Wang Anshi

• Born: 1021
• Died: 1086

Wang Anshi was a prominent reformer of the Northern Song Dynasty. He served as Chief Councillor from 1070-1073, and again from 1075-1076; his policy attitudes remained influential, however, through his death in 1086.

Wang headed a classicist faction at Court rivalling that headed by Sima Guang; unlike Sima, who advocated gradual reforms and policies based on the more recent Tang Dynasty and Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, Wang sought a restoration of the ways of the Sage Kings of old. He emphasized his own interpretation of the Confucian classics, and sought to have the civil examinations be based specifically on that line of interpretation. He also oversaw the implementation of an empire-wide "public" school system, in which the curriculum and interpretations chosen by Wang were then taught.

Regarding the Song's financial crisis, Sima Guang's faction argued that economies cannot grow - that the amount of wealth that exists is finite - and that traditional statuses and disparities between rich and poor were in accordance with the Tao, i.e. that this was the way things should be. Wang Anshi disagreed dramatically, believing that economic development was possible, that the economy could grow, and that the relationships between rich and poor ought to be drastically altered.

References

• Valerie Hansen, The Open Empire, New York: W.W. Norton & Co (2000), 269-270.