On the Maturation of Chinese Characters and the Mechanism behind the Contention of Hundred Schools of Thought

Abstract

Academic circles hold diverse views on the causes of the “Contention of a Hundred Schools of Thought.” This paper proposes that the maturity, practical application and diffusion of Chinese characters during the Spring and Autumn Period substantially enhanced administrative governance and economic development, bringing the prefecture-county system to dominance. Populations whose intellectual horizons had long been confined to parochial local contexts, metaphorically “frogs at the bottom of a well,” achieved free circulation of information and talent across the Chinese-character cultural sphere. This unprecedented intellectual explosion furnished the necessary preconditions for the emergence, contestation and synthesis of ideas, thereby giving rise to the Contention of a Hundred Schools of Thought. The historical process and its underlying mechanism are non-replicable.