Shang Yang built Qin's harsh legal machine, then was caught by it
Shang Yang's reforms turned Qin, a peripheral state, into the power that would first unify China. When his patron died and he fled, an innkeeper reportedly turned him away because one of his own laws barred guests without proper identification. The new ruler had him executed but kept every reform.
Born around 390 BC as the son of a concubine in the ducal family of the small state of Wey, Shang Yang, originally Gongsun Yang, studied law and served a minister in Wei before Duke Xiao of Qin made him chief adviser in 359 BC. He dominated Qin policy for about twenty years. After leading an army that forced Wei to give up land west of the Yellow River in 341 BC, reportedly by seizing an enemy general who came to negotiate, he received 15 cities in Shang as a fief, hence his name.
His first reforms, in 356 BC, built on Li Kui's law code and added a rule punishing anyone who knew of a crime and failed to report it as severely as the offender. Soldiers earned land and one of twenty ranks through battlefield success, while nobles who would not fight lost their privileges. A second round in 350 BC standardised land allocation and taxation. Most measures were borrowed from other states, but Qin applied them more thoroughly and concentrated power in the ruler.
Short of workers, he lured farmers from rival states, which strengthened Qin while weakening its neighbours, pushed early marriage, and doubled taxes on households with more than one adult son to break big clans into small families. He moved the capital to Xianyang to curb aristocratic influence. Sima Qian reports that after ten years nobody pocketed items lost on the road and banditry had vanished.
Scholars such as Hulsewé see him as a founder of Legalism, above all for applying the same penalties to noble and commoner, and he expected even the king to obey the law. He had once made the future ruler's household suffer punishment like ordinary people, and the nobility loathed him. Qin's fall in 207 BC darkened his reputation, yet the Han dynasty kept much of his legal framework.
Source: Shang Yang
