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Notes -
The focus on the family unit, and obligations arising within such, is hardly unique to China in the premodern world. And despite the Confucian sheen on this, early Chinese states really did develop institutions in an attempt to move away from "I know a guy" as a recruitment strategy. That doesn't scream "was more of an integral part of the state apparatus than in other polities" to me.
Confucian ethics also would not necessarily disapprove of submitting to formal, legible state power, as a legitimate part of the Confucian hierarchy; the 五倫 wu lun (five cardinal relations) includes the ruler-subject relation, and in some Confucian interpretations — e.g. in the Xunzi (noting that Xunzi had not been marginalised in the early Tang, and Mengzi had not been canonised as such yet) and in the Doctrine of the Mean — this is placed above familial relations. Thus the focus on family does not necessarily imply approval of the sort of informal patronage characterised by, say, the Jin aristocratic landlords.
This I do not understand. The hostility of Romans to regnum affectare is all well and good, but did this not occur hand-in-hand with celebration of the aristocratic patronage system, which was seen as an important civic institution (especially early in the Republic)? Extensive informal patronage networks throughout society and absolute authority seem rather opposed to me.
(In fact this is mirrored by the Chinese example — aristocratic clans often had the most to lose when the sovereign, or the state, consolidates power.)
There is a potential somewhat-adjacent avenue that I think might grasp at what you really mean (esp. with the gesture at the co-evolution of clan and state):
Some hiccups with this model exist (e.g. I’m hesitant to map India, Iran, or even Russia onto these categorisations), and I’m not sure there’s meat on this bone, but I think it’s an interesting thing to ponder.
Or perhaps it is the reverse — the philosophical innovation of subordinating the family as a part of a “greater family” in the state may have allowed early Chinese states to form with less resistance (and where other polities would’ve failed to divert loyalty from a tribe to a state).
Both of these are, however, significantly more bounded than “China placed much more emphasis on it in periods throughout its history relative to other societies” or that networking “was deeply embedded in its governance structures in a way that Europeans didn’t have an analog”.
† Fukuyama did glibly call Qin China the first modern state, after all.
edit:a word
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