What makes a government in any country strong? Some say it is how the government interacts with the people, while others say that it is the laws and how strictly the government abides them (Dolan 120). The Mongols in China ruled two dynasties - the Yuan, and the Qing, each with superior power and incredible edict that the Chinese ruled dynasties lacked. The methods of ruling, used by the Mongols in China, were far superior to the Chinese ruling methods.
The first formal dynasty - the Shang Dynasty, had no real central government. Instead, like many other societies in the world today, it had a government based upon the decisions and actions of the nobles. The beginnings of feudal society had begun. There were the nobles, and then there were the peasants. Each served one another - the nobles made sure that the peasants were well fed and clothed, while the peasants worked the land for the nobles. "A Shang noble is in many ways resembling a landowner whose main occupation is to yield the harvest and increase domestic stock" (Dun 35). This is very true about the Shang government because the nobles concern was to increase production of plants so that the whole plantation, consisting of the noble's family, and the peasants, had enough to eat with food to spare. The next dynasty was the Zhou Dynasty.
The Zhou dynasty was known for the incorporation of Confucianism into the government. Confucius, who was born in 551 BCE and lived until 479 BCE, was very influential to the way the Chinese government ran its operations (Eichhorn 252). Confucius ideas filtered throughout the government. Another influential person that made the Zhou Dynasty powerful was Lao Tzu. He created another thought process called Daoism. Daoism deals with the Ying Yang and how people should interpret it. This also had an effect on the government, but on a much lesser degree. The Zhou Dynasty, although its philosophies were good, had big flaws at keeping the nation together.