Even today, when scholars sit together and talk about Wang Anshi, they still have a big argument.

Because of the Xining Reforms, there will be a group of people discussing his merits and demerits.

But it doesn’t matter. If what a person does can be understood by everyone, then he must be very ordinary.

Just like what he wrote in his poem: I am not afraid of the floating clouds blocking my view, because I am at the highest level;

Or: A few plum blossoms stand alone in the corner, blooming in the cold.

It was precisely because of this stubbornness that he became a true lone hero in the Northern Song Dynasty.

Including Su Xun, Sima Guang, Su Dongpo, censor Liu Shu, Liu Qi, Sun Changling, Cheng Hao, Zhang Jian, Chen Xiang, Xie Jingwen, Yang Hui, Liu Zhi, as well as censors Fan Chunren (son of Fan Zhongyan) and Hu Zongyu, all opposed him.

Ouyang Xiu also repeatedly criticized the reform system that he was the main person to promote, and Empress Dowager Cao and Empress Dowager Gao even said that he was "a disaster to the country."

But as a prime minister, Wang Anshi did not back down at all.

Now we can see how advanced Wang Anshi's ideas were. Take the controversial "Qingmiao Law" as an example. Before the promulgation of this regulation, the court's policy for balancing prices was "reduce quantity when prices are high and increase quantity when prices are low", and the national treasury was always in deficit.

The practice of the "Qingmiao Law" was to convert the grain reserves in the national treasury into cost money and lend it to farmers and handicraftsmen at low interest rates to resist the high-interest exploitation of landlords, local tyrants and powerful people, while increasing the income of the national treasury.

The specific operation is that several farmers jointly guarantee to increase security, and then obtain capital from state institutions to use for farming and handicraft business. After the capital is recovered, the loan will be returned to the state treasury...

It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand it. More than 800 years later, the Rural Credit Cooperatives of New China adopted this system and it is still in use today!

In other words, this is the earliest prototype of the "market economy".

However, such a policy that benefits the country and the people was not implemented. After Su Xun impeached him, Sima Guang impeached him. After Su Dongpo impeached him, Fan Chunren impeached him. Finally, Wang Anshi was forced to resign. After he resumed his office, he took the initiative to retire because of the death of his eldest son.

Thus, the Northern Song Dynasty perished 40 years after Wang Anshi's death.

There is no harm without comparison. When Wang Anshi's mother passed away, Su Xun was the only one who did not go to mourn. He even wrote "On Distinguishing Traitors" to satirize Wang Anshi and his supporters behind him. After Su Dongpo became an official, he continued to oppose Wang Anshi's reforms.

However, after Su Dongpo was imprisoned for the "Wudai Poetry Case", it was Wang Anshi who rescued him regardless of past grudges. He wrote a letter to Song Shenzong saying: How can a sage kill talented people in this world?

Su Dongpo was able to save his life because of Wang Anshi's "one word".

At this time, Wang Anshi had already resigned from his official position and lived in Zhongshan, Jinling. He could have ignored Su Dongpo's affairs, but he felt sorry for Su Dongpo's extraordinary talent. Later, when Su Dongpo was reinstated in Huangzhou, he deliberately took a detour to visit Wang Anshi and put aside their grudges with a smile.

It can even be said that if there had been no Wang Anshi, Su Shi would always have been that Northern Song Dynasty official, and there would have been no more Dongpo Jushi.

After Wang Anshi stepped down, Sima Guang was reinstated as prime minister. The first thing he did was to abolish all the laws enacted by Wang Anshi, exiled all members of the reformist faction, and returned the land that the soldiers had taken at the cost of their lives during the reign of Emperor Shenzong to Western Xia without compensation...

Therefore, later generations said that the Northern Song Dynasty was actually destroyed by Sima Guang. He was the typical example of "scholars ruining the country", and the Yuanyou Party dispute continued until the end of the Northern Song Dynasty.

There is no "if" in history, but if Wang Anshi's reforms could be successfully implemented, the fate of a dynasty would be very different.

What is loneliness?

Loneliness is not about being alone, but being lonely at the top. People at the bottom are never lonely, because they are never lacking in understanding.

Just like Caesar standing on the walls of ancient Rome, surveying the world and realizing he no longer had any rivals, at that moment, he was alone.

Just like Wang Anshi, he tried his best to save the fate of a dynasty, but when he looked around, he found that he was alone.

I always see some fans of other historical figures coming to the Jinggong bar to defend their own historical figures. This is Wang Anshi bar. Please don't bring topics about other historical figures to this bar to seek attention, okay?

Any comparison, any explanation that the master was not really opposed to Wang Anshi's reforms, and other similar topics have nothing to do with the Jinggong Bar. If you really want to say something, please discuss it in your own bar.

This kind of topic can easily cause discomfort to this forum and to Wang Jinggong's true fans or followers of Wang Jinggong alone. I don't want to see this kind of topic spark all kinds of arguments in the forum. Of course, this does not apply to refuting those posts that criticize Wang Jinggong.

What Jing Gong did for the country a thousand years ago is admirable. For over 800 years, he has endured much criticism and been slammed with too much mud. It's hard to say his death had nothing to do with the conservatives' decision to abolish the new law. Personally, I believe anyone who sided with the conservatives back then who supported abolishing the new law is to blame!

I hope fans of certain historical figures will be careful. If they truly respect Jing Gong, they should stop talking about people who opposed his new laws/ideas or topics that have nothing to do with Wang Jing Gong himself.

A few days ago, I saw an article about the prime minister system of the Tang and Song dynasties. It said that before the Dali period, the highest rank of prime minister in the Tang Dynasty was the second rank (Shangshu Zuo Pushe). In most cases, the prime ministers such as Zhongshu Ling and Shizhong Zhengzheng were of the third rank, and the deputy prime ministers such as Zuo Cheng and Zuo Cheng and the assistant ministers of the two ministries of Zhongshu and Menxia were only fourth rank officials. Many people were not convinced by this (TV dramas and rubbish online novels are so harmful), and they all said that the prime minister was a first-rank official.

My thinking is that Jing Gong was appointed as the Vice Minister of State Affairs and the Imperial Counselor in the second year of Xining. Before that, he was a Hanlin scholar and a lecturer, which was similar to the position of the emperor's teacher. At that time, the Yuanfeng Reform had not yet begun, which is the so-called "Song inherited the Tang system". So Jing Gong's appointment as a Vice Minister was at most a third-rank official. Can I understand it this way? (Because the salary in the Song Dynasty was given according to the salary standard, before Jing Gong was transferred to the Vice Minister, he was a third-rank Hanlin scholar according to the Tang system. After the transfer, the Vice Minister was dispatched and had no rank. The Imperial Counselor (If the rank of "Daifu" is considered as his original official title, then he would be a deputy prime minister of the fourth rank, which obviously does not make sense). Later, Jing Gong served as Tongpingzhangshi, and finally became a prime minister together with the monk Han Jiang. If we do not count the additional official title and the title of Duke of Jing, it seems that Jing Gong, as the prime minister, did not get any promotion or salary increase. I remember that after Jing Gong retired, he was the Minister of Personnel and judged the affairs of Jiangning Prefecture, which was only the second rank (the Yuanfeng Jilu Ge said that the Jilu official of the Minister of Personnel was the second rank Jinzi Guanglu Dafu), but I don't know if this is correct.

My dear, there is more to this chapter. Please click on the next page to continue reading. It’s even more exciting later!