to overthrow a tyrant. In addition, it needs to be conducted in a humane manner, especially by respecting the principles of benevolence, precaution, and proportionality.

Benevolence is the foundation. As Weiliaozi aptly summarized, “when a true king attacks the brutal and chaotic, he takes benevolence and righteousness as the foundation for it”.⁸⁶ Some requirements were outdated, but illustrate the efforts to limit the impacts of war. For example, there were strict restrictions on the timing of war; namely, it could not be done during the farming seasons to take care of one's own people, it should not be initiated against a state during its national mourning or during natural disasters to take care of its people, and the army should not be raised in winter or summer to take care of people on both sides.⁸⁷

Moreover, as the Annals declared, warfare was one of the things that the Master was most cautious about.⁸⁸ Confucius considered wars to be a matter of life and death for states and their peoples. Therefore, a just war must have general support from the people and their voluntary participation. In other words, a just war needs to be perceived as “just” by citizens of the war-waging state.⁸⁹

The principle of proportionality required that harm be minimized. In the words of Weiliaozi, farmers should be allowed to work in their fields, merchants to stay in their stores, and officials to remain at their posts when the army reaches the target. The scale of the operation should be controlled, with the aim of not unduly harming the other side.⁹⁰

III. The Discontinued Practice of Humanitarian Expeditions in Post-Qin China and Tentative Explanations through Comparative Studies

A. The Advent of the First Empire

Humanitarian expeditions disappeared from historical records after the advent of the Qin Empire. The Qin dynasty reigned for merely fourteen years, but it offered a vision of Empire, which, after times of division, always made a comeback until the beginning of the twentieth century. During the periods of division from 220 to 589 and from 907 to 960, rival regimes engaged in constant turf wars, while no humanitarian expeditions occurred. This section briefly documents the climactic change at the end of the Warring State period, where the Qin state took steps to eliminate all its rivals and inaugurated the first centralized government in China. In particular, I will highlight the changing intellectual traditions that contributed to Qin's unification, its rapid downfall, and its lasting legacy.

During the Warring States period, human suffering and social chaos became the shared vision of dystopia due to centuries-long warfare. Against this background, Legalism developed, whose adherents understood good governance differently from earlier Confucianism. Regarding rival political units as the source of bloodshed and breakdown of order, some pioneering Legalists launched reforms in various states to create a stronger government.

In the wave of these Legalist reforms, Shang Yang (390–338 bce) helped Duke Xiao of Qin to implement radical measures, of which the central theme was to weaken the people and strengthen the government. To weaken the people, for example, Shang dismissed eight things as nurturing “the rapacity of the wicked”, including cleverness, rites, benevolence, and employment.⁹¹ To strengthen the state, he fixed models and measures, valued farming and weaving, and prepared for defence and attack.⁹² After only five years, Qin arose from a backward country on the far western borders to such a commanding position that the Zhou court sent sacrificial meat.⁹³

After six generations, King Zheng annexed all the warring states by 221 bce and announced himself as the “first emperor”. Abandoning Zhou's feudal system, the first emperor established a centralized bureaucracy: local prefectures and counties were directly administered by the court; measures and written characters were standardized; laws were unified, clarified, and publicized nationwide;⁹⁴ statistics on demography and taxes were collected and reported to the court annually.⁹⁵ These policies remained the cornerstone of imperial rule for the next two thousand years.

Qin's military and political unification was due in large part to the influence of the Legalist doctrines. Generally, the first emperor's pursuit of a centralized system, specifically through the use of laws, was inspired by Legalist thinkers. After reading Han Feizi who had argued that Confucian methods of rule were obsolete, the first emperor once cried out “if I could meet this man and talk to him, I would embrace death without complaint”.⁹⁶ Han Feizi (ca. 280–233 bce) followed his master Xunzi's assumption that without proper guidance, human beings could easily degenerate.⁹⁷ In particular, an individual's instinctual egoism would destroy a public-minded society, which would not be readily tempered by moral teachings. In contrast, clearly written law accessible to all subjects was the most effective way to counteract individuals’ selfish and anarchic tendencies. Correspondingly, Han Feizi and fellow student of Xunzi, Li Si (ca. 280–08 bce) advocated the elimination of other schools of thought. Han Feizi particularly said that “in a state of an intelligent ruler, there is no literature of books and bamboo tablets, but the law is the only doctrine; there are no sayings of former Kings, but the officials are the only models”.⁹⁸ As a dramatic event, in 213 bce, the first emperor approved Li's proposal to suppress private learning by burning privately-owned books including the Confucian classics of which some had been cited to support the revival of Zhou's practice.

The first emperor left behind him a united Empire with an exhausted population. His successor, Huhai, further doomed the dynasty through a series of arbitrary acts. Hu Hai ordered massive building projects, including the extravagant E-Pang Palace. To sponsor these extensive works, people were heavily taxed. Meanwhile, officials at court opposing his wilful exploitation and licentious living were purged, and Li Si himself was put to death. The first popular revolt soon occurred in 209 bce,⁹⁹ and this was the precursor of a wave of revolutions; among them the commoner Liu Bang won over all competing powers and established the Han dynasty in 202 bce.

Trying to distance itself from the tyrannical Qin, the Han court accused Qin of flouting benevolent rule, and identified itself with Confucianism. Since Emperor Wu, Confucianism further became the state ideology. On the other hand, the Legalist principles of rule were integrated into the new configuration of Confucianism. For instance, the Code of Han incorporated part of the Code of Qin, which was initially composed by the Legalist reformer Li Kui of the Wei state and brought by Shang Yang to the Qin state. Moreover, the Legalist method of eliciting strong social cohesion added to the monarch's authoritarian toolbox. Early Han Confucian scholars thus positively evaluated the effective state reigned over by the first emperor of Qin and his predecessors. However, as they emphasized, the inability to adapt to a more lenient rule after exhausting the people was the cause of Qin's decline.¹⁰⁰ In short, the Legalist formula for building a strong state, raising the status of the ruler, and demanding absolute popular obedience had persisted throughout the imperial history, but it was not used independently for regulating norms of conduct.¹⁰¹

B. Overview of Post-Qin Practice

No humanitarian expedition was recorded after the third century bce, either between regional political competitors or between the Chinese Empire and her neighbours. Occasionally, though, some religious figures assumed modest roles in stopping the massacres or helping the victims.

The lack of recorded expeditions does not indicate that atrocities were rare. On the contrary, massacres abounded especially during periods of division. For example, after the “Rebellion of the Eight Princes” (291–306), which led to the downfall of the Western Jin in 316, several non-Han regimes took the chance to rule the North for centuries. In this context, inter-ethnic hatred triggered frequent ethnic cleansing and at least one recorded genocide.¹⁰² In 350, Ran Min, the kingmaker of Han origin ordered a genocidal campaign against all non-Han populations, especially the Jie, following a failed attempt on his life by the Jie ruler he had just installed. As described in historical texts and literary works, after the executions, more than 200,000 corpses were stacked outside the city walls, eaten by jackals, wolves, and wild dogs.¹⁰³

Atrocities such as massacres of those who had surrendered and extermination of civilians were also frequent. Soon after the Rebellion of the Eight Princes, massacres of inhabitants and detainees became common practice among the early non-Han conquerors, especially the armies of Jie and Xiongnu. As recorded in The Book of Jin and History as a Mirror, the state-sponsored historical records written by Tang and Song literati, the founder of the later Zhao regime Shi Le ordered the death of more than 100,000 prisoners of war in Ning Pin and over 20,000 in Ye. The scale of slaughter culminated in the early conquests of the Mongols, who defeated the Song dynasty and founded the Yuan Empire. Within a decade of the early thirteenth century, Mongol conquerors wiped out the Karazmian Empire and the Western Xia, a Tangut-ruled regime, and killed around 5 million Jurchens.

While historians have detailed these atrocities, there is little mention of humanitarian support from outsiders. Exceptionally, religious figures helped tame the violence. At a time when the Mongols were conquering westward, the Taoist minister Qiu Cuiji trekked to the Hindu Kush Mountains in 1222, after hearing news of the fall of the Karazmian Empire. Qiu pleaded with Genghis Khan, the founder of the Mongol Empire, not to engage in mass killings. Having gained Genghis Khan's reverence, Qiu convinced him that respect for the Heaven and love for the people was the foundation of his rule, and that an ascetic life was the key to longevity.¹⁰⁴ Qiu's sermons were recorded as crucial in reducing violence.

Likewise, Buddhist personages helped revoke atrocious policies. Horrified by Shi Le's massacres of inhabitants in his conquered cities, Fotucheng, a learned Buddhist master from Kucha, criticized it as unjust and converted Shi Le into a believer. Fotucheng's influence helped change the annihilation policy.¹⁰⁵ However, as historians noticed, Shi Le's turn to Buddhist teachings was an easy blend of personal belief and political expedience. After it was introduced to China around the Common Era, Buddhism swiftly permeated the Han Court because of the ease with which it could be incorporated into traditional Chinese thought.¹⁰⁶ By the time of the Northern and Southern dynasties, Buddhism had received enthusiastic support from many rulers. Like Shi Le, King of Former Qin (r. 357–85), Emperor Wencheng of the Northern Wei (r. 452–65), and Emperor Wu of Liang (r. 502–49) all actively identified with Buddhism to strengthen their rule.¹⁰⁷

As said, humanitarian expeditions did not occur between China and her neighbours, and this is partly because of their unequal relationships. As early as the Han dynasty (206 bce–220), a tributary system started to evolve which lasted until the Opium war in 1840.¹⁰⁸ Within this Sino-centric community of states, China exerted its influence over junior members primarily in the light of its cultural superiority. Correspondingly, the Confucian doctrines of benevolence and obedience became the all-embracing norm of conduct.¹⁰⁹ In this context, no intervention was directed at the Chinese.

Meanwhile, though China sometimes adhered to the Just War tradition by launching punitive expeditions against foreign rulers for violating the rituals,¹¹⁰ expeditions to expel despots did not occur. Nevertheless, the Chinese ruler would withdraw his support from a foreign prince who was deemed unworthy. This was the case with the 1780s Vietnamese rebellion. The revolt was triggered by long-standing corrupt rule of two principalities that had divided Vietnam and reigned on behalf of the Lê dynasty. One of the rebel leaders, Nguyên Huê conquered the northern principality and restored the Lê emperor. Soon afterwards, he established his own kingdom bordering the Lê territory.

When Nguyên Huê went to Hanoi in 1788 to execute one of the emperor's ministers, the emperor felt threatened and fled to seek refuge in China. The Chinese court heard of the insurgence once a local official reported that the Vietnamese king had lost his seal given by the Qing emperor, and his heir requested to be invested.¹¹¹ The Chinese emperor then sent Sun Shiyi, the governor-general of two Cantonese provinces to investigate “into the reason for the rebellion before taking any definite action”.¹¹² In his memorial, Sun concluded that the country had not entirely fallen to the rebels and that many local officials remained loyal to the dynasty.¹¹³

Sun's findings convinced the court to assist the Lê emperor. The court sent a small-sized army following the Vietnamese troops only to give them confidence in pacifying the rebellion.¹¹⁴ The Grand Council justified their action on the ground that the Lê dynasty had served the Chinese Empire respectfully for more than a century and, therefore, “we cannot bear to see this family destroyed”.¹¹⁵

When Sun asked to proceed “to the rebel's nest”, the Grand Council ordered him to return once he had achieved the initial military objectives.¹¹⁶ Apart from reasons related to cost and climate, the court was careful not to let the Vietnamese misunderstand its motives¹¹⁷ and, in addition, was convinced that the Lê emperor had lost his Mandate.¹¹⁸ As documented, by fleeing twice from his capital, the Vietnamese king proved to be an incompetent ruler. Moreover, Sun's subsequent report confirmed that “among Vietnamese officials, he had met no worthy people”.¹¹⁹ This suggests that, given the loss of the Mandate, the Chinese Empire considered it appropriate to suspend its support to the prince facing rebellion, without helping to install a new Mandate holder.

C. Tentative Explanations for the Discontinued Humanitarian Expeditions

1. The Mandate as an inadequate basis for atrocity prevention

Until the end of the Warring States periods, humanitarian expeditions could be carried out against a tyrant who failed to uphold the Mandate from Heaven. The first explanation for the subsequent discontinuity of such practice is that the interpretation of the Mandate supported a paternalistic conception of a monarch's responsibility.¹²⁰ The Chinese concept of “tyrants” was defined by something other than their atrocious deeds.

Originally, the moral belief in the Mandate derived from the Zhou precept: “[a]ll under Heaven is not one man's domain”, but for “all under Heaven”, namely all the people. Accordingly, “anyone who shares profit with all the people under Heaven will gain the world”.¹²¹

Therefore, what underscored the Mandate doctrine was the recognition that “all under heaven” was collectively owned by the people.¹²² Nevertheless, as Confucianists believed, the people should follow their monarch in public life and patriarch in private life. In other words, the monarch was not conceived as a delegate following the people's will, but at best a devoted parent taking care of the people's needs. Xunzi, who initiated the rationalist trend in Confucianism, further developed justifications for authoritarian rule. While recognizing that the Heaven appointed the king only for the sake of the people,¹²³ Xunzi proposed that monarchs should maintain good social order by using ethics and law to curb people's selfish and antisocial instincts. He therefore favoured restrictive policies including thought control and travel bans.

Though Mencius’ moral idealism set him apart from Xunzi, he likewise had a paternalistic conception of the sovereign. In particular, he believed that a king honoured his responsibility by enriching and educating his people.¹²⁴ When King Hui of the Liang state asked Mencius about the way to achieve hegemony, Mencius answered:

[o]nly a gentleman can maintain a faithful heart in the absence of a proper livelihood. As for the people, depriving them of their livelihood will lead them to self-abandonment and moral degradation. When they thus commit crimes, to punish them is to entrap them.¹²⁵

In summary, Mencius said that the ruler of a state never failed to be a true king where people in their seventies wear silk and eat meat and the pepper-haired are neither hungry nor cold.¹²⁶ Thus, Mencius imbued his standard moral argument with a pragmatic touch.

Indeed, ensuring people's livelihood was the practical key to staying in power. In an agrarian society as in ancient China, popular opposition capable of eventually dethroning a monarch often came from the society-wide crisis, such as excessive taxes or natural calamities that would ruin the livelihood of the majority. In contrast, persecutions on a limited scale usually did not trigger a widespread response. Therefore, even if Emperors Yong Zheng (r. 1722–35) and Qian Long (r. 1736–96) of Qing reached the apex of the literary inquisition (wen zi yu), they remained model kings contributing to the last “prosperous age” (sheng shi) of imperial China,¹²⁷ as the people of Qing believed.¹²⁸

As such, Confucianists took the monarch's ability to secure people's wellbeing, especially their material wealth as the touchstone of legitimate rule. Correspondingly, “tyrants” were the “unworthy kings” who fundamentally failed to do so. In the stereotypical descriptions of Confucian historians, those were the “bad last emperor” who indulged in a building spree and hearty sensual appetites.¹²⁹ Their violent and debauched characters often took on society-wide effects through reckless war-waging or excessive taxes and corvée policies, which would seriously disrupt the social or economic order.

For example, the first emperor was a standard tyrant in the narratives of later dynasties. Lu Jia (240–170 bce), a political thinker who helped Liu Bang establish the Han dynasty, reasoned that Qin's rapid collapse was because of its rulers’ penchant for cruel punishment and tyranny over the masses, including the frequent raising of an army for conquests and the massive building programmes.¹³⁰ Another early Han politian Chao Cuo (220–154 bce) criticized the first emperor for exhausting the people with his insatiable ambitions and desires.¹³¹ Indeed, as analysts revealed, while the total population at the time did not exceed 20 million, the concentrated labour for construction projects was more than 2.2 million, and the number of infrastructure workers elsewhere in the Empire must have been very large.¹³² By the same token, The Book of Jin portrayed Shi Le's successor Shi Hu (295–349) as a tyrannical ruler who had conscripted a vast number of peasants for the construction of his palace.¹³³

Legalists conceptualized tyranny quite similarly with Confucianists. The Legalist efforts to purge individuals of their selfishness also applied to monarchs. Thus, as opposed to the public-minded rulers, tyrants enslaved his people for private needs.¹³⁴ The early Legalist thinker, Han Fei, therefore constantly asked rulers to restrain their selfish desires for luxurious palaces as these constructions would overwork the people and cause their own destruction.¹³⁵ Nevertheless, contrary to Confucianists’ insistence on benevolent rule, Legalists supported tough measures to rescue the state from chaos and to bring long-term benefits despite people's protest.¹³⁶ In this regard, if we say that Confucianists favoured a paternalistic monarch who ruled with moral indoctrination and leniency, the Legalists’ paternalistic monarch ruled with harsh punishment.

The Legalist School petered out during the Han dynasty but, as Glanville observed, the Han continued to use Legalist methods while claiming Confucianism as its official ideology. And this practice of “Legalism with a Confucian façade” was recycled by all subsequent dynasties.¹³⁷ For instance, in his influential polemics, early Han court-scholar, Jia Yi, argued that Qin's downfall was because the first emperor discarded the Way (Dao), and instead followed his self-interest.¹³⁸ Here, the Confucianist reverence of the Way complemented the Legalist reproach of self-interest. And Jia went on to comment that the people as an unstable mass needed to be kept peaceful to prevent turmoil, which sounds deeply Legalist.¹³⁹

So, how is the Chinese concept of tyranny different from its European counterpart, which has been crucial to justify external interventions? In Europe, the problem of tyranny was the cause of intervention during the Reformation on which basis princes tried to save their spiritual kins persecuted in another state. Massacres at the time took place by virtue of victims’ identities. Such was the case in 1572 for the 3,000 Protestants slaughtered on Saint Bartholomew's Day, another 7,000 killed by imitation elsewhere in France, and 3,000 burnt by the Spaniards at Naarden.¹⁴⁰ In this context, widely circulated polemics condemned tyrants for being guilty of shedding blood on a factional bias.¹⁴¹ As a result, cross-border intervention became a legitimate response, as Queen Elizabeth I did in France under Valois and in the Netherlands under the Habsburg,¹⁴² and Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth, did on behalf of the Vaudois in Savoy.¹⁴³

In general, tyranny for the ancient Chinese was the selfish rule of monarchs over their subjects. As long as the monarch did not severely oppress the majority for the private good, especially by exhausting them through conscription or depriving them of their livelihood, the ruler might be tolerated. Thus, targeted persecutions, such as those directed against literati or religious sects, would not necessarily constitute tyranny. In contrast, the Europeans understood tyranny primarily as the biased rule resulting in identity-based persecutions. Therefore, those who sided with some particular subjects in brutal oppression of the others would appear to be open to challenge from other princes.

2. “Atrocity” and “minority protection” as alien concepts

While tyranny was conceived differently from that in Europe, “atrocity”, especially those against minorities, was also an unfamiliar concept to ancient Chinese and did not form a separate cause for just war. Thus, calamities defined as atrocities in early modern Europe were framed in different terms in ancient China. The Five Persecutions of Buddhism, for example, were all narrated as actions out of practical necessity rather than confessional purge.

As mentioned earlier, Buddhism had gained increased support among the populace and officials since Han. In particular, it turned several rulers into fervent followers from the fourth to the sixth centuries. Patronized by royal and aristocratic families, Buddhist monasteries became landholders and reservoirs of manpower, and thus rivals of the state in accessing resources.¹⁴⁴ In 446, Emperor Taiwu of Northern Wei (r. 423–52), leader of the Xian Bei tribes who had established supremacy over northern China, started a full-scale crackdown on Buddhism. Mass killings of monks were ordered. Monasteries were destroyed. The reasons for this campaign might be the monasteries’ likely participation in a usurpation and their rapidly expanding wealth.¹⁴⁵

One century later, the Yuwen regime under Emperor Wu (r. 560–78) launched the second proscription of Buddhism with subdued violence. The aim was straightforward; namely, to reap the enormous wealth and to incorporate the numbers in its armies in the fight against rival regimes.¹⁴⁶ Around three million monks, nuns, and their dependents then became soldiers and peasants, while 40,000 temples with their lands, retainers, and property changed hands overnight.¹⁴⁷ This crackdown happened amid the decades-long upheaval in North China, where rapid depopulation led to greater competition in the control of persons rather than territory.¹⁴⁸ In this sense, monks exempted from corvée, conscription, and taxes were human capital for the authority.¹⁴⁹ The other two persecutions during the Tang dynasty (845) and Later Zhou (955) had the same logic. As noted in the Six Codes of Tang, a dynastic administrative record, prerogatives were accorded to Taoist ministers and Buddhist clergy, including sizeable lands,¹⁵⁰ to such an extent that “rich fields and handsome profits mostly flows to the monasteries”.¹⁵¹

The five Persecutions were viewed as violent requisition, but not atrocities targeting peoples by their distinct identities. Indeed, the violence was justified as a radical measure to strengthen the regime and, in a subtle twist, redistribute wealth to society. In all five cases, proscription softened within a decade and did not attract society-wide condemnation.

This narrative reflects the general perception that mistreating a particular group was not a separate offence in itself. In comparison, R2P's legal basis in relation to atrocities has long been a sui generis concern in Europe. Specifically, the language of atrocity emerged in the Enlightenment to characterize brutality against human bodies as a result of religious persecution, colonial violence, and slavery.¹⁵² This distinctive focus continued into the twentieth century, when international law in the wake of the Holocaust repeatedly addressed identity-based pogroms. At Nuremberg, crimes against humanity were tried as an international crime, thereby changing the existing laws and customs of war where such offences against fellow citizens could not be prosecuted.¹⁵³ In 1948, states signed a convention to prevent and punish genocide, defined as “acts of states with an intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group”.¹⁵⁴ In 1951, refugee law provided further protection for individuals fearing domestic persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.¹⁵⁵ Those are the rights that the international community tried to enforce in Kosovo, but failed to do so in many places such as Rwanda, Srebrenica, and Syria. This consistent focus on atrocities, which culminated in R2P, was absent in ancient China.

3. The Mandate doctrine's shift from normative to apologetic

As Section 1 explained, the early Mandate doctrine traded off the respect for particular groups of people against the assurance about the majority's well-being. This rationale then fostered a general social indifference to persecutions against some populations, including intellectuals and religious practitioners.

But worse, the Mandate soon ceased to be a normative requirement of sovereign responsibility, and became a descriptive statement – the earlier teachings of “sages are the kings” (sheng wang) was turned into a political declaration that “kings are sages” (wang sheng).

Degradation of the Mandate's meaning dates back to the Han dynasty. Dong Zhongshu (179–04 bce), an important Han scholar who transformed Confucianism into Han's official ideology, developed a theory of the unity of Heaven and man (tianren heyi). As Heaven's ambassador on earth, the emperor's conduct would have a repercussion on natural beings. Disasters such as floods and drought were therefore taken as a warning sign.¹⁵⁶ When a solar eclipse happened in 178 bce, Emperor Wen of Han, an exemplary sage king, announced his sins to the nation. Emperor Wen declared that the eclipse reflected his faults of not educating his people. He then implored the public to inform him of his wrongdoing and appealed to virtuous advisors to help him avoid immoral behaviour.¹⁵⁷ However, there were more natural calamities than virtuous kings. The practice of the king's public self-reproach was later replaced by the idea that “kings are always sages, and it was the guilty ministers who should be punished” (tianzi shengming, zuichen dangzhu).¹⁵⁸ With it, Emperor Yuan (43 bce) and Emperor Cheng of Han (15 bce) asked their chancellors to resign after rare celestial events. In 7 bce, Emperor Cheng even issued an edict for his chancellor to remedy another onerous sign by death. The practice of scapegoating ministers for celestial warnings of bad rule became a legal precedent, according to an ordinance in Han yi zhu, which documents rituals in the Han Court.¹⁵⁹

4. The institutionalized inequality of individuals

R2P has its legal origins in anti-atrocity laws, of which conceptual foundations include not only concerns with tyranny, discussed in Section 2, but also respect for individual equality within a polity. Atrocities are unlikely to occur, if no one is treated as inferior by their attributes including religion, race, ethnicity, or class,¹⁶⁰ and if no one is asked to sacrifice their fundamental rights for the good of the collective.

However, “people” as the basis of the Mandate was in plural form. Correspondingly, individual equality was not part of any prominent political or moral theory. In fact, the ancient Chinese society was built on an essentially anti-egalitarian basis shaped by an authoritarian ideology that proclaimed its origin from Confucianism.

Confucius believed that people should be guided to develop their idiosyncratic nature, since they were born dissimilar, as things were made different. Therefore, he developed a code of conduct for all members of society based on their “role responsibility”. Ideally, everyone would behave according to his or her specific duties and rituals to others. Ultimately, this model would establish superior-subordinate relationships in family and in the court. “Let the ruler be a ruler, the subject be a subject, a father be a father, a son be a son”¹⁶¹ was Confucius’ answer to Duke Jing of Qi about the way of good governance. However, it is important to note that despite Confucius’ endorsement of asymmetrical relationships, the responsibility between superiors and subordinates is mutual. For example, loyalty of ministers requires that the sovereign treat his ministers with courtesy.¹⁶²

Certainly, Confucius was not the only one to conceptualize human relationships. His contemporary, Mozi, firmly defended the idea that men were born equal, and that the rules regulating social relations should be mutually agreed upon by all society members.¹⁶³ However, Mohism declined at the end of the Warring States period and was later stamped out by emperor Wu of Han.

Once Confucianism became the sole ruling ideology in Han (134 bce), it had been favoured by almost all succeeding dynasties and applied in both political and social realms. Adapting Confucianism to Han's official ideology, Dong Zhongshu first proposed the hierarchical Three Bonds between father and son, husband and wife, and prince and minister as a totalitarian mechanism to keep families well maintained, communities (zongzu) well organized, and eventually the state well ordered.¹⁶⁴ Based on Confucius’ role responsibility, an additional layer of absolute obedience was prescribed.¹⁶⁵ As a result, chancellors could be ordered to be scapegoats for Emperor Cheng of Han.

In family life, laws of the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties permitted the killing of offspring when the youngsters assaulted their parents or the parents had “good” reasons to do so, including filial disobedience.¹⁶⁶ In earlier periods of Tang (618–907) and Song (960–1279), parents could also petition for the death penalty for their undutiful children.¹⁶⁷

In social space, various forms of slavery persisted throughout most of the imperial history, only to be officially abolished by a Qing imperial edict in 1909. As late as the Tang dynasty, nubi, a form of domestic servants, and jianren, the untouchables, still belonged to a specific class that “were taken as chattels in law”.¹⁶⁸ They could be bought, gifted, and inherited. Although the panel code required that slaves should not be subject to wanton killings, masters who violated this rule were punished leniently. After Tang, a slave's status as property changed into that of employees in the Song dynasty at the height of the commodity-based economy. However, the Yuan conquerors soon changed course.

In short, among freemen, many were pinned to an institutional framework of subjugation through the “Three Bonds”. Further, through the Sino-centric network, this social and ethical model applied to China's relations with her tributary states.¹⁶⁹ Within this context, prohibition against identity-based persecution was a foreign concept as the role-based inequality, to the extent of deprivation of life, was recognized and practised at court, within family, and in society.

5. The principle of humanity derived from family relations

The principle of humanity that motivated the pre-Qin humanitarian expeditions arose from family relations and did not mature into a broad-based empathy. This partly explains why similar expeditions did not occur in response to the massacres during periods of division or within its neighbours.

The Just War theory in support of humanitarian expeditions originated from the pre-Qin context where vassal states were connected with family ties. The archaic dynasties of Xia, Shang, and Zhou were ruled by clans, and titles of inner feudatories (nei fan) were only granted to royal members with the same surname. When the Zhou court established the feudal system, 53 out of 71 states came from the Ji family.¹⁷⁰ Besides lineage, family ties were further consolidated through marriage.¹⁷¹

Against this background, pre-Qin warfare was regulated by a whole set of norms.¹⁷² For instance, warfare between states with the same surname was forbidden. Countries could not be attacked during national mourning. Soldiers who had been seriously wounded should not be attacked, and elderly warriors should not be taken hostage.¹⁷³ The ethical call to “revive the fallen states and restore the imperilled lineage” also circulated among those with the same ancestry. Such practice shows that the morality among nations in ancient times was actually a code of conduct among families.¹⁷⁴

These ethical norms of proper conduct (li) gained universal validity initially via the auspice of the Zhou house. Later on, when the Zhou authority became weakened, Confucius revived Zhou's li in his proposed ethical universe, where the family was still the most important unit for discharging mutual responsibilities. In contrast, Mozi's doctrine on impartial love towards all men was ridiculed by Mencius as acts of unenlightened animals. As encapsulated in the teaching that “Caring for all men to the same extent of caring for your parents means not loving your parents”,¹⁷⁵ the Confucianist conception of differentiated love required that priority be given to people closer to oneself. For example, Confucius’ homeland, Lu, had an edict asking travellers to redeem slaves of Lu origin in other states. Once back to the country, the redeemer could ask for state reimbursement.¹⁷⁶ Clearly, nationals were more closely connected as a “family” than they were to foreigners.

In short, the inchoate Chinese conception of “all under heaven” featured family-states which shared similar mental and cultural attributes. Accordingly, the driving force for punishing and remedying tyrannical deeds across borders was found in both ethical and emotional bonds conceptualized in terms of family relations. The lack of either motivator would make humanitarian expeditions unlikely.

In history, the conception of this ethical bond became untenable near the end of the Warring States period. As states grew estranged from each other after centuries of rivalry, the “humanized” art of war gave way to strategic warlike techniques. Resultantly, the virtues of killing no elders and capturing no children became a laughingstock.¹⁷⁷ Duke Xiang of Song's refusal to strike the enemy during their river crossing, which led to his defeat and subsequent death, was seen as ridiculous.¹⁷⁸

Since the Han dynasty, the “familial qualities of Confucianism” came to characterize the Empire's relationship with other countries.¹⁷⁹ Therefore, the court's external campaigns were also framed as punitive expeditions.¹⁸⁰ However, while family ethos was applied to the tributary states, it was hard to extend simultaneously family pathos. Thus, as in the case of the Qing court's response to the Vietnamese emperor's request for support, once the court found that the Lê dynasty had lost its Mandate in the face of the rebels, it withheld its support to the Lê emperor, but had no further involvement in the revolts.

In contrast to the localized humanitarian concern in ancient China, the humanitarian sentiments in Europe started to expand after the Enlightenment, which culminated in various humanitarian interventions in the nineteenth century on behalf of distant strangers.¹⁸¹ One prominent example was the Abolitionist movement aimed at banning the slave trade. In particular, British citizen activists and Christians worked through the Parliament to secure the 1807 Act for Abolition of the Slave Trade, which empowered the British navy to seize ships implicated in the slave trade.¹⁸²

IV. Conclusion

By the fourth century bce, the ancient Chinese had developed a theory of Just War. Framed as humanitarian expedition, deposing unworthy rulers was one of its justified causes. The Just War reasoning was reinforced by the political proposition that Heaven delegated the earthly Mandate to the king to care for his subjects. The manifest failure to uphold this Mandate would justify his displacement.

Through a comparative reading, the Chinese Just War doctrine, which incorporated jus ad bellum and jus in bello, shared striking similarities with its European counterpart. Both doctrines spelled out conditions for waging wars and prescribed the appropriate way of conducting warfare. The Chinese tradition further highlighted that only “ministers of Heaven”, namely, those with superior moral authority, could depose tyrants of another state. Therefore, in practice, interveners who mistreated populations on whose behalf they claimed to raise armies, would prove themselves illegitimate ex post facto. It should be noted that this requirement extended to the military personnel involved through ethics of war.

While the Just War doctrine continued to justify religious interventions during the Reformation and the nineteenth century humanitarian interventions against the Ottomans, Just War in China lost its strength against tyranny with the advent of the Qin Empire. To account for this paradigmatic turn, I discussed both structural and normative reasons. Structurally, the monolithic Empire provided no condition for carrying out humanitarian expeditions internally. Meanwhile, the Empire had long smaintained a Sino-centric order externally, where tributary states were not positioned to initiate interventions against the Chinese court.

But why did frequent atrocities, amid turf wars during periods of division, not provoke mutual humanitarian expeditions between warlords, and why did the Empire not consider humanitarian expeditions against her neighbours? In response to this question, this paper posited some normative factors, which also accounted for ancient China's growing divergence from principles forming the foundations of modern anti-atrocity laws.

To begin, the Mandate of Heaven supported paternalistic rule, but not “rule by the people”. In particular, the core responsibility of rulers was to ensure the livelihood of the majority. But this legitimatizing standard spoke little, if anything, about respect for those in the minority. Correspondingly, the Chinese notion of “tyrants” was more narrowly understood as those excessively exploiting the masses to further their own private interests.

For this reason, atrocity and identity-based persecution were rather alien concepts, and acts as such were often tolerated by the society. Furthermore, as early as the Han dynasty, the Mandate, which was originally a limit on sovereigns’ authority, became an apologetic tool for their power.

Additionally, individuals were embedded within non-egalitarian ethical relations based on gender, age, and social functions. Oppression became normalized when the king could legally order the death of his ministers in order to remedy his wrongs, and parents legally pleaded for the death penalty against their defiant children.

Finally, as the ethical foundation of Just War, the principle of humanity originally arose from the familial kinship among vassal states during the Zhou dynasty. Humanitarian expeditions were thus contemplated among quasi-family-states. However, this narrowly conceptualized principle did not ripen into a broad-based empathy that would motivate humanitarian expeditions across the border. This explains why the Empire occasionally cited Just War to intervene in her tributary states for their violations of li, but not for their atrocious deeds.