The videos I watched became popular in ancient times

Chapter 108 Unity is strength
  "Wang Anshi's reforms were not only economic and military, but also related to employment."

"In order to cultivate suitable talents, Wang Anshi promulgated four policies, rectifying Imperial College, Sanshefa, reforming the imperial examination, and compiling the new meaning of the Three Classics as official teaching materials."

"Rectification of Taixue: It is stipulated that in addition to the chief officer of Taixue, Taixue will have ten additional direct lecturers responsible for explaining the meaning of the scriptures. The academic officers will be evaluated regularly and rewarded and punished based on their teaching results."

"Three Classes Method: Implement teaching in three classes, upper, middle and lower, with different levels of teaching. The imperial examination will be replaced by the school's daily assessment. Those with excellent student performance can directly become officials without passing the imperial examination."

"Reforming the imperial examination: the original examination subjects were abolished, and candidates taking the Jinshi subject had a range of choices. The Jinshi subject examination was divided into four sessions, mainly focusing on classics and theory."

"Compile the New Meanings of the Three Classics as an official textbook: focusing on the Confucian classics "Poems", "Books", and "Zhou Rites", collectively known as the "New Meanings of the Three Classics", as an official textbook for the imperial examination, to promote the ideas of reform, and to cultivate knowledge of the world for the imperial court Use talents.”

Ying Zheng looked at Wang Anshi's changes in talent and got a lot of inspiration from them.

It is extremely difficult for Da Qin to find a talent, otherwise he would not let Li Si go so easily.

Li Si teamed up with Zhao Gao to plot rebellion after his death. According to his temperament, Li Si would have been dragged out and executed long ago.

But he couldn't. There were too few talents available in the court, and Li Si's talents were well known.

It is precisely because of this that he gave Li Sidai the opportunity to commit crimes and make meritorious deeds.

Due to the high cost of studying, ordinary people cannot afford to study, and naturally they have no chance of receiving talents.

If he wanted to recruit talents, he could only recruit them from those nobles.

He has always wanted to make changes, and did not want to be controlled by those nobles, so he recruited talents from other channels for his use.

After seeing Wang Anshi's employment methods, he already had a rough idea in his mind.

He could refer to this imperial examination format and recruit suitable officials through the examination.

However, I am afraid it cannot be accomplished in a short time. The cultivation of scholars cannot be completed overnight.

After Su Chen finished talking about the main contents of Wang Anshi's reform, historical figures from various dynasties expressed their opinions one after another.

Most historical figures still have a positive attitude towards Wang Anshi's reform and expressed praise for Wang Anshi's reform spirit.

These historical figures were either emperors, generals, or civil and military ministers, and they knew how difficult it was to carry out reforms.

The Northern Song Dynasty was poor and weak. In order to change this situation, Wang Anshi persisted in reform despite the resistance of thousands of people. This spirit deeply impressed these historical figures.

Especially some of the emperors of the previous dynasties of the Northern Song Dynasty had various degrees of reform in order to make their country prosperous. Only a few of them could succeed in the reform, which shows how difficult the reform was.

Regardless of the success or failure of Wang Anshi's reform, it does not affect their praise of Wang Anshi.

Wang Mang: If I had Wang Anshi's assistance, and the monarch and his ministers worked together, I think we should be able to successfully implement the New Deal!

Liu Xiu: @王伟, don’t waste your efforts. No matter who comes to help you, your New Deal will never succeed and will only bring disaster to the people of the world.

Wang Mang: @LiuXiu, you rebellious minister and traitor, don’t be complacent, I will find you and behead you. Emperor Guangwu will never appear again in this world.

Liu Xiu:......

Wang Anshi: Anchor, can you now tell me the root cause of the failure of the reform?
  Wang Anshi saw that the rhythm in the live broadcast room was getting more and more chaotic, and it was gradually getting into a quarrel, so he hurriedly asked the question he was most concerned about. "As for the reasons for the failure of Wang Anshi's reform, our later generations of experts and scholars have summarized five points."

"The first reason for the failure is that the conservative forces are strong and the reformists lack strong support."

"The political reform restrained land annexation to a certain extent. At that time, measures such as land redistribution and tax reform had an impact on local powerful people and local bureaucrats, harming the interests of the big nobles, big landowners and big businessmen, triggering their strong be opposed to."

"So they joined forces to continuously attack the reform officials led by Wang Anshi in the court and among the people, and at the same time hindered the reform by refusing to implement the new law and sabotaging it."

"According to the analysis of later scholars, the anti-reform alliance composed of big bureaucrats, nobles, big landowners, and big businessmen at that time controlled 60-70% of the social wealth of the entire Song Dynasty. It can be imagined how powerful the conservatives who opposed the reform were."

"Although Wang Anshi's reform received strong support from the middle and lower landlord classes, it was difficult to compete with the anti-reform alliance in terms of overall strength, so it is not surprising that the reform failed."

When members of the anti-reform alliance across the country in the Song Dynasty saw the reasons analyzed by later generations of scholars, they couldn't help but nod their heads and applauded later generations of scholars.

The reason why they are extremely opposed to Wang Anshi's reform is because the reform is cutting flesh from them.

Originally, they could pay less or no land tax, but Wang Anshi's land equalization tax law promulgated by Wang Anshi required re-measurement of land, forcing them to pay a large amount of tax.

Wang Anshi's reform has put a knife to their necks, so naturally they must unite and strongly oppose it.

Wang Anshi's face was complicated, and he sighed deeply, feeling a sense of powerlessness in his heart.

From the day the reform began, he knew that there would be joint opposition from interest groups, and he had already made up his mind to fight the conservatives to the end.

But now it seems that he still underestimated the strength of the conservatives and ultimately failed to withstand the conservative counterattack.

He felt a little confused in his heart. If he could not resolve the conservative counterattack, his reform would still repeat the same mistakes as the original history.

Wang Anshi: Anchor, I would like to ask, have future generations of scholars come up with a solution?

Faced with the resistance of the anti-reform alliance, he was helpless and could only wait and see if later generations of scholars could come up with a good solution to the matter.

Su Chen smiled slightly and gave Wang Anshi a firm look.

He sincerely admired the reform led by Wang Anshi and tried his best to provide some ideas, hoping that Wang Anshi could get some inspiration and make the road to reform smoother.

"Mr. Qi Xia, a later historian, believes that the main reason why your reforms were able to proceed smoothly was because of the support of the working people."

"But your reform was only a reform based on consolidating feudal rule. It did not unite the people and lacked a solid social foundation. Therefore, the reform ultimately failed."

"So the anchor suggests that you consider the people at the bottom of society and unite them. Only in this way can you defeat the anti-reform alliance."

Wang Anshi was shocked when he heard this, as if he understood something, but he couldn't explain it specifically.

He lowered his head in deep thought and murmured to himself, thinking about the words 'unite the people'.

He didn't know why, but he felt an inexplicable palpitation in his heart despite the fact that these five words had an extraordinary power.

(End of this chapter)