Jacques Gernet: One could say that in China, the state is all. History explains this. The state was not an organism which ...was obliged to make a place for itself among other powers, as was the case in the West, where the state had to impose itself on the independent powers of the Church, of feudalism and of the nobility, come to terms with the merchants, and seek the support of the financiers. In China, the state was an established reality from the beginning, or in any case from the time when the formula was worked out in the State of Qin [pre-221B.C.].