Ap World History Comparative Essay

547 Words3 Pages
Japan and China both had a social classes like most empires had during the ancient times. The social hierarchy did change form one nation to the next but all together had similar bases. The Chinese Hierarchy is split into four separate parts. In the chinese hierarchy you would have the officials on top referred as the shi class and right below them you would have the farmers or nong class, below the shi class and the nong class where the artisans who were referred to as the gong class. This left the merchants or the shang class on the bottom of the hierarchy. The reason of this order is quite simple and has strong support why each class is where it is. First the scholars or officials were at the top because of their formal education, knowledge and more often than not their inherited wealth pushed…show more content…
Next on the hierarchy is the farmers or peasants, in history the farmers were usually at the bottom of the hierarchy like in most European nations and in Japan, the Chinese saw that they provided food for the entire nation and this gave them the second spot on the Chinese social hierarchy. On the lower half of the hierarchy is the artisans. The spot is for the artisans as they produced goods from raw material, weather it be pots or architecture either way it was giving to the country. The reason the merchants were the lowest in the social classes is because they did not contribute anything to the country as a whole all they did was take goods and took in money for it. Since the merchants gave nothing to the government they were denied the right to carry weapons. There are many similarities and even more differences in how the Japanese structured the social classes. One of the main differences is they had three broad groups with many subcategories within
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