Power sockets still not standardised? First Emperor unified China by standardising writing and measures 2,200 years ago
- Power adaptors being a travel necessity highlights the lack of standardisation in our world – we could learn from the First Emperor of China’s Qin dynasty
- Upon taking power in 221 BC, he unified China’s states through the introduction of a standard Chinese writing system, weights, measures, even carriage widths
I recently holidayed in Shikoku, the least visited of the four main islands of Japan, and had a wonderful time enjoying the sights (it was cherry blossom season), food and company.
A group of us living in Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore travel together once a year, and it’s become something of an annual tradition since our first trip to Vietnam in 2016. For some of us, it’s the only time that we see each other.
In Shikoku, I couldn’t resist buying a few beautifully packaged boxes of comestibles, some condiments, and a few emergency pairs of socks and underwear (laundry day didn’t happen).
I also bought an adaptor for my electrical appliances because I had stupidly forgotten to pack one of the half-dozen or so adaptors sitting in the drawer at home.
It’s one of the great mysteries of the modern world why power plugs and sockets still aren’t standardised.
The different number and configurations of pins used across different countries is an unnecessary inconvenience for travellers, as are different charging cables for phones, driving on different sides of the road, and measuring temperatures in Fahrenheit (still used in about a dozen countries and territories, most notably the United States and Liberia).
Ride hailing began in China 2,200 years ago. Get with it, Hong Kong!
When the First Emperor of the Qin dynasty unified China and reorganised the Chinese nation as a centralised empire in 221 BC, he implemented measures that consolidated, and contributed to, the unitary cohesion of the new state, a unity that continues to inform China’s self-image today and its international relations.
Many of the First Emperor’s measures aimed at standardisation, a crucial step before any semblance of national unity could be achieved. To understand why this was so important, one has to know the historical context.
In the more than five centuries before the First Emperor, the Chinese nation was a veritable jigsaw puzzle of independent domains nominally subordinate to the king of the Zhou dynasty.
Over the centuries, these states decreased in number even as each one increased in size and power. In time, seven remained, and one of them, the state of Qin, succeeded in conquering the rest. Its ruler proclaimed himself the First Emperor.
The coexistence of multiple states for more than 500 years (around 20 human generations) meant that the new empire had to contend with multiple languages, weights and measures, and currencies, which had developed independently of one another for centuries.
The First Emperor decided that this was not conducive to efficient administration, which in turn, would not help him realise his stated goal of the empire lasting 10,000 generations.
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The Qin empire lasted all of two generations, in what must rank among the worst KPIs in human history, but many of its policies went on to have profound historical impact, in particular the standardisation of the written Chinese script.
Even with the prevalence of Putonghua (or Mandarin) today, many mutually unintelligible tongues are still spoken within China and in Chinese communities outside the country. Imagine if each of these were written in a completely different form.
The use of a single script for the Chinese language in the two millennia since the First Emperor was one of those historical developments whose cultural and political importance cannot be overstated.
The First Emperor also standardised units for measuring length, area, weight and volume. To facilitate efficient transport and, more importantly, to allow armies and supplies to move across the vast empire quickly, he built trunk roads and decreed that carriages had to be of a consistent width.
We can now fly to the other side of the world with ease, but we still have to remember to bring adaptors with us because the world’s power plugs and sockets have yet to be standardised.
It’s obvious that a multipronged approach involving different countries is desperately needed.
