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"Wang Anshi"
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Wang Anshi’s economic reforms
The parallel between the economic reforms of Chinese Song Dynasty Chancellor Wang Anshi and those associated with Keynesianism has been rather neglected so far. However, understanding the original ideas of Wang Anshi’s economic thought and his reform policies, and comparing those with John Maynard Keynes’, we argue that Wang Anshi’s reforms well deserve the label of ‘proto-Keynesianism’. Both sides reach a consensus about the importance of government’s expenditure to support aggregate demand, increasing inducement to invest and state control of the economy in order to combat economic depression, especially as regards unemployment.
Journal Article
Two Approaches to Reexamining the Writings of Wang Anshi (1021–1086)
Partisan historiographic intervention has strongly shaped what we know of the life and writings of the controversial Northern Song dynasty official Wang Anshi. Thus, interpreting his surviving textual legacy presents a significant challenge. The two monographs under review offer very different approaches to this challenge. Yang Xiaoshan explores the history of the interpretive issues, while Jonathan Pease takes a very personal approach to a lifetime of reflection on Wang Anshi's life and works.
Journal Article
Traces of Grand Peace
Since the second century BC the Confucian Classics, endorsed by the successive ruling houses of imperial China, had stood in tension with the statist ideals of \"big government.\" In Northern Song China (960-1127), a group of reform-minded statesmen and thinkers sought to remove the tension between the two by revisiting the highly controversial classic, the Rituals of Zhou: the administrative blueprint of an archaic bureaucratic state with the six ministries of some 370 offices staffed by close to 94,000 men. With their revisionist approaches, they reinvented it as the constitution of state activism. Most importantly, the reform-councilor Wang Anshi's (1021-1086) new commentary on the Rituals of Zhou rose to preeminence during the New Policies period (ca. 1068-1125), only to be swept into the dustbin of history afterward. By reconstructing his revisionist exegesis from its partial remains, this book illuminates the interplay between classics, thinkers, and government in statist reform, and explains why the uneasy marriage between classics and state activism had to fail in imperial China.
eBook
The Everlasting Empire
Established in 221 BCE, the Chinese empire lasted for 2,132 years before being replaced by the Republic of China in 1912. During its two millennia, the empire endured internal wars, foreign incursions, alien occupations, and devastating rebellions--yet fundamental institutional, sociopolitical, and cultural features of the empire remained intact.The Everlasting Empiretraces the roots of the Chinese empire's exceptional longevity and unparalleled political durability, and shows how lessons from the imperial past are relevant for China today.
Yuri Pines demonstrates that the empire survived and adjusted to a variety of domestic and external challenges through a peculiar combination of rigid ideological premises and their flexible implementation. The empire's major political actors and neighbors shared its fundamental ideological principles, such as unity under a single monarch--hence, even the empire's strongest domestic and foreign foes adopted the system of imperial rule. Yet details of this rule were constantly negotiated and adjusted. Pines shows how deep tensions between political actors including the emperor, the literati, local elites, and rebellious commoners actually enabled the empire's basic institutional framework to remain critically vital and adaptable to ever-changing sociopolitical circumstances. As contemporary China moves toward a new period of prosperity and power in the twenty-first century, Pines argues that the legacy of the empire may become an increasingly important force in shaping the nation's future trajectory.
eBook
Wang Anshi’s “Treatise on Great Men”
With his “Treatise on Great Men” Wang Anshi wrote a short yet sharp rejoinder contradicting a daring assumption formulated in previous Buddhist apologetic thought. Basing themselves on a famous passage in Liezi, chapter 4, Buddhist apologists claimed that the Confucian sages would not be real sages, while the only real sage would be the Buddha. Being an early representative of Neo-Confucianism,
Wang Anshi in his treatise attacks this Buddhist apologetic position. In his counter-argumentation, he develops a system ascribing three different qualities to every sage. These are the qualities of ‘greatness’, ‘sageliness’, and ‘numinosity’. Wang Anshi implies that the Buddha mainly excels in numinosity, while Confucian sages mainly excel in greatness and sageliness. Since numinosity is regarded as the highest quality, he also stresses that the three qualities are all interconnected, so that also the Confucian sages are connected to numinosity. However, Wang Anshi’s main argument is that numinosity, though being the highest of the three qualities, does not benefit the common people. In order to benefit them, he says, one rather has to engage in practical action being represented by the qualities of greatness and sageliness. In the present paper I present both an analysis and a translation of Wang Anshi’s treatise.
Journal Article
Ritual Propriety and Political Intrigue in the Xuande Gate Incident
The 1073 incident at the Xuande Gate, involving Wang Anshi's alleged breach of imperial protocol, was a turning point both in his career and in emperor Shenzong's policies. By filling in the gaps and reconciling the discrepancies in various accounts of the incident, this essay demonstrates that, whereas on the surface the controversy centered on the ritual question of whether Wang should have dismounted before entering the gate, what was really at play was the particular political dynamics of the time. Direct instigation came from the ranks of senior eunuchs, among whom there was considerable aversion to Wang. Such aversion reflected the attitude of the conservative members of the imperial family. The incident also marked the beginning of Shenzong's shifting away from his exclusive reliance on Wang in formulating and implementing reform policies. L'incident de la Porte Xuande en 1073, où Wang Anshi aurait manqué au protocole impérial, fut un point tournant aussi bien dans la carrière de Wang que dans la politique suivie par l'empereur Shenzong. Le présent article cherche à combler les lacunes et à concilier les contradictions rencontrées dans les différents récits de l'incident. Il montre que, même si en apparence la controverse portait sur un problème de rituel — Wang aurait-il dû descendre de cheval avant de franchir la porte? —, sa nature réelle met en cause les forces politiques qui étaient alors en jeu. L'incident a été directement provoqué par des eunuques de haut rang, appartenant donc à un milieu marqué par une considérable hostilité envers Wang. Celle-ci reflétait l'attitude des membres de la famille impériale les plus conservateurs. C'est aussi à partir de l'incident de la Porte Xuande que Shenzong a cessé de se reposer exclusivement sur Wang Anshi pour concevoir et mettre en œuvre la politique réformiste.
Journal Article
Redefining Good Government: Shifting Paradigms in Song Dynasty (960-1279) Discourse on \Fengjian\
This article describes changing political visions of the Chinese literati during the two halves of the Song dynasty, as reflected in their discourse on the fengjian (classical enfeoffment) system of antiquity. In the aftermath of the An Lushan rebellion (755-763), a group of political thinkers criticized that system as an ungrounded historical anachronism. This idea gained currency among a majority of the Northern Song statesmen and literati who supported the centralization project of the founding emperors.With the fall of the Northern Song, the ancient fengjian doctrine resurfaced as a sustained constitutional discourse on government. Contesting the imperial vision of centralization and interventionism, Southern Song literati redefined good government for their time. Cet article s'attache à l'évolution de la vision politique des lettrés chinois pendant les deux moitiés de la dynastie des Song, telle que la reflète le discours sur la féodalité classique de l'Antiquité (fengjian). À la suite de la rébellion de An Lushan (755-763), un groupe de penseurs critiqua ce système en considérant que c'était un anachronisme sans fondement historique. Cette idée s'imposa auprès d'une majorité d'hommes d'État et de lettrés sous les Song du Nord, favorables au projet centralisateur des fondateurs de la dynastie. Après la chute des Song du Nord, l'ancienne doctrine du fengjian refit surface et persista comme discours constitutionnel sur le gouvernement. Les lettrés des Song du Sud en vinrent à contester la vision impériale centralisatrice et interventionniste et à redéfinir un type de bon gouvernement mieux adapté à leur époque.
Journal Article
Tradition and Individuality in Wang Anshi's Tang bai jia shixuan
Xiaoshan Yang examines the controversy concerning why Wang Anshi (1021-1086) should have omitted many canonical poets, such as Li Bai, Du Fu, and Han Yu, when compiling his anthology, Tang bai jia shixuan—the largest anthology of Tang poetry up to its time. Yang argues that Wang s anthology is not as idiosyncratic as many commentators contended but is instead derivative of a tradition that started in the Tang itself and would endure throughout the Yuan period. In this tradition, major Tang poets were routinely underrepresented or even excluded. Noting the discordance between anthology compilation and canon formation, Yang cautions us against assuming that anthologies played a crucial role in shaping Tang poetic canons as we know them today, especially when we are dealing with the tradition prior to the Ming period.
Journal Article