12-05 Zhou Dynasty rule had broken up into various political entities that can be called states

Warring States Period Begins..

Zhou Dynasty rule had broken up into various political entities that can be called states – a state commonly defined as a civil government, a political institution, that maintains a monopoly over the use of force within its territory.

Historians have been interested in the balance of power dynamics between the states that for a while prevented one state from growing in its ability to dominate or conquer all the other states. The balance of power worked as states that felt threatened by the growing power of the strongest and most aggressive state united against that state. Their combined power controlled the expansion of the strongest state, as did the costs that always accompanied attempts at expansion and the possibility of strong states to weaken themselves.

The state called Chu began as the most powerful of the states and the state others had to reckon with. Of 148 or so powers, Chu was the largest in the size of its territory and the richest in natural resources, and it was strengthened by a freedom from Zhou Dynasty feudalism – in other words, there was respect for centralized authority that is commonly diminished by feudalism. Chu expanded territorially and was the first of the states to appoint dependent officials tied to central authority rather than to create hereditary nobles as fiefs