Gongsun Hong (公孫弘; Wade–Giles: Kung-sun Hung; 200 – 7 April 121 BCE[1]) was a senior official in the Western Han dynasty under Emperor Wu.
While first proposed and more ardently promoted by Dong, the national academy and Imperial examination, then considered radical, did not come into existence until they were supported by the more successful Gongsun.
Beginning his political career at age sixty, he rapidly advanced from commoner to attain a senior appointment in 130BC when he was seventy, becoming grand secretary and 'censor-in-chief' in 126, and chancellor in 124.
His successor Emperor Jing managed to crush a revolt of the princes, who were thereafter denied rights to appoint ministers for their fiefs, but their power persisted.
Referring to a typical golden age of the remote past in which the populace was naturally good, reminiscent of Lu Jia and Jia Yi, Gongsun's speech to the court derides the practice of the Qin (that is, its penalties) as inadequate, stressing the Confucian values of sincerity, humaneness (ren), righteousness (yi), and moderation (li), but also intellectual judgement (zhi) as the means of effective authority.
His discourse was rated low by the Ceremonial Superintendent, but among the top by the Emperor; though it may have been simple compared with Dong's, Sima Qian writes that it was still very elegant.
[19][20][21] While Dong did not attain high office, the Han Shu records state that his career was still distinguished through the same call to service as Gongsun Hong.
In the legendarium of the Hanshu, collecting Dong's interpretation of Confucian texts from the very beginning of his employment, despite banishing him, Gongsun is said to have preferred his teachings to that of a now largely unknown Scholar Jiang of Xiaqiu.
Ban Gu, at least as representative of the Hanshu, repeatedly asserts Gongsun as responsible for Dong's banishment to Jiaoxi, as well as the death of Zhufu Yan.
[22][23] As memorialized in Sima Qian's The Collected Biographies of Ru (which he did not necessarily write himself), Gongsun Hong recommended that highly talented young men be selected to train at an imperial academy.
Often mentioned together in the Shiji, Gongsun sang the praises of legal clerk Zhang Tang, whose policies needed legitimation, thereby strengthening each other's positions.
[28] According to the Taiping Yulan, Gongsun also wrote a highly valuable book on Xing-Ming (personnel selection), the doctrine of Shen Buhai, that may have been extant as late as the tenth century.
Eliminating their enemies through execution or transfer, they began what may be termed a political revolution putting a temporary end to group interests in the court, consolidating it with the death of Liu An in Huainan.
[36] Despite his political orientation, because he insisted on the value of trust over either law, rewards or penalties, Professor Griet Vankeerberghen considers Gongsun still reminiscent of Huang-Lao ideology like that of the Daoistic Huainanzi, the book of his opponents.
Pledging allegiance to the Emperor, he was innovative in defining absolutism in moral terms, espousing a conception of loyalty at odds with the times, and new standards of conduct to go with it.
[38] Following Gongsun, scholars "took to supporting monarchical power",[39] he and Zhang Tang achieving "nothing less than a tilting of the axis of the conventional moral compass toward a more legal-centric orientation.
[42] Many were willing to follow Gongsun, while notable contemporaries like Dong Zhongshu, Ji An and historiographer Sima Qian called him and Zhang Tang flatterers and deceitful hypocrites, Gongsun receiving high salary while wearing simple clothes, and appearing lenient while inwardly uncompromising ("a suspicious man, outwardly magnanimous but inwardly scheming... he pretended to be friendly but repaid all wrongs" -Sima Qian), and accused him of subverting Confucianism.
[44] Sinologist Homer H. Dubs considered him "admirable in personal conduct, able in disputation, capable in legal matters, and an ornament to scholarship",[39] while Tu Weiming calls him and Dong the heirs of Shusun Tong.