Warring States Period (475-221 BC): China's Age of Rival Kingdoms

The Warring States period, conventionally dated 475 to 221 BC, was an age in which seven Chinese kingdoms competed for survival and supremacy. Driven by constant war, rulers reformed their governments, built mass armies of conscripted farmers and sponsored a burst of philosophical debate. The period ended when the state of Qin conquered its rivals and founded China’s first unified empire.

From Spring and Autumn to Warring States

The period takes its name from the Zhan Guo Ce, or Strategies of the Warring States, a Han dynasty collection of speeches and stories. It followed the Spring and Autumn period, in which many small states had gradually been absorbed by a few large ones after the fall of the Western Zhou in 771 BC.

Two changes marked the transition. In the great northern state of Jin, the ruling dukes lost power to ministerial families. In 453 BC the Han, Zhao and Wei lineages destroyed their rival, the Zhi family, and divided Jin among themselves, a division the Zhou king recognised in 403 BC in the partition of Jin. In Qi, the Tian family took the throne from the old ruling house, receiving royal recognition in 386 BC. The new rulers owed their position to force and skill rather than ancient right.

The seven kingdoms

• Qin: in the west, in the Wei River valley, protected by mountains and passes.
• Chu: the largest state, covering much of the middle Yangtze and later the south-east.
• Qi: in the east, on the Shandong peninsula, rich in salt and trade, with its capital at Linzi.
• Yan: in the north-east, around modern Beijing.
• Han, Zhao and Wei: the three successor states of Jin, in the central plains and the north.

The Zhou kings still reigned at Luoyang but had become minor figures. During the 4th century BC the major rulers began calling themselves kings (wang), a title once reserved for the Zhou: the rulers of Wei and Qi recognised each other as kings around 334 BC, and Qin followed in 325 BC.

Reform and the new state

To survive, rulers needed more soldiers, more grain and more control. Reforming ministers rebuilt their states from the 5th century BC onward. Li Kui in Wei is credited with an early law code and farming policies; Wu Qi reformed Chu before he was killed in 381 BC; Shen Buhai organised the bureaucracy of Han.

The most thorough programme was that of Shang Yang in Qin from 356 BC. Shang Yang’s reforms grouped households into units with mutual responsibility for crimes, rewarded farming and military success with ranks, weakened the old nobility and divided the state into counties run by appointed officials. Similar county and commandery systems spread across the kingdoms, laying the foundations of the later imperial bureaucracy.

The economy grew alongside. Iron tools spread, large irrigation and canal projects were built, and states issued bronze coins in the shape of spades and knives. Cities such as Linzi and Handan grew into major centres of trade and craft. The Zhan Guo Ce describes the streets of Linzi, the capital of Qi, as so crowded that carriage axles knocked together and people rubbed shoulders, and archaeologists have traced city walls there enclosing an area of roughly 15 square kilometres.

One of the best-known engineering projects is the Dujiangyan irrigation system in Sichuan, built under the Qin governor Li Bing in the 3rd century BC after Qin conquered the region in 316 BC. It turned the Chengdu plain into one of the richest farming areas in China and is still in use today. Another Qin project, the Zhengguo Canal in the Wei valley, begun in 246 BC, irrigated large areas north of the capital and helped feed Qin’s armies.

Armies and war

Warfare changed dramatically. The chariot-based aristocratic armies of earlier centuries gave way to huge infantry forces raised by conscription, armed with iron and bronze weapons and the crossbow, which needed little training to use effectively. In 307 BC King Wuling of Zhao ordered his troops to adopt the trousers and mounted archery of the steppe peoples, an early step towards Chinese cavalry. States built long defensive walls along their borders, forerunners of the later Great Wall.

Major campaigns included Qi’s victories over Wei at Guiling in 354 BC and Maling in 342 BC; Yan’s invasion of Qi in 284 BC under the general Yue Yi, which almost destroyed Qi; and Qin’s capture of the Chu capital Ying in 278 BC. The decisive clash came at Changping in 260 BC, when Qin under Bai Qi crushed Zhao. Sima Qian says some 400,000 surrendered Zhao soldiers were killed; the figure is probably inflated, but the defeat broke Zhao’s power.

The human cost was severe. Conscription took farmers away from their fields for months at a time, sieges could last for years, and the sources describe cities reduced to famine. Rulers also invested heavily in defence, building massive rammed-earth walls around their cities and along their frontiers.

Diplomacy was as important as fighting. Travelling strategists sold their services to rulers, proposing either “vertical alliances” of the six eastern states against Qin, associated with Su Qin, or “horizontal alliances” in which individual states allied with Qin, associated with Zhang Yi. Coalitions repeatedly formed and broke apart, which allowed Qin to defeat its enemies one at a time.

The Hundred Schools of Thought

The insecurity of the age, and the competition between courts for talent, produced China’s classical age of philosophy. Rulers employed advisers from many backgrounds, and Qi supported a famous gathering of scholars at the Jixia Gate of Linzi.

Followers of Confucius, such as Mencius and Xunzi, argued that rulers should govern through virtue and ritual. The Mohists preached impartial care for all and opposed aggressive war. Daoist texts, including the Zhuangzi and the Daodejing, questioned conventional values. Legalists such as Han Fei argued that clear laws, rewards and punishments were the only reliable tools of rule. Military writing also flourished, including works attributed to Sun Tzu and Sun Bin.

Many of these texts survive only in later edited forms, but archaeological finds have added greatly to our knowledge. Bamboo-slip manuscripts from tombs in Hubei, such as the Guodian texts discovered in 1993, preserve early versions of Daoist and Confucian writings, while Qin legal documents from Shuihudi, found in 1975, show how the Qin state administered its laws at the local level. Together they reveal a world of written records, officials and regulations, not just of kings and battles.

Key people

• Shang Yang (died 338 BC): the reformer who transformed Qin into a centralised war state.
• King Wuling of Zhao (reigned 325-299 BC): introduced steppe-style cavalry and clothing to his army.
• Su Qin and Zhang Yi: famous travelling diplomats associated with the rival alliance strategies; the details of their careers are uncertain.
• Bai Qi (died 257 BC): Qin’s most successful general, victor at Yique in 293 BC and Changping in 260 BC.
• King Zheng of Qin (reigned 246-210 BC): the ruler who completed the conquest and became the First Emperor.

Timeline

• 475 BC: traditional start of the Warring States period in Sima Qian’s chronology.
• 453 BC: the Han, Zhao and Wei families destroy the Zhi family and divide Jin.
• 403 BC: the Zhou king recognises Han, Zhao and Wei as states.
• 356 BC: Shang Yang begins his reforms in Qin.
• 342 BC: Qi defeats Wei at Maling.
• 307 BC: King Wuling of Zhao adopts steppe dress and mounted archery.
• 278 BC: Qin captures Ying, the capital of Chu.
• 260 BC: Qin defeats Zhao at the Battle of Changping.
• 256 BC: Qin ends the Zhou royal line.
• 230-221 BC: Qin conquers Han, Zhao, Wei, Chu, Yan and finally Qi.

The Qin conquest

After Changping, Qin was clearly the strongest state, although a relief army from Wei and Chu forced it to abandon the siege of the Zhao capital Handan in 257 BC. In 256 BC Qin took over the last Zhou royal domain. King Zheng, who came to the throne in 246 BC, then destroyed the remaining kingdoms in quick succession: Han in 230 BC, Zhao in 228 BC, Wei in 225 BC, Chu in 223 BC, Yan in 222 BC and Qi in 221 BC. The Qin unification of China followed, and King Zheng took the new title of First Emperor.

Myths and facts

Myth: the period was nothing but chaos and destruction. Fact: it was also a time of rapid economic growth, technological change and intellectual creativity, and many institutions of imperial China were invented then.

Myth: the figures for armies and battle deaths in the ancient histories are reliable. Fact: numbers such as the 400,000 dead at Changping come from sources written long after the events and often served a moral or literary purpose. They indicate scale, not precise counts.

Why it matters

The Warring States period created the tools of the Chinese empire: a salaried bureaucracy, written law, county administration, mass conscription and standard coinage. It also produced the classic texts of Chinese philosophy, from Confucian ethics to Daoism and Legalism, which framed political debate for the next two thousand years. The long struggle ended with unification under Qin, and the ideal of a single unified China has shaped the country’s history ever since.