And then they got invaded by a government that managed to run things even more poorly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine https://en.wikipedia.o

And then they got invaded by a government that managed to run things even more poorly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine Even if it was a better government invading, the potential benefit would be fairly limited. They probably would have moved away from that social structure without interference. Much of the world used to be crappy feudal societies with powerful religions.