23 Facts About Wang Anshi

Wang Anshi, courtesy name Jiefu, was a Chinese economist, philosopher, poet, and politician during the Song dynasty.

Wang Anshi served as chancellor and attempted major and controversial socioeconomic reforms known as the New Policies.

Wang Anshi's ideas are usually analyzed in terms of the influence the Rites of Zhou or Legalism had on him.

Wang Anshi placed fourth in the palace exam and obtained a jinshi degree in 1042.

Wang Anshi began his career in the Song bureaucracy as a secretary in the office of the assistant military commissioner of Huainan.

Wang Anshi was then promoted to district magistrate of Yinxian, where he reorganized hydrological projects for irrigation and gave credits to the peasant.

Wang Anshi criticized the imperial examination system for failing to create specialized workers.

Wang Anshi believed that there should not be generalists but that people should specialize in their roles and not study extraneous teachings.

Wang Anshi was first appointed vice counsellor, a key position for general administration, and a year later was made chancellor.

Wang Anshi believed that suppressing jianbing was one of the most important goals.

Under such a situation, Wang Anshi considered any claim that the emperor had control of the people to be just words.

Critics claimed that Wang Anshi was waging a price war with merchants.

Wang Anshi's faction, known as the "Reformers", were opposed by the ministers in the "Conservative" faction led by the historian and Chancellor Sima Guang.

Fiscally, Wang Anshi made it clear that he was not concerned about deficits and promised the emperor that revenues would be adequate even without increasing taxes.

Wang Anshi was in favor of more aggressive foreign policy such as recovering territory and assimilating people to the northwest while Sima preferred a more balanced foreign policy.

Wang Anshi saw that as the breakdown of social order which would cause the eventual downfall of the state.

Wang Anshi argued that the empire would be better off if rich families kept more of their wealth.

Wang Anshi still had the emperor's favor, though he resigned in 1076.

Wang Anshi was later ranked number seven among the Eight Great Prose Masters of the Tang and Song.

Wang Anshi was an adherent of the Classical Prose Movement championed by Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan, first and second of the Eight Masters of the Tang and Song respectively.

The twentieth-century Chinese warlord Yan Xishan cited the reforms of Wang Anshi to justify his use of a limited form of local democracy in Shanxi.

Yan believed that the focus and intent of Wang Anshi's reforms was to strengthen the Song dynasty by persuading ordinary Chinese to give the dynasty their active support, instead of merely serving it.

The system of "democratic" government that Yan justified via the philosophy of Wang Anshi was mostly focused on improving Yan's own popularity without holding any real power, and never became an effective alternative to military dictatorship.