Sima Guang
Sima Guang, courtesy name Junshi, was a Chinese historian, politician, and writer. He was a high-ranking Song dynasty scholar-official who authored the Zizhi Tongjian, a monumental work of history.
Born into a family of officials, Sima Guang displayed remarkable intelligence from a young age and quickly rose through the ranks of the Song bureaucracy. His early career was marked by his work in government administration, where he gained a reputation for his meticulous scholarship and principled stance on state affairs. As a prominent official, he strongly opposed Wang Anshi’s New Policies, arguing that they disrupted social stability and traditional governance. His criticisms led to his removal from political office when reformists held power.
After retiring from active politics, Sima devoted himself to historical research and writing. He spent years compiling and editing the Zizhi Tongjian, which he presented to Emperor Shenzong in 1084. In addition to his historical work, he advocated for the repeal of certain feudal institutions, promoting policies he believed would restore order and moral integrity to the empire. His legacy as a historian and political thinker had a lasting impact on Chinese historiography and conservative political thought.
Early life and career
Sima Guang was named after Guang Prefecture, his birthplace, and where his father Sima Chi served as a county magistrate. The Sima family were originally from Xia County in Shǎn Prefecture, and claimed descent from the 3rd century Cao Wei official Sima Fu. A famous anecdote relates the young Sima Guang saving a playmate who had fallen into an enormous vat full of water. As other children scattered in panic, Sima calmly picked up a rock and smashed a hole in the base of the pot. Water leaked out, and his friend was saved.At the age of 6, Sima heard a lecture concerning the Zuo Zhuan, a work of history dating to the 4th century BC. Fascinated, he was able to retell the stories to his family when he returned home. He became an avid reader, "to the point of not recognizing hunger, thirst, coldness or heat".
Sima obtained early success as a scholar and officer. When he was barely twenty, he passed the Imperial examination with the highest rank of, and spent the next several years in official positions.
Political ideology
Sima believed that civilization was created when the sage kings transformed humans from their original animal state using hierarchical order, property rights, moral instruction, and penal law. He believed that the problem with government was not in its structure, but rather in the people that ran it. He wrote multiple memorials detailing how to make the government more effective and argued that his views were in accord with history and Heaven-and-Earth. A static and well-maintained country would, according to him, last forever. Accordingly, he disliked commercial growth and preferred a recommendation-based imperial examination system.Rulers were supposed to only determine official assignments, reward achievement, punish failure, care about their servants, have good morals, and be immune to outside influence. On a wider level, a society with clear inferior-superior roles would be stable. His deeply anti-change perspective made him a political conservative. For Sima, to be ethical was to accept one's social status, and personal cultivation meant exercising restraint; indeed Sima interpreted the "investigation of things", a fundamental tenet of the Cheng-Zhu school of Neo-confucianism, as "restraining things". He also agreed with Xunzi's postulation that humans were inherently evil and wrote a work called "Doubting Mencius" that criticized Mencius' encouraging of the overthrow of hierarchy.
Under Emperor Renzong
After the failure of the Qingli Reforms under an unenthusiastic Emperor Renzong, the future reformist Wang Anshi submitted a 10,000-word memorial in 1058 detailing a system of comprehensive reform. Sima Guang did the same thing in 1061, but his proposals were more conservative.Under Emperor Yingzong
In 1064, Sima, then just a policy critic, raised the issue between performing rituals for Zhao Yurang, Emperor Yingzong's biological father, and Emperor Renzong. This issue would dominate Yingzong's reign and cause political gridlock. Sima himself believed that priority should be given to Renzong since he was the emperor's ritual father. Yingzong overruled this belief and, partly due to personal affection for his biological father, gave Zhao Yurang high ritual honors in 1066. In the same year, Sima sponsored Su Zhe for a special decree examination.Under Emperor Shenzong
promoted Sima to chief censor in late 1067. He opposed Shenzong's irridentism and favored a defensive stance towards the Uyghurs, Tibetans, Western Xia, and Liao dynasty. Sima hoped that the "barbarians" would commend the Song dynasty's good government. Since the end of the Qingli Reforms in 1045 did not end the Song dynasty's problems, factions developed around how to solve these issues. Conservatives like Sima Guang advocated for a smaller government budget and gradual reform. As such, Sima opposed the New Policies of Wang Anshi, which increased government authority and spending. Sima argued that more state revenue would mean less money for farmers and that the government was immoral for competing with merchants. Somewhat counterintuitively, he emphasized the unifying role of the emperor more than the reformists; he wanted the emperor to manage the bureaucracy and control officials with rewards and punishments, while the reformists wanted to implement new policies for new problems. In response to Emperor Shenzong of Song appointing him as head of the new Office of Expenditure Reduction, Sima released a scathing report that criticized the oversized bureaucracy, imperial extravagance, and an inefficient army and which called for imperial discussion rather than offering specific solutions. Shenzong quickly dissolved the office but continued to accept Sima's counsel.By 1070, Sima was part of the Hanlin Academy, the Bureau of Military Affairs, and the Council of State. Frustrated with Wang Anshi's dominance over court and despite Shenzong's urging for him to stay, Sima retired to Luoyang in 1071, which would become the center of the conservative opposition. This made Wang largely unopposed in government. Sima was disturbed by the New Policy's control over the dynasty's people and resources.
Sima had multiple objections to the New Policies. He believed that:
- The economy was a zero-sum game, so any increase in state revenue naturally meant taking away from the commoners.
- Wealth gaps were beneficial to both the rich and the poor due to the stability that such inequalities provided.
- The economy functioned best with minimal governmental intervention.
- Money was not distributed evenly across the empire, so peasants would struggle to pay cash fees for the New Policies.
Retirement
Under Emperor Zhezong
For 40 years following the death of Shenzong, the reformist and conservative factions alternated control over the Song government. Both factions engaged in "ethical factionalism" as they engaged in ruthless purges against each other. An attempted coup by the reformist faction intended to dethrone Emperor Zhezong failed and aggravated the conservative faction. Sima was an old and tired man in Luoyang and was reluctant to return to the capital, but Cheng Hao convinced him to do so. When Sima arrived in Kaifeng, a large crowd swarmed to touch his horse, and palace guardsmen saluted him as "Prime Minister Sima". He encouraged people to openly express their grievances about the New Policies.Sima was soon made chief councilor by Empress Dowager Gao, the regent for Emperor Zhezong and herself a staunch conservative. He and other recalled conservatives like Su Shi, Su Che, Cheng Yi, Cheng Hao, Wang Yansou, Fan Chunren, Wen Yanbo, and Lü Gongzhu formed the Yuanyou faction, named after the current era. Sima made ad hominem denunciations against Wang Anshi, saying: " was self-satisfied and self-righteous, and considered himself to be unparalleled by figures past and present." Sima also blamed the Song dynasty's defeat at Yongle City during the war with the Western Xia on poor, glory-oriented leadership, while presenting himself as the "savior of the dynasty". As the conservative leader, he headed his coalition to demote reformist leaders to lowly prefectural-level posts (while promoting conservatives into high positions and, one by one, abolished many of the New Policies. He also wanted to combine the Secretariat and the Chancellery, arguing that the latter was redundant: " serves no purpose except to double the number of clerks and multiply paperwork." The two departments would be combined in 1129. Cai Que and Zhang Dun would lead the reformist opposition against the conservative restoration.