What is "fengjian"

Fēngjiàn (封建) was a political ideology developed from Confucian and " Legalist" philosophers during the latter part of the Zhou dynasty of ancient China, its social structure forming a decentralized system of government based on four occupations, or "four categories of the people." The Zhou kings enfeoffed their fellow warriors and relatives, creating large domains of land. The Fengjian system they created allocated a region or piece of land to an individual, establishing him as the ruler of that region. These eventually rebelled against the Zhou Kings, and developed into their own kingdoms, thus ending the centralized rule of the Zhou dynasty. As a result, Chinese history from the Zhou or Chou dynasty (1046 BC–256 BC) to the Qin dynasty has been termed a feudal period by many Chinese historians, due to the custom of enfeoffment of land similar to that in Europe. But scholarship has suggested that fengjian otherwise lacks some of the fundamental aspects of feudalism.

Each state was independent and had its own tax and legal systems along with unique currency. The nobles were required to pay regular homage to the king and to provide him with soldiers at the time of war. This structure played an important part in the political structure of Western Zhou which was expanding its territories in the east. In due course this resulted in the rising power of the nobles, who fought among themselves for power, leading to the dwindling authority of the Zhou kings which eventually brought about their downfall.