Gallimard

Romain Graziani | Les Lois et les Nombres - Essai sur les ressorts de la culture politique chinoise | Gallimard | 512 pages | 24 EUR

Romain Graziani is a French sinologist, university professor, philosopher, poet and writer. His book Les Lois et les Nombres - Essai sur les ressorts de la culture politique chinoise was published by Gallimard in 2025. The French term les ressorts can be translated as roots, which are a symbol for energies and forces hidden from the eye. Here it should be taken quite literally, as the author works his way through texts that Chinese archaeologists have only discovered in recent decades. In a conversation on YouTube, Graziani says he has written a 500 page book to simplify the subject matter - a clear indication that the work he has presented is very dense and complex.

Romain Graziani writes at the beginning of his book that another book, The Art of War by Sun Tzu (Sunzi) must always be kept in mind for everything that follows. It is believed to have been written around 500 BCE and is still considered one of the most important books ever written on warfare. It has been published in German, English, French, Spanish and Arabic. Sun Tzu was the first to suggest that he who wins a war is he who analyses all the available data most precisely and uses the knowledge thus gained unscrupulously. His ideal is to avoid war altogether; rather, to decide the outcome in advance if possible. To this end, all means are justified. There is no moral boundary that he would not cross.

The world's oldest slogan

The first of the eight chapters is called The world's oldest slogan. It reads: Enrich the state, strengthen the army. This claim was first made by Shang Yang. He is considered the first of the so-called Legalists (he died in 338 BCE). His teachings were passed on and further developed in the Book of Prince Shang. It is likely that Shang Yang was not the sole author of the book.

The Legalists were state theorists and almost always held leading positions. They were pioneers and representatives of a fundamental revolution who attempted to find a way out of the centuries-long chaos of the Warring States period (481 - 221 BCE). Their approach: politics requires instruments in order to be successful. The sovereign's personality alone, often not really up to the task, is insufficient. Laws and institutions that function like a well-oiled machine are required, regardless of who is head of state. The sovereign should remain as invisible as possible; their rule is depersonalised and thus completely removed from normal human spheres.

Confucius and his fellow thinkers still championed the ideal of the virtuous, exemplary sovereign who, in the ancient tradition, must answer ultimately to heaven. The people and the conditions in which they lived represented a mirror in which the sovereign could see whether he was properly fulfilling his heavenly task. The legalists dethroned heaven and dispensed with all morality. Only the sovereign, the absolute ruler, mattered, no longer accountable to heaven. He was assisted by laws and tools.

The legalists advocated a system that closely monitored the work of the peasants. They were told exactly how much grain they had to deliver. There was widespread belief that a state's productivity determined the strength of its army. The population was subjected to total militarisation. Every little mistake, every little failure to observe a law resulted in draconian punishments that were automatically imposed regardless of external circumstances. Laws were generally never introduced to protect the individual, but only to cement the power of the sovereign. This is a fundamental difference to ancient Greece and Rome as well as to the laws of Hammurabi in Babylon (died 1750 BCE), which were intended, among other things, to protect the weak from the strong.

*Slavery is not in the world, it is in us - "Worlds of Slavery - A Comparative History" was published in 2021 by Éditions du Seuil in France. It covers the history of slavery from the end of the Bronze Age to the present day. An essential read

With the help of new calculation methods and taxes, the maximum was squeezed out of the natural resources and labour of the population, which underwent a complete reorganisation. It was squeezed into a tight grid and closely monitored. (Ancient Chinese had no word for a free person. See also: Slavery is not in the world, it is in us*) Merchants and craftsmen were inherently suspect because they could become rich through their own efforts. Wealth should be at the sole disposal of the monarch. Agricultural production had absolute priority for reasons that, as Romain Graziani writes, were complex and often irrational. Providing food for the army, he said, was the first priority and then that the fields could be surveyed, working hours and harvests measured and weighed and thus precisely quantified.

Shang Yang repeatedly emphasised the absolute necessity of sovereign authority. In contrast, he wanted to keep the people in ignorance and poverty (précarité). A far-sighted ruler should keep his people in a state of physical exhaustion, in rural simplicity. Those who became rich through their own initiative and intelligence were to be dispossessed, for these people would only diminish the authority and prestige of the sovereign as well as the dignity of the officials. However, the administration no longer relied on the old aristocratic families. Initially, they lost their share of the power. Only those who had successfully passed the prescribed examinations would be able to forge a career based on merit.

The theories and ideas of the Legalists were consistently put into practice in the Qin Empire. They strengthened the kingdom to such an extent that it's rivals were gradually defeated and its ruler was able to establish himself as the first emperor of China in 221 BC. However, during the reign of his son, the Qin dynasty was overthrown in 206 BC. The ruthless laws led to an uprising and the establishment of the Han dynasty. This dynasty reintroduced moral elements of Confucianism, but retained most of the laws and the structure of the administration. It is still said in China today that people pay homage to Confucius during the day, but the Legalists rule at night.

At the end of the chapter, the author writes: The ignorance of the laws of economics, the mocking contempt for the people, the systematic recourse to violence and its disastrous consequences could make Shang Yang a kind of forerunner of Maoist politics, were it not for the First Emperor of China's deep-seated respect for the idea of the objectivity of laws and the impersonality of the ruler and indifference to their suffering. Neither of these applied to Mao. Mao Zedong had written a very positive text about Shang Yang in his final thesis at the end of his school days. Romain Graziani goes on to write that the views on agriculture, trade, war and defense that emerged during the Warring States period have remained essential elements in the history of Chinese political culture.

For example, in his Great Leap Forward (1958 - 1961), Mao Zedong imposed completely unrealistic levies on grain on Chinese farmers. Under the Five-Year Plan, between 20 and 40 million people starved to death while grain spoiled in full silos. It was to be sold abroad in order to generate foreign currency to build up the army. Even in the Qin dynasty, grain stocks were primarily used to feed the army and not the people. Xi Jinping formulated this goal in 2013: "We must carry out joint (interlocked) planning for the development of the national economy and defence so that perfect unity can be achieved between the country's prosperity and the army. Note: Xi Jinping is talking about the prosperity of the country and not the prosperity of the people.

Reality and numbers

The legalists transferred thinking from old mystical paths to an abstract modernity. Their mistake was that they took everything to extremes. Even before the Legalists, numbers played a major role in Chinese mythology and cosmology. Legalists, however, considered numbers no longer solely magical, but first and foremost purely quantitative. Quantity was all-important, quality at best a shadow of its former self. Everything, right down to people, could be expressed in numbers. This is similar to European positivism and American Fordism/Taylorism, which revolutionised industrial production, as well as the total domination of number series consisting of 0 and 1 that is becoming established in our digital world.

In the Qin empire, soldiers had to prove their worth through their tally of soldiers killed and were collectively punished if the specified quotas were not achieved. Those who convert objects and ideas into numbers create a nimbus of objectivity that has an exclusionary effect. What is said can and must no longer be criticised. The major role that numbers still play in Chinese society was evident in Mao's rule as well as in every campaign launched by the Chinese government today. According to Romain Graziani, there is not a single civilisation on our planet that has ever assigned such an important role to numbers. Two statements: Firstly, Chinese thinking has a horror of the indefinable. Secondly, without numbers, no control; without measurement, no power.

The new tool of power

The introduction of a bureaucracy among the legalists, based on education and merit, first had to break resistance from the nobility. Also absolutely new for China was the fact that the laws were published (Hammurabi had already done this in Babylon). The nobility saw this as a significant restriction of their power, because the people could now form their own opinions about the rulings made. Confucius is also said to have been against the publication of laws. He was also in favour of strict separation between nobles and commoners, without which governance would be impossible. Followers of Confucianism agreed with the legalists that the population should be strictly monitored.

For legalists, a law was distinguished by four characteristics: 1. uniformity. This means that a law should be valid everywhere and not allow any local or regional deviations. 2. legibility and clarity, so that everyone can understand the law 3. rewards and punishments stipulated by a law should always be pronounced regardless of the status and reputation of the person. 4. a law applies equally to the nobility and the common people. Romain Graziani comments: Historically speaking, equality before the law in the Legalist period and the principle of meritocracy is the only form of equality ever conceived and realised in China's political system.

The introduction of the new system beyond the Kingdom of Qin to all of China was not easy, and certainly did not reach everywhere. Bureaucratic officials often had to adapt, willingly or not, to local conditions. Rebellion and resistance were widespread. Similar to Louis XIV in France, the First Emperor of China forced prominent aristocratic families to relocate to the capital so he could better control them. The harsh laws were supposed to, in theory, compel people to behave lawfully out of fear, removing the need to enforce them. However, the legalists had failed to take human nature into account. Furthermore, the representatives of the imperial administration often relied on bribery as they were poorly paid. It was precisely because everything was so meticulously weighed and measured that the strict laws and controls led to an explosion of fraud.

As already mentioned, the Qin dynasty collapsed after a few years, mainly because of its draconian laws. Among the leaders of the rebels, the simple civil servant Liu Bang prevailed and became the first emperor of the Han dynasty. For him, it was truly the case that He who steals a fishhook ends up on the gallows, he who steals an entire kingdom ends up on the throne 

The cult of impersonality

In the era of the Zhou dynasty (1045 - 256 BC.BCE; it includes the Spring and Autumn Annals period from 1045 - 771 and the Warring States period from 771 - 221 BCE), the king was still considered primus inter pares. In the Chinese imperial period (from 221 BCE - 1911), the monarchy constantly oscillated between two models: to rule or to reign. Those who ruled celebrated their lives far removed from their daily tasks, while those who governed devoted themselves fully to them. The legalists assumed that a ruler could never trust his ministers, nor his subjects. People should not be educated to become better subjects, but should be deprived of any possibility of harming the state. An emperor neither demands virtues nor promotes them. Both would be useless efforts that would always fail due to human nature. Consequently, he is only concerned with legal norms and procedures. A tight institutional framework had to be developed, the constraints of which offered no leeway for disregarding the law, not only to the closest collaborators but also to all subjects. Only then could order and harmony prevail.

*A dictator is only human... - ...and that is probably the greatest insult to Xi Jinping. Eric Meyer (text) and Gianluca Costantini (illustrator) tell the story of Xi Jinping's life in their graphic novel "Xi Jinping, the Emperor of Silence"

This view of the legalists was a direct attack on the position of the sages in Confucianism. To govern a state, one should start from the needs of the greatest number and not from what served the interests of small minorities. An emperor should always and everywhere in his empire hold a position of power that allowed him or his first minister to master every possible situation. Ideally, the emperor hovered over everything and everyone; his individual personality was no longer important. The more impersonal an emperor appeared, the more venerable and powerful he would appear as the living principle of a monarchist conception of the state. China's President Xi Jinping, who had to learn to conceal his thoughts under the harshest conditions from an early age, perfectly fulfills this demand of the legalists with his mask-like facial expression, which is admired all over the world. (See also: A dictator is only human*)

The legalists were never able to fully realize the ideal of total information and control. No one could even resolve the contradiction that an emperor should delegate daily governance and at the same time control his ministers 100 percent. But the legalists were incapable of conceiving of a state model other than monarchy. The strict laws combined with absolute power could all too easily degenerate into tyranny, as resistance was neither intended nor possible within the system. For Romain Graziani, this was the original sin of the legalists. In the long term, innovations and technical progress were also hindered, as they always have something subversive about them.

Compass, lever and crossbow: the measure and death

Almost all civilizations have benefited from technical inventions, from transport on rivers, from door hinges, from the mechanism of a crossbow, from scales with weights, from the wheel. But only the Chinese made these objects the basis of their theoretical considerations. The trigger of the crossbow, the wheel hub and lever tools became trademarks and signposts (blasons) for strategists and politicians. Victory is not achieved through bravery, strength or power (force), but through cunning (machinations). Even today's vocabulary of power in modern Chinese is deeply influenced by analogies and metaphors that developed during the time of the Legalists on the basis of tools. In these linguistic images, a mechanistic conceptual world develops that understands effectiveness as a ratio between effort and effect. Productivity and means of power are symbolized by tools of leverage. The latter can also be found in the English word leverage. According to Romain Graziani, with the introduction of weapons as anchor points for political reflection, the law discovers its martial face.

Rewards and punishments: the legalists' lack of morality

This chapter goes into more detail on rewards and punishments, on carrots and sticks. Some things are repeated, but are enriched with many details. Brutal civil servants, for example, are regarded as exemplary servants of the state. Venality, the seed of disorder, can be used as a powerful lever to bring about an order that is as absolute as that which governs the elements of the heavens. Those who are punished often become so for the rest of their lives, e.g. through tattoos on their faces. In an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on October 24 this year, a Chinese entrepreneur who has gone bankrupt compares his ban on using a fast train as a debtor to this ancient practice.

Here I would like to quote a poem by Mao Zedong in my own translation from the French original, which Romain Graziani prefaces this chapter:

I advise you not to criticize the first emperor,
You should talk again about the scholars buried alive, about the great auto-da-fé.
The ancestral dragon may be dead, but Qin lives on,
Confucian culture, however highly esteemed, is nothing but sticky residue and garbage.
For a hundred generations, Qin has been laying down the law.

Gallimard

Liu Xiaobo | La philosophie du porc et autres essais | Gallimard | 528 pages | 26,40 EUR

Whoever poses a threat to the highest authority is killed (a few exceptions prove the rule). Modern examples include the massacre of protesting students in 1989 and the miserable death of Liu Xiaobo in prison due to years of refusal of any medical help. The 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner dared to publicly criticize those in power and call their lickspittles by name. (see also: Liu Xiaobo La philosophie du porc, published by Gallimard in 2011)

Surveillance and subjugation, from the Iron Age to the digital era

Romain Graziani sees a Chinese tradition of surveillance of the people that has functioned without interruption for 3,000 years. Since the fourth century BCE, there has been an obsession with spying on the population. This has been a fundamental trait of Chinese administration throughout the centuries. Such behavior did not exist in any comparable ancient society. Today, millions of human eyes and ears as well as automatic sensors are activated in the service of the head of state. The idea suggests itself that the latest evolution of information technologies is the very last phase in the implementation of the theoretical possibilities found in the doctrine of total surveillance of legalist thinkers. There is no other government that exploits the new technical possibilities of surveillance as consistently as the Chinese. For the Chinese themselves, this surveillance is nothing fundamentally new because it does not represent a break with tradition.

In the Qin Empire (as in today's China), rumors, grudges between neighbors, slanderous denunciations and the prospect of profit mocked the original intention of this control of everyone by everyone in the name of justice and the common good. One example: the CCP is currently calling for increased surveillance of executives in both businesses and public administrations, going so far as to evaluate their conduct outside the workplace by investigating their morality (marital fidelity, nightlife) and family ethics. However, these controls come at a price, as they hinder China's economic development.

The One, despite all this

The One is associated with harmony and concord. In China, the number one has always been regarded as the emblem of totality. Everything follows from One, the Great Unity. Order, power, prosperity, stability and peace are inextricably linked with the number one. Until well into the 20th century, no other form of government than the monarchy was imaginable in China. The counterpart to the One, the monarch, is the people, who are equal to the weight of the One on a scale. It is a symbol of harmony and, as a consequence, means that the people are reduced to a childlike whole.

But the One is also China itself. The one, all-encompassing cultural sphere, the center of everything. Similar to the ancient Greeks, the ancient Chinese regarded everyone else as barbarians. Curious: China had no fixed borders. There was the heartland and the vassals, all land beyond was considered unimportant. Words such as state, country and nation were only consciously introduced into the Chinese language in the second half of the 19th century. China's first official border was established in 1689 in the Treaty of Nerchinsk between Russia and China.

China traditionally saw itself as the whole under heaven and therefore superior to all other civilizations. The military superiority of Europe and America in the 19th century was also a great psychological shock. According to Romain Graziani, in the 21st century we can observe an attempt to establish a synthesis of the modern state with the heavenly order. Xi Jinping's writings provide the philosophy for this. The cult of unity appears more and more as a confirmation of the higher destiny that will lead the country to its ultimate point of completion by becoming the linchpin of a new world order and thus the guarantor of the end of all disunity and division.

China has every right to pursue great ambitions. No one should or can dispute this right. But no one should forget what Roman Graziani writes at the beginning of his book: that in everything that follows, one must always bear in mind the book The Art of War by Sun Tzu (Sunzi).

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