Wang Anshi's New Policies (1069): Reform in Song China

Wang Anshi’s New Policies were a far-reaching programme of reform launched in 1069 in Song dynasty China, when Emperor Shenzong gave the scholar-official Wang Anshi the power to reshape state finance, rural credit, local defence and education. The reforms aimed to make the empire both richer and stronger, and they did raise revenue. They also split China’s governing elite into two bitterly opposed factions whose quarrels shaped politics until the fall of the Northern Song.

Background: a rich empire with an empty treasury

By the mid-11th century the Song dynasty presided over a prosperous, commercial society, yet the government was in difficulty. Its standing army had grown to well over a million soldiers on paper, most of them poorly trained, and soldiers’ pay absorbed the bulk of the budget.

The state also paid annual silver and silk to the Khitan Liao under the Treaty of Chanyuan of 1005, and, after wars in 1040–1044, to the Tangut state of Western Xia. Earlier reform attempts, notably the Qingli reforms of Fan Zhongyan in 1043–1045, had been abandoned in the face of opposition. By the 1060s the budget was regularly in deficit.

Critics of the time spoke of “redundant soldiers” and “redundant officials”. The bureaucracy had swollen as examination graduates and the relatives of officials waited for posts, while large landowners often evaded tax and small farmers fell into debt to moneylenders at harsh rates. Many officials agreed that something had to change; they disagreed sharply about what.

Wang Anshi and Emperor Shenzong

Wang Anshi was born in 1021 in Linchuan, Jiangxi, and passed the highest civil service examination in 1042. Unusually, he spent many years in local posts, where he experimented with grain loans and irrigation. In 1058 he sent the throne a long memorial, often called the Ten Thousand Word Memorial, arguing that the empire’s problems required training better officials and changing institutions.

Emperor Shenzong came to the throne in 1067 at the age of about 19, determined to restore Song power. In 1069 he appointed Wang an assisting councillor, and a new Finance Planning Commission was created to draft reforms. In 1070 Wang became chief councillor. He was a gifted and austere man, also celebrated as one of the finest poets and prose writers of his age, but critics found him stubborn and dismissive of opposition.

The main reforms

The New Policies were introduced between 1069 and the mid-1070s. Among the most important were:

• Green Sprouts (1069): the state lent money or grain to farmers in spring, when they were short of seed and food, to be repaid with interest after harvest. It was meant to free peasants from private moneylenders while earning income for the government.
• Equitable Transport (1069): officials bought goods where they were cheap and sold them where they were needed, reducing waste in supplying the capital.
• Hired Service (1071): households paid a graduated cash tax instead of performing compulsory local service, and the state hired workers for those duties.
• Baojia (1070): households were grouped into units for mutual surveillance and policing, and later trained as militia to reduce reliance on the costly professional army.
• State Trade (1072): official agencies bought unsold goods from small merchants and lent them money, curbing the power of large wholesalers.
• Land survey and equitable tax (1072): land was measured and graded so that tax reflected its real quality, exposing undeclared holdings.

Education changed too. The imperial examinations were reformed to drop poetry composition in favour of essays on policy and interpretation of the classics, and Wang’s own New Interpretations of the classics became the official standard in 1075.

Opposition and the factional struggle

Resistance was fierce. Leading statesmen and scholars, including Sima Guang, Han Qi, Ouyang Xiu and the poet Su Shi, argued that the reforms let officials force loans on peasants, burdened households with new payments, and turned the state into a profiteering merchant. Many also objected to Wang’s sweeping removal of critics and promotion of loyal but sometimes unscrupulous subordinates.

The debate was partly about principles: whether government should actively manage the economy or govern lightly and by moral example. It was also about power. As officials took sides, the reformers and their opponents hardened into factions.

Sima Guang, the leading opponent, was himself a great scholar; he withdrew to Luoyang and devoted years to his monumental history, the Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government, completed in 1084. Su Shi, perhaps the most admired poet of the age, was arrested in 1079 over verses judged critical of the reforms and sent into exile. The clash between such distinguished men made the conflict one of the most famous in Chinese history.

A severe drought and famine in 1074 brought matters to a head. A minor official, Zheng Xia, submitted a picture of starving refugees to the emperor, blaming the reforms. Wang resigned that year, returned in 1075, and left office for good in 1076. Shenzong kept most of the policies in force, but his ambitious campaigns against Western Xia ended in heavy defeats in 1081 and 1082.

Repeal, revival and the fall of the Northern Song

Shenzong died in 1085. Acting as regent for the young Emperor Zhezong, Empress Dowager Gao recalled Sima Guang, who began dismantling the New Policies. Both Wang Anshi and Sima Guang died in 1086, months apart.

When Zhezong took personal power in 1093, he restored the reforms and exiled their opponents. Under Emperor Huizong, the minister Cai Jing used the reform banner to purge enemies, even listing 309 members of the “Yuanyou faction” on stone tablets set up in 1104. The dynasty’s credibility suffered, and after the Jurchen captured Kaifeng in the Jingkang Incident of 1127, many writers blamed the reformers.

Legacy and debate

For centuries, Confucian historians largely condemned Wang Anshi, following the views of Sima Guang’s followers and the Neo-Confucian thinkers of the Southern Song. In the early 20th century the reformer Liang Qichao rehabilitated him as a visionary statesman, and some modern writers have even described him, misleadingly, as an early socialist.

Today historians generally see the New Policies as an ambitious attempt at state activism in a commercial economy. They succeeded in raising revenue and building reserves, but their dependence on officials with quotas to meet produced abuse, and their political cost was enormous.

Later reformers faced similar dilemmas. The Ming grand secretary Zhang Juzheng, who in the 1570s pushed through land surveys and simplified taxation, was often compared with Wang Anshi, both by admirers and by enemies. The questions Wang raised, about how far the state should lend, trade and plan, and how to stop officials abusing such powers, recur throughout Chinese history.

Timeline

• 1021: Wang Anshi is born in Linchuan, Jiangxi.
• 1058: Wang submits his Ten Thousand Word Memorial.
• 1067: Emperor Shenzong ascends the throne.
• 1069: Wang becomes assisting councillor; Green Sprouts and Equitable Transport begin.
• 1070–1072: Baojia, Hired Service, State Trade and the land survey are introduced.
• 1074: Famine and protests; Wang resigns, returning in 1075.
• 1076: Wang leaves office for good.
• 1085–1086: After Shenzong’s death, Sima Guang repeals most reforms; both men die in 1086.
• 1093: Emperor Zhezong restores the New Policies.

Why it matters

Wang Anshi’s New Policies were one of the boldest attempts to reform a pre-modern state, tackling credit, taxation, defence and education at once. Their mixed results, and the factional hatred they left behind, still frame debates in China about the proper role of government in the economy.