Ch'in long existed as a small state or principality and then as a major dynasty and empire. The Chinese world became divided into a multitude of political entities; some 170 are believed to have existed during the Chou subperiod known as the Spring and Autumn period. Both non-Marxist and Marxist historians have been exercised over the appropriate use of the term feudalism. The improvement in agriculture was probably accompanied by a growth of population, despite the simultaneous intensification of warfare. In Ch'in and several contemporary principalities, the political changes just noted were accompanied by an evolution toward more sophisticated institutions and organs of central government. The Ch'in empire is regarded as the supreme embodiment of the ideas and techniques known as Legalism. Shang Yang had been chancellor in Ch'in, and Shen Pu-hai had been chancellor in the much smaller neighboring state of Hann.

The system of imperial government evolved during the Ch'in and Han periods was marked by the division of responsibilities, the duplication of some offices, and the organization of civil servants into hierarchies. The principal method of recruiting civil servants was by the recommendation of provincial officials or of senior ministers in the central government. The academy flourished in Later Han, admitting foreigners as well as Chinese. The importance of the secretariat was recognized as early as 46 BC in a telling remark made by the statesman Hsiao Wang-chih. The great majority of the inhabitants of the Ch'in and Han empires lived on the land in villages. Major decisions of state policy depended theoretically on the choice and authority of the emperor, or on that of the empress dowager The government of Ch'in and Han rested on principles enunciated by Shang Yang and Han Fei: that meritorious service must be encouraged by rewards, and infringement of the law must be punished.

The Han dynasty bequeathed to China an ideal and a concept of empire that survived basically intact for two thousand years. Modernist policies derived from the unification of China by Ch'in and the operation of imperial government under the principles of Shang Yang, Shen Pu-hai, and Han Fei. The first century of the Han empire witnessed the implementation, modification, or extension of these policies in a number of ways. The imperial institutions and intellectual framework of the Han empire were evolved and modified as a result of controversy, violence, or rebellion. Ch'en She and Wu Kuang are named as the two men who were the first to challenge the authority of the Ch'in empire. The major difference between the systems of government of Ch'in and Han lay in the organization of the provinces. During the last fifty years of the Former Han period, foreign policy was marked at times by a refusal to engage potential enemies.