Bureaucracy and the State in Early China is a most welcome addition to the studies of China's preimperial history. In this meticulous study, Li Feng introduces the institutional and administrative history of the Western Zhou period (1046–771 bce), one of the important—and rarely addressed—stages of the formation of Chinese civilization. This book crowns Li's series of earlier studies of Western Zhou history, most notably Landscape and Power in Early China: The Crisis and Fall of the Western Zhou, 1045–771 BC (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), making him the single most prolific writer on this topic.

Li Feng's book could not be more timely. Forty years ago, Herrlee G. Creel published his seminal The Origins of Statecraft in China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), but that book is now woefully outdated. A series of remarkable discoveries of Western Zhou archeological sites and relevant epigraphic materials (most notably inscribed bronze vessels) have tremendously expanded our knowledge of Western Zhou society and history; yet in the West, only a few studies have attempted to update Creel. Now, Li Feng has presented the Anglophone community with exemplary research, incorporating most of the newly discovered materials and fully absorbing relevant secondary sources. As such, Bureaucracy and the State in Early China will become a standard reference book for Western Zhou studies in the West for years to come.

Li's research results may surprise some who have underestimated the degree of sophistication and maturity of the Western Zhou government apparatus. Li systematically addresses major fields of Western Zhou administrative life, from the structure of the central government and administrative procedures in the center, down to local administration in the royal domain, and, briefly, administration of the regional states, established under royal aegis in the eastern half of the Zhou realm. He suggests that, from its inception, the Zhou state had much more developed administrative practices than the preceding Shang dynasty (ca. 1600–1046 bce) and even opines that this might have constituted one of Zhou's advantages over the ostensibly much more powerful Shang. He then analyzes the increasing sophistication of the royal administration during the three centuries of the Zhou rule and argues that the Zhou government fits well with Weber's definition of bureaucracy. Even career patterns of Zhou officials, according to Li, reflect mature bureaucratic procedures and were much less dependent on hereditary succession than the conventional wisdom holds.

Li Feng particularly excels at incorporating inscriptional evidence. Rather than using selected inscriptions to validate or question textual data, he uses inscriptions as an independent source of information. The remarkable results show that, despite their ritualistic context, bronze inscriptions can be a most valuable historical source. Li's translations, reproductions of many inscriptions and relevant vessels, and a handy appendix of bronze vessels cited in the book should serve as standards for future publications in the field.

The only serious shortcoming that this reviewer finds is Li's preoccupation with the Weberian perspective at the expense of much more needed diachronic analysis of Western Zhou bureaucratic patterns. Whether Weber should serve as a standard for analyzing early Chinese polities is debatable; Li's study could have benefited much more from comparing the Western Zhou system with the systems of the subsequent Spring and Autumn (771–453 bce) and especially Warring States periods (453–221 bce), the latter being the true hallmark of China's bureaucratization. For instance, Li's assertion of meritocratic patterns of official advancement in the Western Zhou should be compared not with Weber's models but with the actual meritocratic system of the Warring States. Such comparison would reveal that the Western Zhou system lacked control of officials and their punishment and demotion in case of dereliction of duty. These were routine procedures in the Warring States period, but we have no evidence for them either in the Western Zhou or in the aristocratic society of the Spring and Autumn period. Possibly, the lack of evidence reflects the nature of our sources: bronze inscriptions never contain negative information about the lives of their donors. Yet it is also possible that procedures of supervision and punishment remained underdeveloped in Western Zhou society, in which one's status was determined primarily by pedigree. Li's silence on this issue weakens his otherwise eloquent argument.

Other substantial issues arise from comparing the Western Zhou to the subsequent aristocratic Spring and Autumn period. For the latter period, it is clear from the Zuo zhuan accounts that a bureaucratic approach toward state functioning is inadequate: the power of an individual derived overwhelmingly from the standing of his lineage rather than from his official position. Is it possible that this was the case in the Western Zhou as well, and that behind the façade of bureaucratic sophistication, the society remained decidedly aristocratic rather than bureaucratic and meritocratic? Or, conversely, did the aristocratic Spring and Autumn period constitute an aberration in the process of evolution of bureaucratic government in China? These issues await a further study, which will benefit greatly from Li Feng's pioneering efforts.