Yuan
Dynasty
The 'Four Class System' was a legal caste system in the Yuan Dynasty. After the founding of the Yuan regime, Kublai Khan, the first emperor in the Yuan Dynasty, set up this system to consolidate the ruling status of the Mongolian Ethnic Minority, which had a small number with great disparity to the majority Han people.
Specifically, the four classes of people by the descending order were Mongolian people, Semu people, Han people (in the northern areas of China) and Southerners (people of the former Northern Song Dynasty (1127 - 1279)). According to the Yuan rulers' mind, the grading sequence was based on the sequencing of Mongolian's conquest of these people. Some historical scholars said that it was a kind of psychological indication that the earlier they submitted to Mongolian people, the higher social status they would be.
Kublai Khan did not force ideas on Chinese, but did force high taxes (public works projects completed by Chinese workers.
Yuan dynasty introduced the policy of Colored population statistics(Chinese: 諸色戶計). The policy divided commoners according to their occupation.Farmers, soldiers, craftsmen, hunters, physicians, messengers and Confucian scholars are some of the categories under this policy. The farmers had the largest population among all the commoners in Yuan dynasty. These categories are hereditary. One soldier will give birth to a son who will later become a soldier. In comparison with other commoners, craftsmen were treated more fairly since the Mongols deemed the skills of making weapons necessary for their conquest of the world. The Mongols routinely massacred Chinese civilians with the exception of Craftsmen.