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The Witch Doctor President and Other Horrific Rulers

Khalid Elhassan December 25, 2019 32 min

28. Ancient China’s Reign of Terror

Chin Shi Huang’s most trusted and influential official was his minister of justice, Li Ssu. In addition to being a bureaucrat, Li Ssu was also a philosopher who followed a school of thought known as “Legalism”, which advocated strict laws and draconian punishments for even petty crimes. As Li Ssu put it: “If light offenses carry heavy punishments, one can imagine what will be done against a serious offense. Thus the people will not dare to break the laws“.

Criticizing the law became a capital offense, and cowed citizens were expected to inform their neighbors. Millennia before modern totalitarians such as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, China’s First Emperor had created what was arguably history’s first totalitarian state.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.