UC Berkeley

Whether they know it or not, many views of Chinese legal history continue to rely on the idea that Chinese law became thoroughly Confucian thousands of years ago and has since resisted all efforts to adjust that underlying philosophy. This “Confucianization” hypothesis represents a consequential misunderstanding: in the US, it adds fuel both to increasingly dangerous Sino-American hostilities and anti-Asian violence, while in China it underpins the government’s ethno-nationalist expansionism in Tibet, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong. This dissertation begins by examining the historical roots and some of the present-day effects of this view.

A key assertion of the Confucianization hypothesis is that Chinese law was never significantly influenced by any of the “non-Chinese” groups who governed the territory administered today by the People’s Republic of China. In fact, supporters of this idea claim, Chinese culture in general and law in particular was so attractive to these outside groups that they adopted it almost wholesale. A prime example offered as evidence of this picture of largely untroubled cultural homogeneity is the Northern Wei 北魏 (386-535), a dynasty founded by a formerly nomadic group which conquered and then ruled China for a century and a half. In a speech several years ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping 習近平 singled out the Northern Wei and its adoption of Chinese practices as proof of the unique power and worth of Chinese culture.

I challenge such claims by examining two major texts relating to Northern Wei law: the administrative and legal treatises in the History of Wei 魏書, a government-sponsored history written in the sixth century by Wei Shou 魏收 (506-572). Many of the most reductionist views of Chinese legal history draw on these texts, while many of the scholars focusing on the ethnic and cultural complexity of Northern Wei (contra the Confucianization hypothesis) have turned away from the History of Wei, leaving it primarily to those with the most polemical ends. I argue that these texts actually reflect a diversity of theory and practice far beyond what is generally recognized, and that the origins of important features of imperial Chinese law and administration can be found in the synthesis of approaches these treatises record. By focusing on that diversity, this dissertation hopes to revive interest in works that offer the potential to further complicate some of the simplistic but still-influential attitudes to both the Northern Wei and to Chinese history as a whole.