Wang Anshi

Wang Anshi

Introduction

This was written by Wang Anshi 1021 - 1086) who was a Chinese economist, statesman, chancellor and poet of the Song Dynasty major socioeconomic reforms it was first published in Chinese language, and So successfully did Wang use this manuscript to give good reason for his reforms that his edition of it became one of the most powerful and contentious books in all Chinese literature. To refute Wang the support he derived from it, his opponents supposed that the Institutes of Zhou was itself a relatively recent forgery. In later times writers commonly attributed the fall of the Northern Song dynasty to Wang's adoption of this text as a political guide(Gascoigne,2003).

Thus Wang's espousal of the institutes of zhou represents the culmination in the political sphere of the long debate in Confucian circles over the applicability of classical institutions, as described in the books of rites, to conditions obtaining in the Song dynasty. At the same time Wang's effort to reinterpret these texts - to discard the Han and Tang commentaries - and to use a modernized version as the basis for a reformed civil service examination system, stressing the general meaning of the classics instead of a literal knowledge of them, is a concrete expression of the Confucian urge to break with the scholarship of the Han and Tang dynasties, both in the field of classical scholarship and in the form of civil service examinations, in order to return to the essential purity of the classic order(Gascoigne,2003).

In this respect Wang stands together with the Cheng brothers, Zhu Xi, and a host of other Song scholars in their determination to set aside accepted interpretations and find new meaning in their Confucian inheritance, just as subsequent scholars of a more critical temper would someday reject the Song interpretations and press anew their inquiry into the meaning and validity of the classics.

This document, sometimes called the Ten Thousand Word Memorial, is famous as Wang's first important declaration of his political views. Those who look to it for a manifesto outlining his later program will be disappointed, for aside from his general philosophy it deals only with the problem of recruiting able officials. Those who recognize, however, that in China any reformer had to wrestle first of all with the intractable bureaucracy will appreciate why Wang, like many other Song reformers, should have given first priority to this question. Subsequent readings, including the protests of Wang's critics, will show that in the final analysis this remained the most crucial issue.

Abstract and Comparison:

The first of Wang's New Laws (or Measures) (xinfa) aimed at achieving greater flexibility and economy in the transportation of tax grain or tribute in kind to the capital. His basic principle was that officials be enabled to resell.the goods collected and use funds at their disposal to procure at the most con~ement time and place (and with the least transportation cost) the goods required(Mote,1999). by the government. This was later expanded greatly into a vast state ...