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.
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, Citation1932, 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.