The Everlasting Empire (24 page)

Wang Anshi’s ideology was a curious blend of moral idealism and pragmatism, of the quest for social justice through redistribution of wealth and an equally powerful desire to increase state revenues through tapping the burgeoning economy. His “New Policies,” launched in 1068, shaped sociopolitical dynamics in China for almost sixty years, becoming the most audacious political experiment in imperial history. Wang initiated a complete overhaul of the state administration in order to enable it to deal adequately with new demographic pressures and the impact of commercialization; and he hoped that the reinvigorated state apparatus would also promote social fairness through reallocating resources from the wealthy to the needy. Wang’s program brought about a radical expansion in the government bureaucracy and a parallel unprecedented surge in bureaucratic activism in all spheres of life. This was by far the boldest departure ever from prevalent practices, the hallmark of Northern Song innovativeness.
²⁶

Among Wang Anshi’s numerous innovations, several were directly aimed at reducing what he considered the disruptive role of local elites in socioeconomic life. The single most controversial of his steps was the introduction of the so-called Green Sprouts policy, which turned the state into a competitor with local elites as a source for rural credit. Normally, on the eve of planting or harvest, peasants had to borrow seeds or food from local magnates, and exorbitant interest rates sucked many of them into perennial indebtedness and eventual loss of property. Wang Anshi hoped to reverse the situation through loans distributed by officials at a tolerable interest rate of 20 percent. He explicitly stated that this intervention would not just help the peasants; it would also destroy the hated “engrossers” (
jianbing
), powerful elite members who benefited from the peasants’ plight, and whom Wang viewed with an enmity that a modern

-115-

observer likened to class hatred in the early years of the People’s Republic of China.
²⁷
This was the state’s boldest intervention into the rural economy since the cessation of the “equal field” system three centuries earlier, and it threatened to undermine the very foundation of the elite’s local economic dominance.

Other measures undertaken by Wang Anshi were similarly detrimental to elite power. Thus to enhance local security he initiated the formation of a new village-level mutual responsibility system, based on the
baojia
, a unit of five or ten households, headed on a rotating basis by a sequence of wealthy local landowners. From its initial modest goals of facilitating mutual control by the neighbors and providing militia training, the
baojia
soon evolved into a low-level administrative unit—one that could potentially facilitate the penetration of the state authorities into local communities, to the marked disadvantage of local elites.
²⁸
Other actions advanced by Wang Anshi, such as state intervention into commercial activities and his planned educational reform (for which see chapter 3 above), also angered many of the literati.

Why did Wang Anshi, who himself came from an elite family, opt for a radical antielite stance? Several answers suggest themselves. First, many of Wang’s policies may have been more detrimental to large northern landowners than they were to people like himself who came from the more commercialized southern areas. Second, on a more idealistic level, Wang, like many other “elite-bashers” from among the officialdom, perceived himself to be representing the “public” (
gong
) rather than narrow “private” (
si
) interest; thus his readiness to harm his own social stratum could have been considered a manifestation of his moral superiority and selflessness. Third, and most significantly, Wang was ideologically disinclined to accept the existence of an independent elite stratum. Rather, as argued by Peter Bol, he envisioned a new order in which all the literati— that is, all those who deserved elite status—would be ultimately employed by the state.
²⁹
Should this happen, China would revert to the Warring States-Qin situation in which there was no place for independent elite groups. However, this ideal, even if Wang had wholeheartedly pursued it, was unattainable under the socioeconomic conditions of his age; and, in any case, it was not shared by the majority of the literati.

Wang’s excessive activism engendered bitter opposition, which grew exponentially as his policies progressed. Some of his opponents, such as the eminent historian and thinker Sima Guang (1019–1086), were averse in principle to his assault on the wealthy, arguing that this stratum was essential to society’s well-being.
³⁰
Others disliked Wang’s arrogance and his attempts to impose ideological uniformity on the literati; yet others opposed some of his economic or administrative measures. Their specific arguments varied considerably; but most of the reformer’s adversaries

-116-

were unified by intense dissatisfaction with Wang’s infringement on the interests of their stratum. Wang Anshi’s policies generated deep political schism among the literati.

Amid bitter struggle between the opposing factions, the “New Policies” were twice discontinued and resumed again, peaking once more in the reign of Emperor Huizong (r. 1101–1125).
³¹
That emperor’s patronage, however, proved disastrous in the long term: when Huizong’s intemperate foreign policy caused a major military debacle and the loss of the Central Plain to the invading Jurchens, this fiasco was blamed on the emperor’s fascination with Wang Anshi-inspired activism, which was thenceforth branded as political heresy. As the battered Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279) tried to restore its fortunes in a bitter competition first with the Jurchens and later with the Mongols, its leaders were no longer prone to renew the assertive state policies that Wang Anshi had promoted.
³²

The cessation of state activism in the Southern Song dynasty reflected not just disappointment with Wang Anshi’s perceived failure, but also a deeper change in the literati’s behavior, dubbed by researchers a “localist turn.” This turn came as a result of growing frustration with the political sphere, viewed as corrupt, fragmented, and unable to realize high moral goals, and, more significantly, because of the increasing difficulty even the most brilliant men of letters faced in their efforts to attain office. As the number of examination candidates soared, ambitious literati’s chances of earning the highest degree markedly decreased, prompting many to look for alternative ways to secure their social position. New generations of literati sought primarily to enhance their standing and prestige in local society, while political activism was largely discontinued. This localist turn was duly mirrored in the realm of political thought. In the Southern Song, gone was the quest for increased centralization and deeper penetration of the state into society; to the contrary, leading thinkers sought to improve the sociopolitical situation through elite activism from below rather than through invigoration of the state apparatus.
³³
This change is apparent in the approaches of the single most important thinker of the late imperial period, Zhu Xi.

Zhu Xi shared some of Wang Anshi’s goals, such as caring for the weaker members of the society, disciplining the elite, and enhancing social order; significantly, though, Zhu Xi, who never attained high position, was much less concerned with the problem of state revenues. Yet what critically distinguishes Zhu Xi from his predecessor is his radically different recipe for attaining his objectives: rather than advancing the position that the state should remold local society, he believed that social problems should be resolved through voluntary action from below undertaken by morally upright and public-spirited literati. Having success

-117-

fully synthesized the ideas of his predecessors, Zhu Xi and his associates promulgated several initiatives that mirrored those of Wang Anshi but were not imposed from above. Thus privately established academies were to augment or replace the dilapidated state education system as a locus for the moral and ideological instruction of the literati; in place of the hated “Green Sprouts” loans, charitable granaries run by prominent elite members would provide support for the needy; and the “community compact,” a voluntary association of the literati (or of all the villagers), would increase mutual moral supervision, superseding the state-imposed
baojia
mutual surveillance system.
³⁴

Communal self-support had existed long before Zhu Xi; for centuries it was actively promulgated by Buddhist monasteries and lay associations; and it was also a part of the expanding repertoire of lineageoriented activities that had been proliferating among the elite since Northern Song days.
³⁵
Other thinkers before Zhu Xi similarly sought ways to strengthen communal solidarity and buttress internal hierarchy, to promote philanthropy and establish educational facilities. Zhu Xi’s major innovation was his successful synthesis of local activism with the notion of moral self-cultivation and self-realization of the elite member. Zhu Xi allowed the “superior man” to realize the True Way not only in the political realm, by acquiring office, but in his immediate vicinity, on the community level. In the Neo-Confucian interpretation, the mission of “ordering the world” could be accomplished not only from the top of the sociopolitical pyramid downward, but also from the base, the local communities, upward—which meant radical empowerment of local elites, provided these elites were led by upright literati.

Zhu Xi’s linkage between the moral realization of the “superior men” and local voluntarism came, as noted above, at the crucial juncture when more and more literati realized that official careers might elude them forever owing to ever-fiercer competition. By redirecting their public spiritedness from government service to quasi-government communal activities, Zhu Xi not only found an outlet for the literati’s sense of mission but also helped to redefine the nature of elite membership. If philanthropic activities were a manifestation of one’s moral superiority, then their role in perpetuating one’s elite status became as crucial as acquiring education and maintaining the conventional lifestyle of the literati. This encouraged generations of elite members to take care of their communities, and even to perform tasks that may have been economically disadvantageous for at least some of them, such as revising the tax rolls in their county to ensure fairer distribution of the tax burden.
³⁶
This latter example of extraordinary public spirit was a rarity, to be sure, but many other communal activities of the literati were not. The state thenceforth

-118-

could relegate much of its social burden to its willing aides, for whom the very right to serve the community was instrumental in preserving their prestige and status. Zhu Xi provided the throne with reliable, unpaid servants, thereby contributing decisively to the ongoing success of the imperial enterprise.

TENSE SYMBIOSIS: THE ELITE AND THE STATE
IN LATE IMPERIAL CHINA

As is well known, shortly after Zhu Xi’s death he was lionized as the greatest imperial Confucian, while Wang Anshi was relegated to the margins of history, to be rediscovered only in the twentieth century. But does this mean that Zhu Xi’s vision of the symbiosis between the state and the elite was thenceforth uncritically accepted? In the past, not a few scholars have answered affirmatively, arguing that in practical terms elite members safeguarded the imperial autocracy, while the state protected the interests of rich landowners. Others have proposed a radically different view: they averred that the elite’s relations with the state were characterized by persistent struggle, or even a “zero-sum game,” and that elites were guardians of community interests against the intrusive state apparatus. Nowadays, most scholars tend to synthesize both views: the relations between the elite and the state were marked by mutual dependency and cooperation, but also by competition and tensions.
³⁷
And yet, as we shall see, the general tendency was toward increased mutual reliance and dependence—even though not necessarily for the idealistic reasons envisioned by Zhu Xi.

Cooperation between the imperial state and local elites had solid institutional, social, and ideological foundations. Institutionally speaking, reliance on local elites was the officials’ default choice owing to the peculiar structure of the imperial bureaucracy. Throughout most of the late imperial period, the cream of the bureaucracy, the civil servants (most of whom were degree holders), numbered no more than thirty thousand men. This contingent was simply too thinly spread over the vast reaches of the empire to effectively deal with the variety of local challenges. A county magistrate, who represented the emperor and the civil service on the lowest administrative level, was in charge of more than one hundred thousand people, and was supposed to deal with multiple administrative, fiscal, educational, and judicial tasks, which, if performed thoroughly, would absorb all his spare time. Moreover, customarily he was not supposed to serve in his native province nor to occupy his office for more than three years, which meant that he was usually a newcomer in a strange area, the colloquial language of which he could not understand,

-119-

and the local conditions of which he rarely could learn in advance. From the very beginning, the magistrate was put in an almost impossible situation.
³⁸

To deal effectively with his everyday tasks, the magistrate had to rely on the clerical subbureaucracy, which was probably the weakest link of the imperial system. Originally, clerks, who stayed “outside the stream” (
liu wai
) of prestigious offices, were minor partners of civil servants; but in the wake of the Song reforms their position greatly deteriorated. Denied the right to participate in the examinations, most of the clerks could no longer hope to advance into the civil service, which made their position singularly unprestigious. Civil service employees normally viewed their clerical underlings as avaricious and selfish “petty men,” prone to abuse their power; this stereotype provided moral justification for the clerks’ lowly position. As so frequently happens, the negative stereotype turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy, as chronically underfunded clerks routinely had to extort funds from the local population through a variety of illegal means. This state of affairs perpetuated and aggravated the alienation between proud members of the regular bureaucracy and their clerical staff, which made effective cooperation between the two highly improbable.
³⁹