New Policies (Song dynasty)
The beneficiaries, the wealthy landowners, were commonly called jianbing zhijia, which has been translated as plutocrats, engrossers, or exploiters and described as "magnates who preyed on the poor and usurped the fiscal prerogatives of the state.
He began his career in the Song bureaucracy as a secretary (qianshu) in the office of the assistant military commissioner (jiedu panguan tinggonshi) of Huainan (Yangzhou, Jiangsu province).
He was then promoted to district magistrate (zhixian) of Yinxian (Ningbo, Zhejiang province), where he reorganized hydrological projects for irrigation and gave credits to the peasant.
Wang was first appointed vice counsellor (can zhizheng shi; 参知政事), a key position for general administration, and a year later was made chancellor (zaixiang; 宰相).
To do this, Wang advocated for policies intended to alleviate suffering among the peasantry and to prevent the consolidation of large land estates which would deprive small peasants of their livelihood.
[10] Today in every prefecture and subprefecture, there are jianbing [engrossing] families that annually collect interest amounting to several myriad strings of cash without doing anything... What contribution have they made to the state to [warrant] enjoying such a good salary?
Wang created new state agencies to manage wholesale trade at the capital and provide credit for retail businesses, turned private brokers into government agents, tightened the state’s control of foreign trade, and extended the existing monopoly on salt production to include much tea cultivation as well.
This information was written in a ledger declared legally binding for the purposes of sale and purchase, and the taxation value assessed appropriately.
Orthodox Confucians condemned the intrusion of state power into the private economy both on principle and because of the deleterious effects of Wang’s initiatives.
Critics charged that local officials forced farmers to borrow money from the state, turning the loan program into a regressive tax.
Revenues from the Green Sprouts loan program – which in its early years yielded roughly 3 million guan annually, or a net profit of 27 percent on its capital – were appropriated to finance flood control and famine relief and to provision frontier armies.
The state’s injection of new credit into the rural economy apparently reinforced rather than remedied the perpetual cycle of indebtedness that afflicted many farming families.
Tax receipts in coin rose by nearly 40 percent, primarily as a result of the monetization of labor services and the income generated by the Green Sprouts program; commercial sources, apart from the Sichuan tea monopoly, yielded only modest revenues.
From this time forward silver essentially replaced textiles in the Song fiscal system, and silk ceased to serve any monetary functions.
[23]The balanced delivery law (junshufa; 均输法) was meant to curb the prices of commodities purchased by the government and to control the expenditures of the local administration.
To do this, the Commissioner of Supply, who was in charge of collecting tributes from the six most prosperous provinces in southeast China, was made responsible for government purchases and their transport.
The central treasury provided funds for the purchase of low cost goods wherever there was a surplus, their storage, and transport to areas where they were expensive for sale.
[25] Who can’t afford wedding and funeralWill be granted loan for relief.Who faced loss in bad harvestWill be lent credit to continue undertakings.Surplus goods will be purchased;And sold out when it became shortage.
After 1085, the market exchange bureau and offices became profit making institutions, and bought cheap goods and sold at higher prices.
The security groups exercised police powers, organized night watches, and trained in martial arts when no agricultural work was required.
[30] The three college law (sanshefa; 三舍法), also called the Three Hall system, regulated the education of future officials in the Taixue (National University).
[34] As one faction supplanted another in the majority position of the court ministers, it would demote rival officials and exile them to govern remote frontier regions of the empire.
One of the prominent victims of the political rivalry, the famous poet and statesman Su Shi (1037–1101), was jailed and eventually exiled for criticizing Wang's reforms.
[37] The Green Sprouts program and the baojia system were not conceived as revenue-generating policies but soon were changed to finance new state initiatives and military campaigns.
With the emperor's death in 1085 and the return of the opposition leader Sima Guang, the New Policies were abolished under the regency of Dowager Empress Gao.
[17] With Sima back in power, he blamed the New Policies' implementation on Shenzong's wish to extend Song borders to match the Han and Tang dynasties, that they were only a tool for irredentism.
But incompetent leadership, a deteriorating military situation, and factional struggles at the court resulted in increasingly erratic fiscal policies and predatory taxation that inflicted enormous damage on the economy.
The rapid collapse of the Song state in the face of the Jurchen invasion in 1126 was widely blamed on the fiscal mismanagement and private venality of Wang Anshi’s self-anointed disciples.
The refugee court that reconstituted Song rule in South China after the fall of Kaifeng in 1127 repudiated Wang Anshi’s political philosophy and repealed most of the New Policies.
[42] Cai Jing remained in power from 1101 to 1125, two years before the Northern Song was ended by the Jin invasion and capture of Kaifeng, known as the Jingkang Incident.
