Armed with weapons and a monopoly on the use of legal force, one man (or woman) can do a world of harm. Add ego, arrogance, and dictatorship to the mix, and the harm can spread far and wide, even across generations. One tyrant’s fancies become curses upon society, the effects of which may linger long after the tyrant is gone.
This is an iron law of the human experience. The ancient Chinese emperor Wang Mang provides a prime example.
If you’re curious what an absolute dictatorship looks like—one of the very worst in all history—this is a story you’ll want to read.
While the family dynasties that ruled China for four millennia often lasted dozens or even hundreds of years, the Xin Dynasty endured a mere 14—from 9 AD to 23 AD. Wang Mang was its only emperor. As Emperor Augustus governed in Rome and Jesus Christ was a boy in Nazareth, Wang rose to power in the Han Dynasty as a senior official.
After the death of a boy emperor for whom Wang acted as regent, Wang seized the throne and ordered the murder of many potential opponents. His time at the top proved to be a brief and bloody interregnum. Wang’s overthrow and the restoration of the Han Dynasty followed his appalling reign.
Despite living nearly 2,000 years before Karl Marx, Wang was a Marxist. He nationalized the country’s gold supply. He imposed draconian regulations on commerce and money lending. After declaring that all land belonged to the head of state, he confiscated and redistributed much of it to the poor (who often did not know how to manage it) and the politically well-connected (ditto). He imposed new taxes on virtually everything; indeed, he may have been the first ruler in history to impose an income tax. Citizens were required to testify annually regarding their income, and, if they provided false information, they were sentenced to a minimum of a year in prison. He introduced a new bureaucracy to enforce price controls. And finally, he waged constant warfare against rebels at home and enemies abroad.
Sometimes Wang Mang is credited with abolishing slavery. He did precisely that in the year of his coup d’etat (9 AD), not for humanitarian reasons but as a strategic move to weaken the farmers whose land he was about to confiscate. Just three years later, in 12 AD, Wang reinstituted slavery. It would remain legal until it was abolished early in the 20th century, only to be reinstituted under other names by the Communist Party, beginning with Mao Zedong. (Don’t forget the Uighurs, who endure a harsh life in what amounts to slave labor camps in China at this very moment.)
Pan Ku, a scholar of Chinese history, contends in his exhaustive book, The History of the Former Han Dynasty (translated into English in 1938 by Homer H. Dubs), that before rebels executed Wang Mang in 23 AD, “the population of the empire had been reduced by half.” He likens the widespread resistance caused by Wang’s measures to a chronic disease:
When the wealthy were not able to protect themselves and the poor had no way of keeping themselves alive, they arose and became thieves and robbers. Since they relied upon the vastness of the mountains and marshes for refuge, the officials were not able to capture them…and the infection spread daily. Thereupon in the various regions, often by the tens of thousands they battled and died, or were taken captive at the borders by the various barbarians, fell into criminal punishment, or suffered from famine and epidemics, so that people ate each other.
All that would be bad enough on its own. But Wang destroyed the monetary system as well. For generations, the Chinese people had used wu zhu coins (some made of bronze, others of gold) produced by the Han Dynasty—round coins with a square hole in the middle. Wang suspended the minting of wu zhu coins, banned their use, and then flooded the market with a complex and bewildering array of cheap fiat coinage composed of baser metals and even tortoise and cowrie shells.
Historian Richard von Glahn reports in The Economic History of China that Wang’s policies “drove sound coin and gold out of circulation, unleashing rampant inflation and severely disrupting commerce and industrial production.” That’s Gresham’s Law in action, 15 centuries before Gresham. The economic confusion and chaos it produced led to mass protests and strikes by workers and shopkeepers. People who were caught using the traditional currency were executed or exiled.
Among today’s numismatists (coin collectors), the coins of this brief period are highly prized. Heinz Gratzer and A. M. Fishman’s The Numismatic Legacy of Wang Mang (1971) showcases Wang’s unusual coins, which were shaped like knives and spades instead of the traditional round form. Gratzer and Fishman also note how power thoroughly deranged the man himself:
His actions before his accession to the throne are those of a wise learned scholar, gentle and generous, concerned with honor and piety. His actions as an Emperor are those of a careless, greedy, and murderous despot who disregarded the well-being of his subjects…His Confucian convictions are also thrown into doubt, as his actions can be viewed as those of a ruthless courtier and scheming political manipulator and not of a true Confucian scholar.
Throughout history, governments that debase the currency routinely impose edicts and penalties to force people to accept it. Wang Mang took that to a new level. Historian Robert Tye reports, “In order to try to force the spade coins to circulate, regulations were passed to have checks made on people at customs posts, fords, rest houses, city gates and palace gates, to detain those who travelled without them [emphasis mine].” For the crime of using unsanctioned currency, one was lucky to be executed, because Wang’s government also enslaved the culprit’s family and the families of his five nearest neighbors.
When Wang confiscated and nationalized the gold holdings of Chinese citizens early in his reign, he claimed it was “in the public interest.” In truth, it turns out that he hoarded a large portion of it for himself. Rebels who eventually killed him and sacked his palace found more than 150 tons of the yellow metal in one room after another. The people were left with the near-worthless coinage he had foisted on them. With the restoration of the Han Dynasty after his death, the old but reliable “wu zhu” money reappeared as the nation’s preferred currency.
The hatred for Wang’s crazed dictatorship was so great that none of his so-called “reforms” survived. Officials did their utmost to expunge memory of his horrific reign. His body was ripped to shreds, and his head was kept in a box by his imperial successors until it was destroyed in a fire some 300 years later.
Would anyone dare to argue that Wang Mang did not deserve his fate? Good luck.
Additional Reading
The Economic History of China: From Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century by Richard von Glahn
The Numismatic Legacy of Wang Mang, AD 9–23 by Heinz Gratzer and A. M. Fishman
Wang Mang by Robert Tye
The History of the Former Han Dynasty by Pan Ku
