298 Neo-Confucianism program featuring administrative reforms to: eradicate entrenched bureaucrats, official favoritism, and nepotism; promote examination reform; encourage parity of official landholdings to guarantee an adequate income for territorial officials and to discourage bribery; support land reclamation and dike repair to increase agricultural output and facilitate grain transport; form local militia to heighten national defense; decrease mandatory labor service for the people The reforms pertaining to education and the examination system wielded the most significant effect In his memorial Fan petitioned for the establishment of a national school system aimed at recruiting and training worthy individuals for the civil service While devised more to meet the needs of the government, this system constituted the first genuine attempt to furnish universal public education in China and was a major departure from the prevailing social order of dynastic tradition One of his most illuminating suggestions was to discontinue the pasting of a piece of paper over the candidate’s name on the examination, a practice intended to ensure impartial evaluation by the grader The rationale behind this proposal stemmed from the significance that Fan attached to personal integrity in both teaching and politics: It was just as important to know the candidate’s moral character as his literary and intellectual abilities, and character could not be assessed apart from personal knowledge As a result of his suggestions, Renzong reformed the civil service system by dividing the examinations into three sections, with priority given to problems of history and politics, then to interpretation of the classics, and finally to composition of poetry WANG ANSHI (WANG AN-SHIH) The political reformation reached its pinnacle under the leadership of Wang Anshi, one of China’s most celebrated statesmen While he strongly believed that a return to the principles of wen would solve China’s problems, Wang had no interest in overturning the social order and restoring the institutions described in scripture Rather his strategy was to appropriate the objective principles epitomized by those institutions for his own time, making due allowance for radically different circumstances In addition, Wang was a practical statesman, not a social revolutionary or utopian, who was primarily concerned with the welfare of the state and only secondarily with the interests of the people Accordingly his initial reforms were geared toward the reorganization of state finances, with the purpose of engendering greater economy and budgetary autonomy At the same time Wang perceived, contrary to most Chinese emperors and statesmen, that in the long run the fiscal interests of the state depended on the basic economic welfare of the people and the construction of a dynamic and expanding economy Hence although few of his mandates were highly novel, his attitude was bold and visionary in the sense that he viewed reform as extending into practically every aspect of Chinese life, leading his program to be broader in scope than anything previously attempted Wang’s Xinfa (or Hsinfa, New laws) included a system of crop loans to furnish peasants in the spring with the necessary seed and implements, which would be repaid at harvest time This enabled peasants to avoid the clutches of usurers at a difficult time of the year, while generating revenue for the government from the interest paid on the loans In the Song, armies were maintained with taxes supplying the resources for employing police and soldiers To abolish the tremendous cost of these mercenaries, who were inactive much of the time, Wang created a militia system where each territory would be coordinated for self-defense and self-policing, with families grouped in units of 10, 100, and 1,000 arranged in a pyramid structure and taking regular turns at providing service This represented a system of both collective security and collective responsibility in each locale, as the members of each group would be held mutually accountable for the wrongdoings of any individual Surprisingly, Wang employed precisely the opposite method to realize the same goals of economy and efficiency in the performance of local government functions Previously the minor civic tasks, which were sometimes menial and often onerous, were carried out on an unpaid, draft basis Wang regarded this as a system that prevailed too heavily on individuals and families to whom the duty fell Instead of the draft services, which amounted in principle to a labor tax, he substituted a graduated money tax to “soak the rich,” from which funds people were hired to administer these official functions Although Neo-Confucianism is characterized by its many contributions to a spectrum of disciplines, it made its most lasting impact in the realm of theology, especially through its new metaphysics and the doctrine of human nature to which the former gave rise In formulating these metaphysics, known as the Learning of the Way and the Way of the Sage, Song Confucians confronted major philosophical challenges, including the need for a more coherent and systematic cosmology on which to base its conception of human nature and to defend the objectivity of values against the Buddhist doctrines of impermanence, emptiness, and moral