Shang Yang as a Historical Personality and as a Symbol

Abstract

EDITOR’S ABSTRACT This article gives an overview of Shang Yang portrayals in four stages: from Han Fei’s sympathetic yet balanced assessment, passing over a variety of conflicting Han views, skipping through “the two millennia of vilification” to Zhang Taiyan’s (1869–1936) rediscovery of Shang Yang, and ending up at the Shang Yang fervor of the 1970s. Zeng shows how the figure of Shang Yang keeps popping up with a certain regularity, inciting conflicts about his legacy. He also argues that at each flare of the debate, what was really at stake was not a mere assessment of the long gone Warring States-period Qin reformer, but of the then current policies that needed to be indirectly addressed.