The concept of clan punishment has many interpretations in ancient times, mainly including three clans and nine clans. People of the three clans say "parents, brothers and wives"; People of the three clans say "father clan, mother clan, wife clan". The ancients also had different views on what was right. Now it is generally believed that the former is more accurate. In fact, there is no need to delve into this problem. Because the so-called "three tribes of foreigners" in ancient times itself is a kind of arbitrary abuse of punishment. On the one hand, this randomness is manifested in the object, and it is difficult to have a unified standard for what kind of charges are applicable to family punishment. Rulers are also unwilling to formulate uniform and applicable standards, but discuss things on a whim. As long as the supreme ruler thinks that the crime is heinous and must be set to the death penalty, the crime of killing people may become the object of clan punishment. On the other hand, arbitrariness is manifested in the scope. Punishing felonies by clan punishment is intended to eradicate the root causes and set an example for others. There is no pre-defined scope in law, which can cater to the different choices of rulers for different cases and different groups of people. In this sense, the three families may be "parents, brothers and wives" or "fathers, mothers and wives". We might as well regard the former as a strict sense and the latter as an extended sense. As for the "Jiuzu", there are also different opinions, or "Jiuzu all came from Gaozu to Sun Yuan"; Or "Nine clans are four clans of father, three clans of mother, and two clans of wife" (see Shen Jiaben: Textual Research on Criminal Law and Criminal System in Past Dynasties). In fact, Jiuzu should be a hollow name. In our culture, nine is the highest number. Therefore, the theory of nine clans is not a real realization one by one, but generally includes all clans related to it. In ancient times, the punishment of Jiuzu was often applied to major political crimes. Once a prison is tempered, it is innocent as long as it is related to criminals.

The most extreme is the special case of "Ten Families". It is special because in the long ancient history, there is only one case of such appalling atrocities, which happened to special people for special reasons in a special period. The protagonist of this tragedy is Fang Xiaoru, a great scholar in the early Ming Dynasty. When Fang Xiaoru was in Ming Huidi, he was famous for his specialization in such important classics as Records of Mao and Lei Yao. Unexpectedly, disaster struck, the Prince of Yan set out south under the old excuse of "Jun Qing side", and finally overthrew Hui Di and became emperor on his own, in order to become the father of the Ming Dynasty. In order to clear the name of the world, the usurper wanted to draft the imperial edict of Deng Ji in the name of Fang Xiaoru. Unexpectedly, Fang Xiaoru is a group of blind people who refused to cooperate in the spirit of not serving the two masters. "Write big numbers, throw the pen on the ground and say,' Death is death, and you can't write a letter! Cheng Zu threatened, "Do you only care about Jiuzu?" Fang Xiaoru said firmly, "What can I do with those ten families? In a rage, Cheng Zu ignored the advice that "killing filial piety and Confucianism is the last thing in the world" and punished several disciples with his nine clansmen. It is said that there were more than 800 victims, which is the culmination of clan punishment and fully exposed the cruel nature of ancient rulers (see Volume 18 of Ming History).

It is not difficult to find clues to the historical development of clan punishment. There are records of "three clans" in the Spring and Autumn Period. In addition to Qin, there are many cases of clan punishment in other vassal States. Of course, Qin was always one step ahead in many aspects. Especially after Shang Yang came to power, he paid too much attention to the deterrent function of punishment and extensively formulated a series of criminal joint and several liability systems, that is, the system of sitting together, which provided a premise for the implementation and expansion of family punishment. Ironically, Shang Yang himself could not escape the disaster of "family destruction" in the end, which is also called "suicide".

By the time of Qin Shihuang, the situation became more severe and worse. Qin Shihuang, as the "Emperor through the ages", advocated the idea of severe punishment and put it into practice without mercy. In order to consolidate centralized power, clan punishment was imposed on all "taking history as an exception", "carrying books", "lying" and "slandering people", which was a legal measure to adapt to the tyranny of the Qin Dynasty, which not only caused widespread indignation and resentment, but also accelerated the process of overthrowing the dynasty and was widely criticized and lashed by later generations. Since then, although the Han Dynasty occasionally abolished clan punishment, it failed to persevere, and the king often reneged on his words. From the Han Dynasty to the Tang Dynasty, clan punishment was not abolished, and the scope of its collective punishment began to be standardized, forming some conventions. For example, the object of clan punishment was limited to the scope of major crimes such as rebellion and rebellion, and the married daughter only sat with her husband's family and tended not to kill her grandparents, grandchildren and female relatives. This laid the foundation for the formation of the restrictive provisions on family punishment in Tang Law. According to the law of the Tang Dynasty, the crimes of "rebellion" and "great rebellion" are executed at the same time when the father and son reach the age of 16, and other relatives are exempt from the death penalty, and they can accept or flow only according to their close relationship. Generally speaking, the death penalty only kills oneself, and relatives are spared from death. This attachment to the death penalty is no longer a strict sense of clan punishment. Therefore, in comparison, the scope of clan punishment in Tang law is relatively narrow.

However, in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the scope of family punishment expanded. Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder of the Ming Dynasty, is a believer in the idea of "punishing people with punishment". The Daming Law, inspired by him, carried out the guiding ideology of "heavy is heavy, light is light", that is, while reducing the punishment for ordinary crimes that belong to the nature of "etiquette and custom education", it also increased the punishment for serious crimes such as "rebellion" and "rebellion", and not only executed the criminals in the middle of the year, but also executed their grandfathers. Obviously, compared with the Tang Dynasty, this will double the number of people killed. Fortunately, "Beneath the Sword" has not affected female relatives, but they still can't escape the bad luck of "treating the hero's family as slaves". The Qing law completely copied the Ming law in family punishment and was more lenient in specific implementation. The notorious literary inquisition in Qing Dynasty used clan punishment more, which was extremely inhuman.

Abolishing the system of combining clan punishment with punishment was one of the achievements of the legal reform movement in the late Qing Dynasty, which was inseparable from the efforts of Shen Jiaben and Ren, the minister of law revision at that time. Under their vigorous advocacy, the Qing court finally officially announced the abolition of continuous cropping in 1905. At this point, the clan criminal sitting system was officially abolished in law. However, this abolition has great reservations. This reservation profoundly reflects the rulers' reluctance to part with this ancient system. Once necessary and possible, the rulers will not hesitate to pick up this rusty butcher's knife again and slaughter the people. For our country, which has always been proud of its confidence in tradition, it is impossible to completely get rid of stereotypes, especially those that can serve tyrants and tyranny. Therefore, it is not surprising that some tyrannical makers will naturally cherish the memory of traditional culture-rich punishment methods, such as group punishment and sitting punishment. This also gives us a historical and cultural understanding of the phenomenon of clan punishment in modern society.

It is worth noting that it was neither Xia Jie nor Shang Zhouwang who explicitly announced this barbaric punishment, but they were admired by two "holy kings" and imitated by later generations-Xia Qi and Shang Tang.