Wang Anshi

The unprecedented development under the Song Dynasty of large estates, whose owners manage to evade paying their share of taxes, has resulted in an increasingly heavy burden of taxation on the peasantry.

The drop in state revenues, a succession of budget deficits, and widespread inflation prompts the Emperor Shenzong of Song to seek advice from Wang Anshi.

Though Wang is from southern China, he comes from a family of imperial scholars (Jìnshì) and had placed fourth in the imperial exam of 1042.

He had passed the first twenty years of his career in the regional government of the lower Yangtze region, gaining practical experience in local governance., which guides his analysis in formulating solutions to revitalize the ailing Song society.

Wang believes that the state has the responsibility to provide for its people the essentials for a decent living standard: "The state should take the entire management of commerce, industry, and agriculture into its own hands, with a view to succoring the working classes and preventing them from being ground into the dust by the rich."

(Nourse, Mary A.

1944.

A Short History of the Chinese, 3rd edition.

P.136) Wang had come to power as second privy councilor in 1069.

It is here that he has introduced and promulgated his reform policy (xin fa).

There are three main components to this policy: 1) state finance and trade, 2) defense and social order, and 3) education and improving of governance.

Some of the finance reforms includes paying cash for labor in place of corvée labor, increase the supply of copper coins, improve management of trade, direct government loan to farmers during planting seasons and to be repaid at harvest.

He believes that foundation of the state rests on the well being of the common people.

To limit speculation and eliminate private monopolies, he initiates price control and regulates wages and sets up pensions for the aged and unemployed.

The state also begins to institute public orphanages, hospitals, dispensaries, hospices, cemeteries, and reserve granaries.

The military reform centers on a new institution of the baojia system or organized households.

This is done to ensure collective responsibility in society and will later be used to strengthen local defense.

He also proposes the creation of systems to breed military horses, the more efficient manufacture of weapons and training of the militia.

To improve education and government, he seeks to break down the barrier between clerical and official careers as well as improving their supervision to prevent connections being used for personal gain.

Sima Guang is a leader of the conservative faction at the Song court, resolutely opposed to the reformist policies of Chancellor Wang Anshi.

Sima has presented increasingly critical memorials to the throne until 1070, when he refused further appointment and withdrew from court.

In 1071, he takes up residence in Luoyang, where he will remain with an official sinecure, providing sufficient time and resources to continue compilation.

Indeed, though the historian and the emperor continued to disagree on policies, Sima's enforced retirement proves essential for him to fully complete his chronological history.

Sima Guang is also a lexicographer (who perhaps edited the Jiyun), and spent decades compiling his 1066 Leipian ("Classified Chapters", cf.

the Yupian) dictionary.

Based on the Shuowen Jiezi, it includes 31,319 Chinese characters, many of which were coined in the Song and Tang Dynasty.

Song dynasty Chancellor Wang Anshi, in implementing a series of reforms in 1069 upon his ascendance to office, promulgates a community-based law enforcement and civil order known as the Baojia system.

Wang attempts to diminish the importance of landholding and private wealth in favor of mutual-responsibility social groups that share similar values and can be easily controlled by the government.

Just as scholar-officials owe their social prestige to their government degrees, Wang wants to structure all of society as a mass of dependents loyal to the central government.

He uses various means, including the prohibition of landlords offering loans to tenants; this role is assumed by the government.

Wang establishes local militias that can aid the official standing army and lessen the constrained state budget expenses for the military.

He sets up low-cost loans for the benefit of rural farmers, whom he views as the backbone of the Song economy.

Since the land tax exacted from rural farmers fills the state treasury's coffers, Wang implements a reform to update the land-survey system so that more accurate assessments can be gathered.

Wang removes the mandatory poetry requirement in the civil service exams, on the grounds that many otherwise skilled and knowledgeable Confucian students are being denied entry into the administration.

Wang also establishes government monopolies for tea, salt, and wine production.

All of these programs receive heavy criticism from conservative ministerial peers, who believe his reforms damage local family wealth which provides the basis for the production of examination candidates, managers, merchants, landlords, and other essential members of society.

Chancellor Wang Anshi of the Song Dynasty creates a new bureau of the central government called the Directorate of Weapons, which supervises the manufacture of military armaments and ensures quality control.

Shen Kuo, while employed by the central government, is also sent out with others to inspect the granary system of the empire, investigating problems of illegal collections, negligence, ineffective disaster relief, and inadequate water-conservancy projects.

While Shen is serving as the regional inspector of Zhejiang in 1073, the Emperor Shenzong of Song requests that Shen pay a visit to the famous poet Su Shi (1037–1101), at this time an administrator in Hangzhou.

Shen takes advantage of this meeting to copy some of Su's poetry, which he presents to the Emperor indicating that it expresses "abusive and hateful" speech against the Song court; these poems will later be politicized by Li Ding and Shu Dan in order to level a court case against Su.

With his demonstrations of loyalty and ability, Shen Kuo is awarded the honorary title of a State Foundation Viscount by the emperor, who places a great amount of trust in Shen Kuo.

He is even made 'companion to the heir apparent' (’Taizi zhongyun').

Shen, with regard to the Lý Dynasty of Dại Viet (in modern northern Vietnam), demonstrates in his Dream Pool Essays that he is familiar with the key players (on the Vietnamese side) in the prelude to the Sino-Vietnamese War of 1075–1077.

With his reputable achievements, Shen becomes a trusted member of Wang Anshi's elite circle of eighteen unofficial core political loyalists to the New Policies Group.

Wang Anshi, in his New Policies sponsored by Shenzong, has enhanced central authority over Song's frontier administrations, increased militia activity, increased troop levels and war horses sent to the frontiers (including the border areas with Dai Viet), and actively seeks loyal supporters in border regions who can heighten the pace of extraction of local resources for the state's disposal.

Officials at court debate the merits or faults of Wang's policies, yet criticism of his reforms even appears in Dai Viet, where the high officer Ly Thuong Kiet publicly announces that Wang's policies are deliberate efforts to seize and control their border frontiers.

Tensions between Song and Lý are at a critical point, and in these conditions any sign of hostility has the potential to ignite a war.

Wang Anshi tells the Song emperor that Dai Viet is being destroyed by Champa, with less than ten thousand soldiers surviving, hence it will be a good occasion to annex Dai Viet.

The Quang Nguyen chieftain Lưu Ky launches an unexpected attack against Yongzhou in 1075, which is repelled by the Song's Vietnamese officer Nung Trí Hoi in charge of Guihua.

Shenzong now seeks to cement an alliance with the "Five Clans" of northern Guangnan by issuing an edict which will standardize their once irregular tribute missions to visit Kaifeng every five years.

Shenzong has officials sent from the capital to supervise militiamen in naval training exercises.

Shenzong then orders that all merchants are to cease trade with the subjects of Dai Viet, a further indication of heightened hostility that prompts the Ly court under Ly Nhan Tông to prepare for war.

Upon hearing the news, the Ly ruler sends Ly Thuong Kiet and Nung Ton Dan with more than one hundred thousand troops to China to carry out a preemptive attack against the Song Dynasty troops.

In the autumn of 1075, Nung Tong Đan advances into Song territory in Guangxi while a naval fleet commanded by Ly Thuong Kiet captures Qinzhou and Lianzhou prefectures.

Ly Thuong Kiet calms the apprehensions of the local Chinese populace, claiming that he is simply apprehending a rebel who had taken refuge in China and that the local Song authorities had refused to cooperate in detaining him.

Dai Viet, formerly Annam (’Pacified South’) to the Chinese, is flourishing under the Ly dynasty.

Vietnamese general Ly Thurong Kiet was born into an Ngo family in Thang Long, the capital of Dai Viet.

His original name was Ngo Tuấn.

His father had been a low-ranking general.

In 1036, he had served the Emperor as a captain in cavalry and later led the imperial guard force.

Because of his bravery, intelligence and loyalty, he had been granted a royal name, Ly Thurong Kiet, and given an important position in the Court.

Wang Anshi, the Song Dynasty prime minister, had told Emperor Shenzong in 1075 that Dai Viet was being destroyed by Champa, with less than ten thousand soldiers surviving, hence it would be a good occasion to annex Dai Viet.

The Song emperor had mobilized troops and passed decrees to forbid all the provinces to trade with Dai Viet.

Upon hearing the news, the Ly ruler had sent Ly Thurong Kiet and Nung Ton Dan with more than one hundred thousand troops to China to carry out a preemptive attack against the Song Dynasty troops.

In the ensuing forty-day battle near modern-day Nanning, the Dai Viet troops had been victorious, capturing the generals of three Song armies.

Ly Thurong Kiet had fought a war with the Cham in 1069, and in 1076 the Song dynasty calls on the Khmer Empire and Champa to go to war again in 1076.

At the same time, the Song commander Guo Kui leads the combined Song force of approximately one hundred thousand men against Ly.

The Song quickly regains Quang Nguyen prefecture and in the process captures the resistance leader Lưu Ky.

Wang Anshi's New Policies Group (Xin Fa), also known as the 'Reformers', are opposed by the ministers in the 'Conservative' faction led by the historian and Chancellor Sima Guang.

As one faction supplants another in the majority position of the court ministers, it demotes rival officials and exiles them to govern remote frontier regions of the empire.

One of the prominent victims of the political rivalry, the famous poet and statesman Su Shi, is jailed and eventually exiled for criticizing Wang's reforms.

The tide has tilted in favor of the conservatives due to renewed foreign conflict.

Like many Chinese officials of the era, Wang's career has experienced many ups and downs, but the beginning of the end had come in 1074.

A famine in northern China had driven many farmers off their lands, their circumstances made worse by the debts they had incurred from the seasonal loans granted under Wang’s reform initiatives.

Local officials insist on collecting on the loans as the farmers were leaving their land.

The empress dowager is also an opponent of Wang, who is blamed for the crisis.

Wang wanted to resign, but the emperor had supported him, giving him high honors and an appointment to Jiangning (present-day Nanjing.)

He had been recalled by the emperor in 1075, but now he is seen as vulnerable and is openly attacked from groups of conservatives.

Wang returns to Nanjing, which he prefers to Kaifeng, to write and engage in scholarship through to his death in 1086.

With Shenzong's death in 1085, the New Policies will be rolled back—some temporarily, some permanently.

Much of Wang Anshi's reforms outlined in the New Policies center around state finance, land tax reform, and the Imperial examinations, but there are also military concerns.

This includes policies of raising militias to lessen the expense of upholding a million soldiers, putting government monopolies on saltpeter and sulfur production and distribution in 1076 (to ensure that gunpowder solutions will not fall into the hands of enemies), and aggressive military policy towards China's northern rivals of the Western Xia and Liao dynasties.

The Song have by 1077 destroyed two other Vietnamese armies and marched towards their capital at Thang Long (modern Hanoi).

Song forces halt at the Nhu Nguyet River (in modern Bac Ninh Province), where Ly Thurong Kiet has defensive ramparts built on the southern banks.

However, Song forces break through his defense line and their cavalry advances to within several kilometers of the capital city.

The Vietnamese counterattack and push Song forces back across the river while their coastal defenses distract the Song navy.

Ly Thurong Kiet also launches an offensive, but loses two Ly princes in the fighting at Kháo Túc River.

According to Chinese sources, "tropical climate and rampant disease" severely weaken Song's military forces while the Ly court fears the result of a prolonged war so close to the capital.