The New Dynasty: A Usurper’s Modern Experiment

In 2021, Wang Xiaole, a dual-degree graduate from a top Chinese university, couldn’t find a job because of the pandemic. While ice fishing in winter, he accidentally fell into a river. When he opened his eyes again, he had become Wang Mang, a twenty-eight-year-old palace attendant in the late Western Han dynasty. The man condemned by history as a “usurper of the Han,” yet remembered for implementing state ownership of land, abolishing slavery, and establishing a system of loans: a controversial reformer. The founder of Xin, a short-lived dynasty that lasted only fifteen years. This time, a modern man would write history. Armed with the knowledge from his two degrees and his foresight into history, this “Wang Mang” decides not to follow the same path: He knows that if he simply repeats history, Xin will fall after only two reigns because its reforms are too extreme and out of touch with reality. He also knows that if he does nothing, the realm will sink into even longer wars and famine. And so, a thrilling “modern reform experiment” quietly begins in Chang’an at the end of the Western Han dynasty: · At court, he feigns humility and eliminates the maternal relatives of the imperial family, while secretly founding the “Jing’an Bureau” and establishing an intelligence network; · Among the scholars, he wins over great Confucians, but lectures at the Imperial Academy that “Confucianism must keep pace with the times,” planting the seeds of ideological reform; · In the fields, he personally promotes new farming tools and waterworks, and pilots “farmers’ associations” and “work relief” programs; · On the stage of history, he meets the future Emperor Guangwu, Liu Xiu, while he is still a young man. Will Wang Mang win him over as an ally, or are they destined to become enemies? Political scheming threatens from within, while the Xiongnu press at the borders. The weight of historical destiny lies before him, and modern ideals await behind. Every step Wang Mang takes is like walking on thin ice: He must withstand the desperate resistance of powerful clans and the imperial family, while avoiding the mistakes that caused history’s reforms to fail;