Qin Dynasty (in simplified Chinese 秦朝) existed from 221BC to 207BC. It was the dynasty after the warring states period of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty. It is the first dynasty having multi-ethnic empire unified and centralized political system according to Chinese history and also, it was since the Qin Yin that leader of the country would call himself as the “Emperor”. Therefore, Qin Dynasty has a very important historical meaning towards the history of China.

However, the Qin Dynasty only lasted for about fifteen years and there were only 2 emperors in the dynasty. What are the reasons behind? We are going to take a close look at it.

Emperor Qin Chi Huang is the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty. After unifying China, he tried to implement a series of measures for the strengthening and centralization of power. These measures are considered to consolidate national unity. Under the system, the Emperor has a supreme power, and the ministers would only have the right to participate in politics, but they would have no decision-making power. Under the new central system, there would be three top officials, who separately were responsible for proposing policies, monitoring the people and handling military affairs.

Under the new system, China was divided into 36 areas and was given to different officials to rule over the area. However, these officials were not nobles. They were just sent to implement policies given by the central government.

Besides redefining the country’s area, Emperor Qin Chi Huang also unified the weights and measures of the whole country. Before the Qin Dynasty, there were, as mentioned before, more than 7 countries existing in China and different country would use different system to measure and weigh things. However, in Qin Dynasty, the Emperor unified these systems so that people would have the same way to measure things so that trade would be more possible. Of course, besides the weights and measures, currency was also unified to facilitate trade between different areas of the country. All these changes were considered crucial to the development of China.