had been clipped by his legislation united to plot his fall; they were helped
by drought and flood and foreign invasion. The rich Liu family [Liu family
(fl. A.D. 20)] put itself at the head of a general rebellion, slew Wang Mang,
and repealed his legislation. Everything was as before.
A thousand years later Wang An-shih, as premier (1068-85), undertook a
pervasive governmental domination of the Chinese economy. “The state,”
he held, “should take the entire management of commerce, industry, and
agriculture into its own hands, with a view to succoring the working classes
and preventing them from being ground into the dust by the rich.”
rescued the peasants from the moneylenders by loans at low interest. He
encouraged new settiers by advancing them seed and other aid, to be repaid
out of the later yield of their land. He organized great engineering works to
control floods and check unemployment. Boards were appointed in every
district to regulate wages and prices. Commerce was nationalized. Pensions
were provided for the aged, the unemployed, and the poor. Education and
the examination system (by which admission to governmental office was
determined) were reformed; “pupils threw away their textbooks of
rhetoric,” says a Chinese historian, “and began to study primers of history,
geography, and political economy.”
What undermined the experiment? First, high taxes, laid upon all to
finance a swelling band of governmental employees. Second, conscription
of a male in every family to man the armies made necessary by barbarian
invasions. Third, corruption in the bureaucracy; China, like other nations,
was faced with a choice between private plunder and public graft.
Conservatives, led by Wang An-ship’s brother, argued that human
corruptibility and incompetence make governmental control of industry
impracticable, and that the best economy is a laissez-faire system that relies
on the natural impulses of men. The rich, stung by the high taxation of their
fortunes and the monopoly of commerce by the government, poured out
their resources in a campaign to discredit the new system, to obstruct its
enforcement, and to bring it to an end. This movement, well organized,
