TITLE:
The Earliest Centralized Legislation and the Construction of Political System in China: On the Basis of Interpretation of “Yü Gong”
AUTHORS:
Ping Li
KEYWORDS:
“Yü Gong”, Yü, Legislation, Centralization, Technological Tradition
JOURNAL NAME:
Beijing Law Review,
Vol.17 No.3,
September
18,
2026
ABSTRACT: “Yü Gong” is not a record of the achievement of Yü’s water conservancy treatment but Yü’s legislation of constructing a centralized government. In this ancient piece of article, Yü divides the world into nine states, guided the mountains and rivers, and conferred lands and surnames, etc., which are all intent to restore the local order through the tribute and tax system, strengthen the central control, and make it to the specific system setting of vertical infiltration to the local area. The Five-Fu system is the implementation of the centralization of power based on Yü’s particular political ideal of the world. In addition, so far as the received text shows, “Yü Gong” is not respectful to heaven, and does not advocate virtue, nor does it focus on the relation of monarch and minister. These legislative ideas of centralization belong to the tradition of Yin. There are the same political idea in the era of San Huang and Shang dynasty, but it is completely opposite to the political culture of the Fu Xi, Five Di and the Western Zhou Dynasty. The centralized legislative idea and world mode opened by “Yü Gong” is followed by the succession of the Yin-Shang and Qin Dynasty. The autocratic centralization of the Chinese Dynasty in later generations is based on the gradual improvement of it.