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employment and labor: Asia and the Pacific much more is known about China and India for millennia before the Common Era began By late in the third millennium and into the second millennium b.c.e., China already had well-established divisions of labor Cities were separated into sections where different economic functions dominated Some areas were devoted specifically to religious and ceremonial functions, but in industrial sectors skilled workers fabricated goods, both practical and decorative, out of such materials as clay, jade, bronze, and bones A merchant class was also well established, and young men from the lower classes were able to enter this class through apprenticeships A turning point in the economic growth of China was the start of the Zhou Dynasty near the end of the second millennium b.c.e Farming was organized under a semifeudal system not much different from the feudal system that was to appear in Europe centuries later The first ruler of the Zhou Dynasty (ca 1045–256 b.c.e.) was King Wu Wang, who claimed that his authority was granted by God under the Mandate of Heaven, a claim that future Chinese emperors were to invoke Land was owned by nobles, who doled it out to serfs in exchange for a percentage of the harvest Similarly, the means of production, such as the smelting process that provided bronze for making tools and weaponry, was directed by nobles Most of the items used in daily life were produced in individual households and were therefore not subject to barter The vast majority of Chinese peasants during the Zhou Dynasty were farmers or soldiers, but by the time the dynasty ended in 256 b.c.e China had also developed a complex governmental bureaucracy In this feudal society land was controlled by a number of territorial princes, who collected taxes from the peasants who did the actual farming on the land The transfer of wealth that taxes required spurred the use of money for exchange, so that a distant centralized state could reap the benefits of labor without being burdened with amassing goods from all over its lands 429 The later Qin Dynasty (221–207 b.c.e.) and Han Dynasty (202 b.c.e.–220 c.e.) was a period of great prosperity Many people were employed by a large bureaucracy that controlled the economic activities of China’s 36 districts Labor became more efficient with the introduction of standardized weights and measures, roads, and even axle widths for wheeled vehicles During the short-lived Qin Dynasty, hundreds of thousands of laborers were used to construct the first of China’s great walls to keep out invaders and a massive mausoleum for the emperor During the Han Dynasty the country underwent great economic expansion as well as an expansion of trade and commerce along the so-called Silk Road, which extended all the way to Europe This expansion provided opportunities not only for merchants and traders but also for the many thousands of craft workers that provided goods for trade Farm laborers were given better tools with the expansion of the Chinese iron industry These processes continued during the subsequent Three Kingdoms Period (220–263 c.e.) and the Jin Dynasty (265–420 c.e.), though a series of military crises and internal instability worsened the condition of Chinese workers During the Han Dynasty, Emperor Wu Di (140–87 b.c.e.) designated Confucianism as China’s official philosophy and code of ethics of the state Confucianism focused on three elements that directly affected areas of employment and wages One was the teaching of moral precepts to the uneducated The second was the establishment of a clear social hierarchy The third was that those who held prominent social positions must behave in a way that provided proper examples for the rest of society The social hierarchy Confucius had in mind permitted movement through the ranks of society By passing an examination, a person could become a government officer, with the potential to gain wealth and honor Initially, the exam was offered to those who were summoned to the capital because the emperor had heard of their moral excellence, though over the centuries it became more open to anyone Cowrie shells, the earliest form of money in China, Shang and Zhou dynasties, 16th to eighth centuries b.c.e (© The Trustees of the British Museum)
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