Abstract:
Based on the literal and archaeological sources, the paper mainly uses traditional and newly discovered Qin bronze inscriptions, supplemented with jade, bamboo slips, to demonstrate Kingdom of Qin’s early political characteristics from the early Spring and Autumn and the Warring States periods. The major findings are as follows: although in some periods of time there existed phenomena such as the ministerial authoritarian and the decentralization of power, the king and his family always held the main position of power structure in that period; the kinship still served as an important political rule; ethnic minorities played critical political roles in the early Kingdom of Qin, then had certain influence in the middle and late Spring and Autumn period, and became one of the important pillars of Qin’s politics; at the other end of centralization, local decentralization, i.e. the county system, the same as that in the states of the kingdoms of Jin and Chu, had been bred in the Spring and Autumn period, which was the beginning of local administrative system in China.
