Wang Mang is both a lucky darling and a helpless loner.
It is said that he is a lucky darling, mainly due to his deep political background. Wang Mang's aunt, Wang Zhengjun and Queen Mother, is the wife of Emperor Liu Zheng of the Han Yuan Dynasty. This woman is not simple, she won the true biography of the ancestor Liu Bang, the wife of Liu Bang, the founding emperor of the Western Han Dynasty, she followed the example of Lv Hou, and during the period of controlling the government, all the ministers of the humerus in the court were replaced by his own family, and Wang Mang naturally got the favor of the god of luck.
The second is that Wang Mang is diligent and studious, full of economy, serious in his work, and respectful to people, especially to his uncle Wang Feng, who is in the position of the Great Sima, is extremely deferential, therefore, Wang Feng asked Wang Zhengjun to take care of Wang Mang before he died, so that Wang Mang's career is like a hanging, smooth sailing. At the age of 24, he began to be an official, at the age of 30, he was made a marquis, and at the age of 38, he became the great Sima. Suddenly, Wang Mang became an idol-like existence in the minds of all scholars in that era.
Later, although Wang Mang was demoted by Emperor Liu Xin of the Han Dynasty, he was temporarily silent for a few years.
In the second year of Yuanshou (1 BC), as soon as Emperor Han Ai died, Wang Mang's opportunity came again. On the day after the emperor's death, the Empress Dowager Wang Zhengjun drove to Weiyang Palace, took back the jade seal of the country, and ordered Wang Mang to serve as the Great Sima again, record Shangshu affairs, and be in charge of military orders and forbidden armies. Because Emperor Ai of the Han Dynasty did not leave any heirs, Wang Mang supported the nine-year-old Emperor Liu Yin of the Han Ping Dynasty to ascend the throne and govern the government by himself. In order to consolidate his political position, Wang Mang also married his daughter to Emperor Liu Yin of the Han Ping Dynasty and supported his daughter to become the empress. In this way, through a series of divine operations by Wang Taijun and Wang Mang, the power of the entire court was concentrated in the hands of Wang Mang alone.
In December of the first five years of the Yuan Dynasty (6 A.D.), Emperor Ping of the Han Dynasty died of illness, and Wang Mang established Liu Ying, the great-grandson of Emperor Xuan of the Han Dynasty who was only two years old, as the crown prince.
Later, Wang Mang felt that everything in the court was up to him anyway, and this fake emperor was also uncomfortable, so it was better to be the emperor himself, so he became the real emperor through "Zen Rang".
Wang Mang is high-spirited and proud. He felt that the time had finally come to realize his political ambitions, and he put all his ideals into practice.
A new broom sweeps clean. He first renamed the Han Dynasty founded by Liu Bang as the "New Dynasty", which opened the prelude to the reform of the New Dynasty and the New Deal.
The first "fire" is land reform. Wang Mang has a lot of beautiful top-level designs, but most of his top-level designs are not his own original, but are modeled after "Zhou Li", and people call his reform "Tuogu reform".
Wang Mang's most important reform measure was to nationalize all the land of the landlord and implement "equal wealth and poverty", with 100 mu per household. This is of course a dream for the peasant class, but for the landlord class, it has cut off the back road for others to get rich, and it has undoubtedly intensified social contradictions, and this contradiction is not the contradiction of a few people, but the contradiction between one class and another, that is, the contradiction between the peasant class and the feudal landlord class.
I have to say that this is indeed a reform feat full of ambition and pride!It is no wonder that some scholars praise Wang Mang as a socialist, such as Mr. Hu Shih, who believes that he was a socialist emperor before 1900. There are also many netizens who think that Wang Mang is a socialist traverser, because his ideal of "public ownership" of land is too advanced.
The second "fire" is abolition. After Wang Mang became the emperor, he immediately did another big thing. With a dashing wave of his hand, all 36 million slaves were emancipated overnight, and he declared that no one was allowed to buy or sell slaves and maids. This is another feat, this feat is more than 1,000 years earlier than the abolitionist movement of Lincoln in the United States!
The third "fire" is fiscal and monetary reform. Emperor Wang Mang replaced the market economy with a planned economy, implemented the "five equals and six reels" system, managed the five average loans and prices, levied commercial taxes, and operated salt, iron, wine, coinage, and mountains. At the same time, many kinds of currencies have been issued, and a series of regulations have been promulgated, but because there are too many types of currencies issued, it is particularly difficult for the market to circulate and use, and the people do not know how to exchange currencies at all, resulting in the entire market being extremely chaotic and the economy facing collapse.
Economic and political crises are superimposed, social unrest is like a sailboat sailing in a tsunami, and subversion is inevitable.
The final result was that Emperor Wang Mang was kicked by the rebel army with his head cut off and kicked as a ball, and the end was very tragic.
Let's go back and look at Wang Mang's helplessness.
In the process of putting Wang Mang's top-level design into practice, especially after the implementation of the feat of land nationalization, it was met with collective resistance from interest groups above the middle class, and the power of this resistance was too strong, far beyond the imagination of Emperor Wang Mang. Neither the army nor the bureaucratic organization under Wang Mang's actual control could contend with it, not to mention that many of the military chiefs and bureaucratic ministers were themselves landowners.
What is even more helpless is that it stands to reason that the peasant class is the actual beneficiary of the reform, and it is natural to stand up and support Wang Mang, but the fact is the opposite, the peasant class also rose up against Wang Mang, because they actually did not benefit at all, and Wang Mang's "five equals and six baskets" system lost effective supervision in the process of implementation due to the lack of supporting reform measures, and was ** in the middle In addition, natural disasters have been going on for many years, the market is chaotic, the economy has collapsed, and there have been continuous uprisings in various places, and the vast number of peasants are not clothed and hungry, and even the last retreat that could be sold into slavery was cut off by Wang Mang. In this way, peasants and displaced people from all over the country joined the rebel army organized by the landlords to oppose Wang Mang.
In the end, Wang Mang became a loner in the true sense of the word.
Therefore, Wang Mang is both a lucky darling and an unfortunate loner.