ABSTRACT
Since the Confucian scholars were constantly proclaiming how the autocrat must rule by benevolence, cultural ritual, and proper decorum, we have been less aware that the autocrat ruled also and more fundamentally by terror and intimidation.... Killing had always been the ruler's special recourse to keep the system's many channels working by cleansing them of obstructive persons. Terror could be a lubricant, so to speak, whereas trying to rule by force alone would be fatal and would lose heaven's mandate to rule.
