Chapter 39 "Reform Specimen" Wang Anshi

Let’s talk about Wang Anshi later. This person is a benchmark figure full of major controversies in China's economic and political history.We often say that it is difficult to comment on a historical figure because he is "unclear", but Wang Anshi's face is very clear, so it is still difficult to comment. In the Song Dynasty, people didn't know how to evaluate Wang Anshi.When Deng Guangming created "Wang Anshi, a political reformer in the Northern Song Dynasty", he said with emotion: "I can't find a single piece of writing about Wang Anshi's life, epitaph, and Shinto stele. I can’t see it.” In other words, the Song people “turned a blind eye” to this big man who changed the fate of the empire and everyone else.

This talent is full of talent, unique in poetry and prose, and is recognized as one of the "Eight Great Masters of Tang and Song Dynasties".He reads a lot, boasting that he has read all the books in the world.He was good at eloquence, and when it came to "Zhou Li", no one in the court was more familiar with it than him.He made Sima Guang, Su Dongpo and others miserable, but no one dared to say that his talent was higher than him. He is also a very capable official who understands finance and economics very well. He does not rely on backgrounds to be an official. He was born in the imperial examination.He is so familiar with all the administrative joints that no one can fool him.

He is unkempt and unreasonable.The Song Dynasty was a country of scholar-bureaucrats, everyone was well dressed and polite, but this Wang Anshi didn't wash his hair or shave, he came to the court every day with a smelly body, and he had a dead face all day long, and his colleagues called him "Stupid with the public".He doesn't form gangs, works alone, and has nothing to do with anyone.What's more terrible is that he is not greedy for sex or money.In traditional Chinese thinking, a bad official will definitely commit these two things, but Wang Anshi doesn't do any of them.He is frugal and honest, and regards wealth as floating clouds. Every time he pays an official salary, he always takes a bag of money home and hand it over to his wife without counting it.He also never took concubines all his life, which is unique among the literati of the Song Dynasty who were romantic and open.Of course, he does not cooperate with the enemy or betray the country, and is a patriot who puts the national interest first.

Such a person with noble morals and invulnerability to all kinds of poisons has worked diligently and day and night to destroy the country. How do you evaluate him? Therefore, this is a particularly interesting person, and a person who needs to be especially vigilant. In Chinese history, although people like him are rare, they are not alone.They are honest and upright officials, work hard, act vigorously and resolutely, have extremely high administrative efficiency, and do not mix personal interests with state affairs.They strongly advocate nationalism, at the cost of sacrificing the freedom of private industry and commerce, in exchange for the restoration and stability of the centralized system.The administrative slogan they put forward is often "equity between the rich and the poor", but the final result must be to deprive the rich and the poor of the people together.From the perspective of economic history, these "financial masters" are often the turning points of the Chinese-style "cycle of chaos".

During the hundreds of years from the Song Dynasty to the Ming and Qing dynasties, Wang Anshi was a "missing person" in political history. At most, everyone talked about his poetry and prose.After the 20th century, he suddenly made a comeback. In 1908, Liang Qichao, the most famous political commentator in the world, wrote "The Biography of Wang Anshi", announcing that he "overturned the largest injustice case in Chinese history", and Wang Anshi suddenly became a political star again. Wang Anshi's "resurrection" was naturally related to the country's situation and the world environment at that time.After the Opium War, China became the "sick man of East Asia". In order to seek a way to strengthen the country, the implementation of state centralism became the mainstream consciousness in the political and intellectual circles. At that time, both royalists and revolutionaries thought so, Qian Mu said: "In the late Qing Dynasty, those who advocated political reform were arguing about public government." Looking at the world, whether it was the birth of the Soviet Union in 1917, or the rise of Nazi Germany and the Japanese Empire in the 1930s, or the "Roosevelt New Deal" in the United States, all was seen as a triumph of nationalism.Since then, Wang Anshi has become an undisputed reformer in the mainstream ideology. After entering the Republic of China and even after 1949, Wang Anshi's reputation has become higher and higher.Guo Moruo believed that Wang Anshi was the first great statesman after the Qin and Han Dynasties. The two reformers Mao Zedong admired during the "Cultural Revolution" were Shang Yang and Wang Anshi.

In the face of such controversial figures and historical events, if we observe them in the 2000-year evolution history of the centralized power system, we may draw some clearer conclusions. "Wang Anshi's reform" is connected with the previous "Guan Zhong's reform", "Shang Yang's reform", "Sang Hongyang's reform", "Wang Mang's reform" and even "Liu Yan's reform". test.Just as Sang Hongyang admired Shang Yang and Liu Yan admired Sang Hongyang, Wang Anshi also admired Sang and Liu very much. In his debate with Sima Guang, he believed that using state-owned exclusive policies to suppress mergers and balance the rich and the poor is an ancient The righteous way of governing the country of a virtuous monarch, only Sang and Liu "roughly agree with this idea" in later generations.It can be seen from this that the "reforms" of the past dynasties followed the same logic.

Wang Anshi’s degree of radicalism is quite close to that of Wang Mang. They were separated by about a thousand years. They were two reform movements that challenged the two poles respectively. Manage every economic element.They were equally fierce and idealistic, but they also suffered disastrous defeats, which directly or indirectly led to the demise of an empire. From the perspective of institutional innovation, the importance of "Wang Anshi's reform" even surpassed any previous one.It is the last constructive expedition and the "final work" of the overall supporting system reform.

A particularly serious consequence is that the failure of "Wang Anshi's reform" caused a huge psychological shadow on the later rulers.Such a talented financial master carried out such an all-round supporting reform in such a developed macro-environment of industry and commerce, but resulted in such a tragic failure, which made all the latecomers discouraged from radical change.Its failure can be said to be historic, showing that the means of governing the country based on Legalist strategy and Confucian ethics have nowhere to go in the field of economic reform, and neither advance nor retreat can be achieved.After the Northern Song Dynasty, the rulers of the Southern Song, Ming, and Qing dynasties basically gave up institutional innovation within the system, and began to use stricter control methods to maintain their rule. Their economic strategies became more and more cautious and conservative, and finally entered the dead end of closing the country. .

Therefore, in China after Wang Anshi, there is only one really serious economic problem left, and that is stability.