I shat this entire thing completely out of my ass in between classes yesterday for absolutely no reason.
China has long been one of my favorites just because of how incredibly hardcore their bureaucracy was before literally anyone else in the entire rest of the world understood even the most basic theory behind what bureaucratic and organized government was supposed to look like. Everywhere else from India to Greece and Rome was a decentralized cluster of tribes, kings, and small republics that may have kept records and organized groups of people, but not things.
Some examples of China's hardcore organization (TL;DR alert):
Even before the time of Qin Shi Huangdi (roughly, First Heavenly Sovereign Emperor, conquered and ruled all of China from 221-210 B.C.), there were various philosophical schools of thought in Zhou China such as Taoism, Confucianism, and Legalism, which despite being more or less political philosophies and almost scientific theories on how to properly run governments which were contemporary with Greece's own age of philosophy, with some slight mysticism attached, weren't treated as "philosophies" in the sense the Greeks would have seen them so much as they were almost literally organized religions with pious followings, led by leading scholars who were also more or less the high priests. Also, the concept of Heaven as traditionally worshipped and venerated by Chinese culture was often referred to, literally, as "The Celestial Bureaucracy of Heaven", where the gods, forces of nature, and the spirits of deceased ancestors literally interceded between the affairs of Heaven and Earth supposedly via their own complex bureaucracy, which was literally a government of deities with its own Jade Emperor at the top. At a time when Rome was still a growing republic warring with Carthage, Alexander The Great had just died and the Achamenid Empire he had conquered was being splintered and divided up among his generals, well-known ancient Jewish biblical scriptures were in the middle of being written, Japan had literally just discovered agriculture and the iron age, the city of Babylon still actually existed, Mauryan India was just discovering what Buddhism was (300 years or so after it had been founded), and all of Europe north of the Mediterranean from Germany to Scandinavia was populated by nordic tribes who had not yet even developed civilization, China was making taking modern methods of state organization not to be seen anywhere else on earth for over 1000 years (even longer in Europe's case). And making them into a motherfucking religion.
An example of this Bureaucracy At The X-Games is an artifact dated from Qin times, namely, a simple teacup, unearthed several years ago in China. This teacup is significant and unique among most artifacts because the archaeologists did not have to date it using radiocarbon methods. They didn't even have to speculate who made it or where, because all of that information was already written on the teacup when it was made. Written in classical Chinese script on the side in a fashion pretty much contemporary to a patent, thousands of years before those were even conceived as we know them, is the name of the person who crafted the teacup, the name of the workshop, the name of the owner of the workshop, the name of the village where the workshop was located, the name of the province and prefecture where the village was located, the signature of the local, imperially-appointed magistrate with whose permission had been obtained to produce this teacup, and the exact day, month, and year this teacup was produced and/or when the necessary license or contemporary equivalent was obtained to manufacture and sell it. This was apparently all required by law at the time. For a teacup. In fucking 215 B.C.
Am I not stressing this enough? In 215 B.C. in ancient Greek city states or the Roman Republic, an inscribed tablet giving orders to carry out something would have the signature or written consent of the consul, magistrate, or censor (in Rome's case) elected citizens (In Athens' case) or king (in the case of other states like Sparta and Macedon) and they would have the force of law just like that, and be carried out in a decentralized manner typical of classical era state organization. Or the king of some other small state in the world would decree something, maybe write it down, and it would happen pretty much just because he says so. In China, you could expect an entirely different level of extremity unheard of at the time elsewhere, which I may be sort of exaggerating: person in remote village A in designated section B in district C in prefecture D in region E goes to inform the lowest level magistrate nearby that he wants permission to make a teacup as is probably required by law. Request is recorded like a transaction, probably on perishable bamboo slate, sent up to the next highest district minister, who reviews it, gives his signature, sends it in a giant circle around the over-engineered ministry, copies it, sends it to 50 other bureaucrats, who then proceed to burn it after making 10 more copies each. They then make note of the fact that the first-order copies of the original appeal have been burned and record that as a separate transaction complete with precisely dated figures. Then they send copies of this back down to the original magistrate, who records this and sends a new copy to the highest official in the state or region. This official then ensures that the request is stored, then lost, then found exactly 5 days later, then copied, then burned again, then given a signature and sent to the next rung up the ladder. This cycle repeats for each successive rung, and each time it changes hands a separate document is written to record this, including all names and dates involved. Eventually written permission is handed back down again and the teacup is made, after which it then gets properly inspected by state officials, branded, and given 10 signatures by successively higher bureaucrats in the state hierarchy. Then word of this is also recorded, after which a minister, chosen by a number out of a hat which is then divided by 8 and multiplied by the order number of whichever sacred animal year on the Chinese calendar is underway (If it is the Year of the Tiger, this number is 3, for example), after which the number 14 is subtracted from the final value, which is ensured by way of the number started with before operations are applied to never ultimately result in a negative integer. After that, whichever minister is selected proceeds to eat the document, and the Emperor himself consults a cracked turtle shell for divination. Whatever divination is interpreted from the cracks in the shell is the nature of The Celestial Bureaucracy's acknowledgement of the entire transaction, and an ox is then slaughtered and left as an offering to the gods to celebrate. It is uncertain when all of the paperwork required in the aftermath of this sacrifice is fully organized and sorted out, but at the end a single teacup comes out the other end and is sold within the remote, rural Chinese village from which it originated. The merchant is then required by law to record the date of the transaction and the final price it sold for after bartering and file it alongside his tax papers.
