This Chinese philosopher reformed politics in one generation

n the fifth century BCE, around the same time that Socrates was preaching in Greece and the Buddha was practicing in India, Chinese rulers warred against one another in an endless battle for power and territory. They pursued military fame and glory, placed family members over vassal states, taxed constituents exorbitantly for their benefit, and razed surrounding states to the ground for their own plundering.

“Entering the state’s borders, they mow down its crops, fell its trees, raze its city walls, filling its moats with the rubble, burn its ancestral shrines, and slaughter its sacrificial animals,” Mòzǐ said of the time. “People who resist are beheaded; those who don’t resist are brought back in chains, the men to labor in stables and on chain gangs, the women to thresh grain.”1

The rest were the collateral damage of their power struggles and feuding, forced to spend their lives at battle, losing their property to warmongers, having their wealth stolen out from under them and their lives reduced to slavery without much they could do about it.

Until Mòzǐ.