Was there a theocracy higher than kingship in ancient China?

The ruling thought of China in ancient times was Confucianism, and Confucius, the founder of Confucianism, put forward the idea of staying away from ghosts and gods, so later generations also inherited this idea well. Similarly, since the Zhou dynasty used the enfeoffment system, it has always been patriarchal. That is to say,

In the traditional concept of China people, all the people who died were their relatives and ancestors, even if they became immortals and ghosts, they were only their relatives. How can there be a ruling relationship between them? In addition, the gods in ancient China were created by natural phenomena that people can't explain, and offering sacrifices to the gods was also to pray for good weather.

Extended data

It is not without people trying to establish theocracy in the history of China. For example, Dong Zhongshu tried to activate the theocracy by the way of the unity of heaven and man and the imperial power was ordered by heaven, but all of them failed unexpectedly. After all, China's ancient centralization of authority was there and could be overthrown in one fell swoop.

In addition, emperors of all ages have been trying to strengthen their imperial power. How can they be willing to give part of their power to theocracy? Generally speaking, the suppression of imperial power by theocracy was not easy to achieve in ancient China. With the continuous strengthening of centralization of authority, people's secular relationship was strong, and their belief in gods was not particularly strong. So the state of ancient China was obviously different from that of ancient Europe.

Baidu encyclopedia-theocracy