In 1 BC, the Han Emperor quietly died, and the imperial power fell into the hands of the foreign relatives headed by Empress Wang, but all the foreign relatives in history who held power inevitably had a power imbalance, and the same was true in the last years of the Western Han Dynasty, thus opening the historical prelude to the "Wang Mang Dynasty Han".
Wang Mang's historical period coincided with the decline of the Han Dynasty, and the entire country, from the Gongqing Doctor down to the small people in the city, was eager to return to the prosperous era of "the rule of Wenjing", and all turned their eyes to the new dynasty and the new emperor. And Wang Mang is also willing to carry out drastic reforms and create political achievements that have left a famous history, but the final result is not satisfactory, and it also buries the new dynasty regime, so why did Wang Mang's reform fail? This also starts with his three major reforms.
Reform of the land system
In feudal society, the land system has always been a headache for the ruling class. Either the official suppression of land annexation will touch the rights and interests of the bureaucratic landlord class and thus lose the support of the powerful and powerful, or it will not suppress land annexation, so that the bureaucratic landlord class is satisfied, but the peasant class is overwhelmed and becomes a destabilizing factor threatening the regime, so that once the land relations are not handled well, it will seriously shake the basis of rule.
The powerful people who had firmly supported Wang Mang immediately changed their faces, and even some radical landlord bureaucrats raised troops to rebel, and wang mang had to abolish the Wang Tian system under pressure. It can be seen from this that the established private land system for hundreds of years is rock solid, and the conservative forces are entangled in the trees and deep roots, and they only regard Wang Mang as the defender of their own interests, so when Wang Mang touches the interests of the landlord bureaucracy, he will inevitably lose the support of the middle and upper levels and cannot promote reform.
Reform of the monetary system
Before Wang Mang, the Western Han Dynasty only circulated five baht coins as legal tender during the Han WuDi emperor period, but because the minting cost of five baht coins was very high, and the circulation time had reached a hundred years, so the five baht coins continued to depreciate with the changes of the years, Wang Mang in order to rectify the imperial finance, but also in order to increase the financial revenue of the new regime, he decided to issue a new type of large-denomination currency to try to replace the five baht coins.
During the Wang Mang period, the amount of money issued was very large, and the types of issuance were very complex, which seriously violated the social and economic laws of the time, resulting in the occurrence of hyperinflation in the market, coupled with the large denomination of the currency, so the phenomenon of private minting was very common, and once the market fell into the dilemma of financial chaos, and finally forced to stop.
Wang Mang's four currency reforms all ended in failure, not only failing to solve the intractable national economic dilemma, but also triggering a series of more prominent economic problems, and eventually the various currencies issued by the government were expelled by the market, and the country's commercial system was on the verge of collapse.
Government monopolies have been strengthened
At the beginning of the new dynasty, the new regime was facing considerable financial pressure, Wang Mang was keenly aware that the traditional agricultural tax alone was not enough to fill the huge gap in the finance, so he thought of the practice of Monopoly and Monopoly of the Industry by Emperor Wu of Han, and Wang Mang tried to emulate Emperor Wu of Han through the government monopoly to survive the financial crisis.
The New Deal stipulates that the grain, cloth, silk, cotton, as well as salt, iron, wine, coinage, and mountain forests in the non-governmental market, collectively known as the "five equals and six baskets," must be strictly controlled by the government, and the purpose of rapidly accumulating wealth is achieved by strengthening the state monopoly, which will plunge the already unhealthy social economy into a quagmire, resulting in the failure of the nationalization reform.
Wang Mang's state-owned monopoly measures have interfered too much in the private economy, which in turn has caused a serious overdraft of the private economy, triggered a huge rebound effect in the market, and also caused many small businessmen to go bankrupt, many civilian life is difficult to sustain, the voices of dissatisfaction and resistance from top to bottom have risen one after another, coupled with the ensuing natural disasters, the Green Forest Army and the Red Brow Army have taken advantage of the situation and ended the rule of the new dynasty.
The economic reform attempts of Wang Mang's period were very clear and reasonable, but he ignored the economic background and political environment at that time, and only relied on the enthusiasm of idealism to carry out retro-style reforms without careful planning. However, after the mistake of failing economic reform, instead of thinking about reflecting on the mistakes on the cliff, we are deeply involved in the mistakes of reform, which not only puts the state finances into a desperate situation, but also destroys the social economy and creates an irreversible situation, and the failure of its reform is inevitable.