-1 BC- Emperor Āī dies and the throne is passed to Liú Jīzǐ
(Emperor Āī’s cousin (his father was Prince Liú Xīng, one of Emperor Yúan’s
sons)), who's enthroned as Emperor Píng (AKA Emperor Xiàopíng).
-Liú Xīng was a
weak and sickly child and apparently had brutal heart/circulation problems.
-However, Emperor Píng
was only like eight years old at this time, so there was a power struggle
between Empress Dowager Zhào Fēiyàn
and Grand Empress Dowager Wáng Zhèngjūn.
-It seems like Grand Empress Dowager Wáng ultimately ended up the
winner, as she was able to appoint her nephew, Wáng Mǎng (former commander of
the armed forces and a strict Confucian), as regent (as well commander of the
armed forces again). Fearing that his
time had run out, Dǒng Xián
committed suicide (due to all the drama that had gone down when he was rising
in power because of his intimate relationship with Emperor Āī).
- Empress Dowager Zhào Fēiyàn also ended up committing
suicide as well (since she’d quickly be stripped of her powers as well (she was
now to go by Empress Xiàochéng instead of keeping the “empress dowager” title
(but ultimately she’d be demoted to commoner status) by Wáng Mǎng).
-Wáng Mǎng knew that the only way to get anything done would
be to somehow take control of the court (which was extremely divided at the
time).
-In order to restore order back to the way things were back in the day,
he kicked out the Dīng and Fù clans and exiled them back to their ancestral
lands (among other things).
-Wáng Mǎng
also wanted to continue Emperor Yúan’s vision of restoring the old-school
Confucian values of the dynasties of old (pre-Qín), although it’s impossible to
know for sure what was really going on in his mind. Was he really a conservative traditionalist
or was he just after power? Or maybe
both? Who knows.
-Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for Wáng Mǎng to seemingly let the
power go to his head, and he began to manipulate people and situations so that
he’d start to be identified with semi-legendary figures of earlier dynasties
(such as the Duke of Zhōu (key figure during the early days of the Zhōu
dynasty)), and this really helped him further expand his power and influence.
-Soon, he was the most powerful man in
the land, and was very popular with the commoners as well. It was also around this time that he ended up
executing the entire Wèi
clan (except for Emperor Píng’s mom, Consort Wèi) and terrorizing, torturing, and purging anyone he
deemed a threat to his power (including members of his own family!).
-4 AD- Wáng Mǎng
marries his daughter to the emperor, so she becomes Empress Wáng (AKA Empress
Xiàopíng).
-5 AD- Wáng Mǎng insists on receiving
the Nine Bestowments- “ancient” and “traditional” (Zhōu dynasty-era) awards
that was meant to show off the power of the ruler: (copy/paste)
1. Gift of a wagon and horses: when the
official is appropriate in his modesty and walking in an appropriate manner, so
that he does not need to walk any more.
2. Gift of clothes: when the official writes well and appropriately, to
show his good deeds.
3. Gift
of armed guards: when the official is brave and willing to speak the truth, so
that he can be protected.
4. Gift of written music: when the official has love in his heart, so
that he can teach the music to his people.
5. Gift of a ramp: when the official is appropriate in his acts, so that
he can walk on the ramp and maintain his strength.
6. Gift of a red door: when the official maintains his household well,
so that his household can be shown to be different.
7. Gift of arms, bow, and arrows: when the official has good conscience
and follows what is right, so that he can represent the central government to
stamp out treason.
8. Gift of an axe: when the official is strong, wise, and loyal to the
imperial household, so that he can execute the wicked.
9. Gift of wine: when the official is filially pious, so that he can
sacrifice the wine to his ancestors.
-It’s also entirely possible that the Nine
Bestowments may not have actually been a traditional practice from the Zhōu
dynasty and maybe this was all just made up by Wáng Mǎng and his allies in
order to further solidify his power.
-Regardless, in the future the Nine
Bestowments would come to be associated with a potential usurper who was rising
fast among the ranks and wanted to add some legitimacy to his claim on power.
-5 (6?) AD-
Emperor Píng dies at the age of 15, apparently poisoned by Wáng Mǎng 🙁
-Under Wáng Mǎng’s direct “supervision”, the
infant Liú Yīng (a great-great-grandson of Emperor Xuān) was then crowned
Emperor Rúzi (AKA Rúzi Yīng (“Infant Yīng”)) although he wasn’t actually
technically “enthroned” (whatever that means exactly in this particular
situation) and his official title was actually crown prince.
-Wáng
Mǎng then started to make claims that he actually was of royal blood as well
once it was “revealed” to him that he was actually a direct descendant of the
Yellow Emperor, himself. It wasn’t long
after this before Wáng Mǎng forced Grand
Empress Dowager Wáng to name him “jiǎ huángdì” (“acting
emperor”). After this, Wáng Mǎng had his wife named as Empress Wáng (AKA Empress
Xiàomù (“Filial and Congenial”)).
-Wáng Mǎng being enthroned as the
official emperor kicked off his short-lived Xīn (“New” (boring name haha))
dynasty.
-One of his sons, Wáng Lín, was
named crown prince.
-As emperor, Wáng
Mǎng began to implement various policies (basically trying to “Make Hàn Great
Again”) that would have disastrous effects:
-He decreed that in order to take the empire
back to the old school all
the place names must be reverted back to their old names they had during the Zhōu
dynasty (which had existed centuries ago at this point!).
-He introduced sweeping reforms in terms of
private property, as he decreed that all lands under the Xīn dynasty were to become the property of the state (the
“wáng tián” (“king’s field”)
system). These lands would then be
redistributed among the population so that everyone would get their own plot of
land (which I guess is how the Zhōu
kings rocked it back in the day with their well-field system (jǐngtián zhìdù)).
-Here’s a simplified way of how it
worked- aristocrats were allowed to keep owning and operating their estates,
but their property now resembled a “#” in that it was divided up into nine
five-acre plots of land with the surrounding eight plots being worked and
inhabited by serfs and with the middle plot going to the aristocrats, who in
turn were required to give a portion of their earnings to the state (very
similar to how it had been with the Zhōu dynasty’s well-field system).
-He also abolished slavery!
-He also set up a new state agency which
controlled the prices of goods and also acted as a national bank (which offered
loans at fair interest rates) in order to combat shady, predatory black-market
loan organizations.
-He also implemented a “sloth tax”- if
you were lazy and didn’t clean up your property or refused to work or whatever
then you’d become an “employee of the state” (i.e. state-owned slave).
-Also, for the first time in Chinese
history, we see the debut of income tax (apparently, it had only previously
existed in Ancient Egypt and the early days of the Roman Republic)! Wáng
Mǎng set it at a rate of 10% for profits made by “professionals and skilled
labor” (whatever the fuck that means).
-Thus, it’s for this reason primarily why
so many historians trace China’s communist roots back to Wáng Mǎng; he’s an example
of an ancient form of socialism roughly 1,800 years before Karl Marx!
-Interestingly enough, Wáng Mǎng would
probably defend his actions by saying that he was simply reinstating the way
things had been under the Zhōu
dynasty, which he (at least on the surface) considered to be the “correct”
(i.e. Confucian) way things should be.
-He also demanded the recall of all
gold-based currency in order to implement his new system of currency- one that
involved 28 (!) different coins (made of various materials)!! Obviously, this was way too complicated to
realistically work. The coinage system was
also nonsensical because the value of the coins didn’t reflect the value of the
metal contained within (does that make sense?).
So, it had become a system of fiat currency as opposed to having the
value of the coins correspond to the value of the metal contained within (i.e.
the way it used to be).
-By confiscating all the gold in
circulation, the economy quickly began to struggle to function at even the most
basic level.
-The effects of this disastrous policy
would be felt across civilizations, all the way to the Roman Empire!
-Augustus Caesar had to ban the practice
of paying for the importation of silks from the Hàn dynasty with gold coins
since all of the gold was “mysteriously” disappearing from circulation!
-It didn’t take long for inflation to
grow out of control and counterfeit currency to spread in circulation throughout
the empire. As a result, the empire essentially
went back to a barter system since the currency system was fucked (although to
be fair, this was probably already the norm for most people anyway).
-Of course,
there were rebellions as well during this time, as the aristocrats/elites
really hated all of Wáng Mǎng’s
reforms, but Wáng Mǎng gave zero fucks and quickly stamped these out,
seeing his victories as further proof that he had the Mandate of Heaven.
-However, because so many aristocrats refused to go ahead with Wáng Mǎng’s
reforms, it’s possible that a significant portion of commoners didn’t even know
that any reforms had been passed at all! Thus, only a couple years passed
before Wáng Mǎng was forced to rescind his slavery ban and his king’s field
system. Nice try, buddy.
-10 AD- drama starts up once
again with the Xiōngnú Empire!
-Wáng Mǎng sent an envoy to the Xiōngnú chanyu, Wūzhūliú,asking for
them to return the seal which denoted their status (in terms of how they were to
be recognized by the Hàn dynasty) since his new Xīn dynasty was now in power;
thus, a new seal was to be made which would reflect this change.
-However, the new seal they issued to the
Xiōngnú wasn’t a seal at all- it was a badge (which was given to vassal states
as opposed to seals which were given to sovereign states)!
-On the surface, Wūzhūliú Chanyu
accepted what had been given to him by the Xīn
dynasty, but he also knew that war would probably be inevitable if this new
dynasty saw the Xiōngnú Empire as a vassal state rather than a respected rival
empire.
-He immediately began to build
fortifications and invite other Xīyù (Western Regions) nations/kingdoms/tribes
to join the Xiōngnú in preparation for war with the Xīn dynasty.
-Of course, when Wáng Mǎng found
out what Wūzhūliú Chanyu was doing, he declared war on the Xiōngnú Empire.
His plan- invade the Xiōngnú Empire with 12 armies (about 300,000
soldiers in total!) and then, once it was securely conquered, he would divide
the territory up into 15 vassal kingdoms which were to be ruled by various members
of Wūzhūliú Chanyu’s
family.
-So, Wáng Mǎng began to consolidate his forces along the northern
border, but he didn’t realize that in order to raise the kind of massive army
that he had planned for, it was probably going to take months, if not years,
and soon the infrastructure in these border regions began to reach their breaking
point due to the strain of the prolonged accommodation for these armies in these
areas (which weren’t really set up for this kind of thing).
-Similar shit was going on with the southwestern tribes/kingdoms of
modern-day Guìzhōu, Yúnnán, and Sìchuān provinces, where Wáng Mǎng had decided
to demote all of the chieftains (who had been granted titles of “prince”) so
that they were now to just be considered marquesses, which of course pissed all
of them off immensely. Who did this Wáng
Mǎng jerk think he is?
-MORE similar shit was also going down with the Korean kingdom of
Gogoryeo.
-In order to strengthen his forces for
the invasion of the Xiōngnú Empire, Wáng Mǎng forced the Korean tribes technically
living in the Xīn Empire to join his armies.
However, these tribes refused and quickly fled to Goguryeo, which of
course pissed off Wáng Mǎng.
-After the murder of Zōu (a marquess of
Goguryeo) was killed during a meeting with a Xīn army, Goguryeo had fucking had
it with the Xīn dynasty and began raiding nearby Xīn territory.
-By now, Wáng Mǎng was on
a roll with so many problems fucking up the Xīn Empire domestically, and on top of that had also now pissed off all of his neighbors (Goguryeo, the Xiōngnú Empire, the
Xīyù tribes, the southwestern tribes, etc.) too!
-The Xīn dynasty was in pretty bad shape, and it had only been around for about a year at this point!
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