The purpose of this article is to analyze the pastoralism of the Hsiung-nu with respect to their environment, species-composition of animals, seasonal migrations, and subsidiary subsistence (such as agriculture, hunting and gathering, raid and trade), and to show in comparison with their contemporaries the Ch'iang nomads, how the Hsiung-nu state functioned as necessary organization to support this human ecology.

Basically, nomadic pastoralism is a non-autarky subsistence; some subsidiary materials have to be gained from the outside world. How and where these resourses were acquired determined the nature and the range of the outside world they dealt with, and therefore determined the form and scale of their political organizations. This explains why the Hsiung-nu built a state while the Ch'iang could only form groups on the tribal level. Also, the centralized political organization of the Hsiung-nu and the concomitant foreign policy contradicted the segmentary nature of their pastoral economy, thus becoming an inevitable defect leading partly to the failure of the Hsiung-nu state.