Emperor Shenzong of Song

During his reign in 1068, Emperor Shenzong became interested in Wang Anshi's policies and appointed Wang as the Chancellor. Wang implemented his famous New Policies aimed at improving the situation for the peasantry and unemployed. These acts became the hallmark reform of Emperor Shenzong's reign.

Before Shenzong took the throne in 1067, there was pressure on the Song dynasty to make economic reforms. The Song dynasty's rigorous civil service examinations rejuvenated humanist-oriented Confucian elite culture; in particular, the literati wanted to improve the material conditions of the people. Additionally, the humiliating loss against the Western Xia in the 1040s^[6] (as well as the unfavorable terms of the Treaty of Chanyuan) created, according to Sogabe Shizuo, a "perpetual wartime fiscal regime".^[7] Shenzong was particularly driven by his irredentist determination to recover the Sixteen Prefectures.^[8]

Immediately after taking the throne in 1067, Emperor Shenzong established the Office of Expenditure Reduction with Sima Guang at its head to improve Song finances. Sima refused and instead issued a scathing report discussing the immensity of the dynasty's financial problems.^[9] Indeed, defense consumed 83% of the dynasty's cash income, while the expanding and already-large bureaucracy was very costly to maintain.^[10] In 1069, after failing again to gain support for reform from the official Fu Bi,^[11] Shenzong made Wang Anshi the head of government and supported his consolidation of power and his New Policies.^[12]

The Seedling Law, Law on the Exemption from Military Service, Market Exchange Law, and the rise of monopolies on salt, tea, and jiu helped centralize and fully monetize the Song fiscal policy. The monetary policy of the Xining-Yuanfeng period (1068-1085) strongly supported the new laws.^[5]:94

Shenzong largely delegated authority to Wang until his retirement in 1076. An exception was when Shenzong advised Wang Anshi and Chen Shengzhi in early winter 1069 to abandon the Finance Planning Commission (which Wang had set up earlier that year) and instead rely on their power as Secretariats to manage the economy. Wang refused, reasoning that the Commission was needed to coordinate fiscal matters between the Secretariat and the Military Affairs Commission. He rejected Shenzong's proposal to have Wang head the Commission himself on the same grounds.^[13] In another instance, Shenzong proposed the restoration of the equal-field system (a system of land redistribution instated by the Northern Wei and used through the Tang dynasty), but Wang Anshi dismissed the idea as impractical.^[6] Shenzong's fascination with the revenue-generating potential of interest prompted him to invest heavily in a new price control policy, despite complaints from merchants and consumers about governmental harassment.^[14]

Shenzong and Wang Anshi also pursued direct military reforms. In theory, each commandery was 500 troops strong, but in actuality, the number was much lower and contained many old or weak soldiers due to corruption. Shenzong cut down the number of excess troops so that the entire army was less than 900,000 strong and established the Area Generalship System to improve communications, discipline, and troop levy efficiency. Meanwhile, the Baojia system was introduced as a village defense system intended to bolster domestic security and provide further support to the regular army.^[15]

Though the New Policies gave Shenzong a large budget surplus, they failed to achieve their goal of improving the Song dynasty's military. The Western Xia continued to inflict defeats on the Song and an attack on the Liao dynasty remained unthinkable.^[12] This was caused by continually low army quality, poor logistics, and overall poor leadership. The Baojia system, for example, did not produce troops capable enough to replace the imperial army.^[16] The military failures of the Reforms, to which Shenzong had devoted immense amounts of energy, contributed to his eventual illness and death.^[15] The New Policies' circumvention of checks on central power was controversial from the onset; both Fu Bi and Sima Guang wrote memorials to Shenzong advising him to balance governmental function, respect the bureaucratic process, and not to support Wang Anshi.^[17]

In 1074, a severe drought afflicted Northern China. Many officials such as Han Wei thought that this was heaven’s punishment for instating the New Policies. This, along with the general controversy surrounding the New Polices and Wang’s own misbehavior regarding court factions prompted Shenzong to remove him from his post as chief minister in 1074. Shenzong nonetheless remained on the side of the reformers and retained Wang as a mentor. Lü Huiqing, a reformer, gained Shenzong’s favor and harshly opposed Wang while building up his own power base. His own misbehavior broke up the reformist coalition and Wang was recalled to the capital to replace Lü. Wang did not stay for long and an astronomical omen (along with further misbehavior such as pretending to be sick and overworking his son to death) prompted the distraught man’s permanent retirement in 1076.^[18]

Following Wang Anshi's permanent retirement in 1076, Shenzong took personal control of the reform agenda and launched the Yuanfeng Reforms. He first significantly expanded his personal power and used the domineering official Cai Jue to keep the conservatives, many of whom had been invited back to court, in line with the emperor.^[19] In 1082, Shenzong restructured the bureaucracy and restored the Tang model of a central government organized around the Six Ministries by creating the Secretariat, Chancellery, and Department of State Affairs to balance the departments against each other. However, due to design flaws, the Secretariat quickly came to dominate the other two departments.^[20] Moreover, the strict division of the bureaucracy, in which every policy initiative had to take a complicated route to be approved, was inefficient. With Shenzong himself as the most active policy maker, this inefficiency was largely unproblematic, but the reigns of the child-emperor Zhezong and the incompetent emperor Huizong exposed the redundancy of such a system.^[21]

The Finance Commission and Exchequer of Imperial Lands (institutions that predated the New Policies) were dissolved and replaced by the Ministry of Revenue. Shenzong made the Yuanfeng Treasury to raise funds for a renewed offensive against the Western Xia; although the offensive was defeated, the Treasury remained as a depository for revenues from both the New Policies and state-run monopolies. Both the Ministry of Revenue and the Yuanfeng Treasury exercised substantial control over Song fiscal resources.^[22] The Yuanfeng Reforms were likely inspired by institutional reform proposals made during the reign of Emperor Renzong of Song and a concern towards the growing power of the Chief councillorship, but the reforms' rigidity likely contributed to the autocratic nature of the later dynasty.^[23] Unlike the New Policies, the Yuanfeng Reforms likely escaped the conservative anti-reform movement headed by Sima Guang and Grand Dowager Empress Xuanren due to their Tang inspiration and Shenzong's hand in heading them.^[24]