Wang Anshi and the origins of modern public management in Song Dynasty China

Abstract

Wang Anshi (1021–1086) is well known as one of the greatest statesmen of classical China, but it is rarely recognized that his 1058 ‘Wan Yan Shu’ is one of the first texts of public management in the modern sense. This is because Wang addressed still current concerns of a civil service—selection, training, motivation, remuneration—often presenting solutions that are completely in line with today's perspectives. Wang's work is particularly relevant now given the current global state of public management—post-NPM but with no clear new paradigm having emerged.

Keywords:

• China
• non-Western public administration
• public management reform
• Wang Anshi

Acknowledgments

I am very grateful for the substantial contributions by Tiina Randma-Liiv, the discussions with Daniel A. Bell, Chung-Yuang Jan, Rainer Kattel, Andrew Massey, B. Guy Peters, Sor-Hoon Tan, and the research, language, and editorial support by Aziz Klebleyev, Ingbert Edenhofer, Yongqing Cong and Masako Kubota.

Notes

^* For this essay, I have used as a basis Williamson's standard translation (1935), abbreviated ‘WYS’, but I have edited this text based on the facsimile of the original given by Franke in his appendix (1932). I have added the reference to the facsimile after Williamson's page number in cases of direct quotations. Franke uses the text from Wang's collected works originally published in 1883, which in turn is based on a text from 1560, and that again on one from 1140 (Franke, 1932, p. 15). The (silent) edition of Williamson was made, while also consulting Franke's nicely annotated translation (pp. 15–51), by Cong Yongqing with Aziz Klebleyev and myself.

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Notes on contributors

Wolfgang Drechsler

Wolfgang Drechsler is Professor and Chair of Governance at the Ragnar Nurkse School of Innovation and Governance, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia, and currently also Visiting Professor of Public Administration at the Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing, China.