At the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, the great traitor Cai Jing wrote a desperate poem, recounting his eighty-one years of past and exile. At the time, Cai Jing was a powerful minister, but shortly after the new emperor ascended the throne, he was banished.
During his exile, Cai Jing brought boxes full of treasures, but no one was willing to sell them to him. Not only did political opponents in the imperial court hate him, but the people in the countryside also harbored hostility towards him. Cai Jing sighed: "Beijing loses people's hearts, as soon as it is this." At that time, he did not understand why he had ended up in this situation, but only felt that it was due to his desire for prosperity and wealth. However, there were worse prime ministers in the Northern Song court, such as Ding Wei, who even intervened in the struggle for the throne, and behaved worse than Cai Jing.
But no matter how bad they are, they are just fighting in the imperial court, and the people don't know about it. Only Wang Anshi's transformation made the people miserable and became a widely hated prime minister.
The reason why Cai Jing ended up like this is actually because his reforms have harmed the interests of the people.
Although Cai Jing is a great traitor, it is not easy to become a traitor, and don't think that as long as you are bad, you can become a traitor.
So what reform measures did Cai Jing do to cause himself to be in deep trouble?
To understand the background of the reforms at that time, we need to go back forty years, at the end of the reign of Emperor Renzong of Song, who appointed Han Qi, Ouyang Xiu, Wen Yanbo and other old party members of the Qingli New Deal as prime ministers. The Northern Song Dynasty faced serious problems at that time, but the financial expenditure was still barely maintained.
However, these prime ministers squandered the country's wealth during their tenure to build personal prestige. Pang Taishi had long pointed out that after Han Qi and the others served as prime ministers, if they were blamed, it meant that they had fulfilled their duties; And if everyone praises them, it means that they have harmed the interests of the country and pursued personal fame. It is a pity that these prime ministers were later unanimously praised by hundreds of officials.
Cai Jing's misjudgment of consumption to death plunged the entire Northern Song society into crisis. With the continuous increase of inflation, people's purchasing power gradually declined, prices soared, and the gap between the rich and the poor further widened. While it appears to be prosperous in the short term, it is actually built on unsustainable foundations.
As people's purchasing power declined, merchants began to feel the crisis approaching. The once thriving commercial streets have gradually lost their former busy scene, and merchants are facing difficulties in sales and declining profits. Many small traders and artisans are also facing livelihood difficulties, with their products unable to find markets and business increasingly difficult.
At the same time, a large number of banknotes circulated in the market, but their value continued to depreciate, and people's trust in banknotes decreased, and they began to convert property into physical objects to preserve their value against the impact of inflation. This has led to the rush to buy and hoard goods, further exacerbating rising prices and the imbalance between supply and demand.
Cai Jing's measures to change the law also brought a series of negative effects to Northern Song society. First, a large amount of coinage and inflation led to currency depreciation, weakening the economic power of the Northern Song Dynasty. Second, the consumption to death pattern has not effectively improved the living conditions of ordinary people, but has put them in a deeper predicament. The rich benefit, the poor are getting poorer, the gap between the rich and the poor in society is further widening, and the problems of social injustice and instability are becoming more prominent.
In addition, Cai Jing's policies also had a serious impact on the political ecology of the Northern Song Dynasty. He printed a large number of paper money through inflation, which not only caused prices to soar, but also aggravated the fiscal deficit and further weakened the financial strength of the imperial court. This led to the government's inability to effectively manage the country's economy and finances, and plunged the Northern Song Dynasty into a series of political crises and party strife.
Overall, Cai Jing's legal changes, while seemingly contributing to economic development and improving people's livelihoods, are actually based on false prosperity and unsustainability.