University of Virginia Library

How Wang Mang secured unprecedented honors and popularity

No sooner had Wang Mang established his followers in the bureaucracy
than he proceeded to seek for fame and popular support. The method he
employed was an ingenious use of a Confucian principle: the virtue of
yielding to others. He induced his followers to demand certain honors
for him from the throne and then systematically refused those honors.
The custom of first refusing great honors had long been used. Emperor

Kao refused the throne thrice when it was offered to him (Mh II, 380).
Emperor Wen refused it five times (HS 4: 4a). Emperor Ai thought it
best to refuse at first (11: 1b). Wang Mang excelled them all in humility
by refusing, not at merely five times, but firmly and stubbornly.

Confucian tradition contained the statement that when the Duke of
Chou, so honored by Confucius and his followers, was regent for the
infant King Ch'eng, someone from the Yüeh-shang brought a white
pheasant as tribute. Wang Mang, who in his youth had made a thorough
study of Confucianism and its traditions, had the officials in the southernmost
Chinese commandery reminded of this fact, and, at the first New
Year's court of the new reign, some persons who called themselves Yüeh-shang
accordingly appeared with an albino pheasant. No Chinese or
member of the Office for Interpreting (Yi-guan) at the court could understand
their language, so that it had to be translated by a succession of
interpreters before it could be rendered into Chinese. To such distant
regions had Wang Mang's virtue penetrated!

It made quite a stir at the court. The Confucians were pleased to
recognize this obscure tradition, and the courtiers likened Wang Mang
to Ho Kuang, who had so nobly conducted the dynasty through the
minority of Emperors Chao and Hsüan, and to the Duke of Chou himself.
Thus was confirmed Mencius' statement (IV, B, i, 3) that at
intervals of a thousand years, like sages appear. When the Grand Empress
Dowager hinted her suspicions, the courtiers had the opportunity
of lauding Wang Mang to the skies, and proposed that Wang Mang
should be given the title of Duke Giving Tranquillity to the Han Dynasty.
At that time, the two highest existing noble titles were King and Marquis.
The title of king was given only to sons of emperors and their heirs who
succeeded them. Outside the Liu clan there were no kings. The Han
dynasty had not previously enfeoffed any dukes, so that this title elevated
Wang Mang above all the other nobles except the dozen-odd kings.
When Wang Mang insistently refused this honor, keeping to his bed in
order to avoid it, and the petitioners insisted that it should be granted
to him, the Grand Empress Dowager was advised and forced to do as
Wang Mang had planned: to grant high honors to Wang Mang's associates,
K'ung Kuang, Wang Shun4b, Chen Feng, and Chen Han, and then
to grant still higher honors to Wang Mang, before he could be induced to
rise and accept his title. He still however refused some of her grants,
and advised her instead to bestow titles and grants upon members of the
imperial clan and common people. Thus Wang Mang, by the simple
device of obdurantly refusing honors, was enabled, without seeming to

take the initiative, to secure important grants for his followers and also
to avoid the jealousy of the imperial clan and people by having additional
grants bestowed upon them. A more effective means to popularity could
hardly have been found.

When this scheme had been so successful, Wang Mang sought for
plenary power in the government. He again hinted his desires to his
associates. At their suggestions, the Grand Empress Dowager, who did
not want to be disturbed by the details of government, easily granted to
Wang Mang full authority to decide all except the most important matters,
such as enfeoffments to noble titles. She probably thought that
this grant would make no practical difference in the government. Thus
Wang Mang controlled the whole administration by right as well as in
practise. He responded by having the Grand Empress Dowager make a
great grant to the poor people and then lauding her extravagantly for it.

In order to make himself a close relative of the reigning emperor, thus
securing his position in case the Grand Empress Dowager should die,
Wang Mang next planned to marry his daughter to the boy Emperor.
Again he proceeded by indirection. He first proposed that the Emperor
be married, in order that the imperial line be continued. The Grand
Empress Dowager agreed, and ordered the presentation of suitable girls.
It was the custom that the mother of the Emperor should choose his wife.
The Grand Empress Dowager, who was the young Emperor's legal
mother, did not approve of her nephew too whole-heartedly; Wang Mang
was afraid that she would pass over his own daughter, so called attention
to this girl by publicly refusing to offer her under a plea of humility.
The Grand Empress Dowager really opposed the match in her heart and
seems to have thought it would be a good thing to check his growing
power by putting another clan in power, for she issued an edict withdrawing
all girls of the Wang clan from the competition.

But Wang Mang had become too popular. His daughter was of the
right age; he outranked all other nobles in the empire, except those of
the Liu clan, whose daughters could not be espoused because they bore
the same surname as the Emperor; and he had acquired a great fame
through his distribution of favors and grants to the people. It was then
the custom that any one could come to the imperial palace and present
petitions advising the ruler. Many families of those who hoped to enter
the bureaucracy had moved to the capital commanderies, in order to study
at the Imperial University or with the many Confucian masters who had
congregated there, so that there was probably a larger proportion of
literate persons in that region than elsewhere in the empire. These

people hoped to attract the attention of the ministers and so attain office.
Since Wang Mang controlled the giving of offices, and the proposal suited
them, these people crowded to the portals of the Grand Empress Dowager
at the rate of more than a thousand a day, offering petitions which protested
that the daughter of Wang Mang was the most suitable person to
be made the Empress. The ministers and grandees prostrated themselves
in her courts, making similar requests. Wang Mang politely sent
his personal attendants to turn them away, but the petitioners naturally
paid no attention. Thus popular opinion, mobilized by Wang Mang's
refusal, forced the Grand Empress Dowager to discontinue the competition
among the girls and select Wang Mang's daughter. The other
families were placated by selecting eleven of their girls as imperial concubines.
It was an outstanding victory of intrigue, directed by a master
mind, in which Wang Mang completely outmaneuvered his great-aunt.

There was a Confucian tradition that in Chou times, when the Son of
Heaven took a wife from a noble whose state was small, the Son of
Heaven augmented that noble's fief to be at least a hundred li square, i.e.,
nine million mou or over four hundred thousand acres. A sycophant
marquis of the Liu clan accordingly memorialized that Wang Mang's fief
should be augmented to that size, and the courtiers added that he should
be given two hundred million cash as a betrothal present. He declined
both presents, accepting only forty million cash, and distributing most
of that among the new imperial concubines. Then the courtiers said that
he had not received enough, so he was given a further sum, whereupon
he distributed part of it among his own poor relatives. After the marriage
had been celebrated, the ministers likened Wang Mang to Yi Yin
and the Duke of Chou, the two greatest ministers in ancient history, and
proposed that Wang Mang be given the same title as they had had, that
his sons be ennobled, and he be given honors similar to those the Duke
of Chou had received. Wang Mang again refused, the matter was again
debated by the ministers, and petitions again poured in from the people.
His two remaining sons were made marquises, his mother was made a
Baronetess, he was given an official title higher than any other previous
minister, and a special seal with the title, "Ruling Governor, Grand
Tutor, and Commander-in-chief." The other ministers were ordered to
address him in special humble terms. Ten chariots and a host of elite
troops and attendants formed his train. Altogether some 487,572 persons
signed petitions, urging that he be honored. (This number was likely
taken from a memorial to the Grand Empress Dowager, summarizing
these documents.) Thus Wang Mang, by a showy Confucian humility

and generosity, captured the imaginations of the people. No one before
his time and few since then have excited so much enthusiasm.