An example of sailing against the current in the historical era

The new dynasty established by Wang Mang believed in Confucianism. He believes that only when the world returns to the era of propriety before Confucius declared that "propriety collapses and music breaks down" can political integrity and harmony be realized. Therefore, after Wang Mang proclaimed himself emperor, he tried to realize his idea of governing the country and keeping the country safe by restoring ancient ways to the ritual system of the Western Zhou Dynasty, so he imitated the system of the Zhou Dynasty and began to implement the New Deal, which was called "Wang Mang's restructuring" in history. However, because these policies only seek retro, many of them are contrary to the actual situation, and the means and methods are incorrect when they are implemented. After fierce opposition, they tried to enforce it through harsh laws, so that countless governors, officials and even ordinary people were severely punished for violating laws and regulations, which aggravated social unrest. The people suffer first and then benefit, and the policies are constantly changing, which makes the officials of the people at a loss, thus leading to the dissatisfaction of all the powerful people in the world.

Wang Mang also adopted a series of wrong policies towards the overseas political power of frontier ethnic minorities. He coerced the Qiang people to "donate" the land around Qinghai Lake and set up Xihai County, so as to combine with the existing Beihai County, Nanhai County and Donghai County in China to form the whole "Four Seas". In order to make this wasteland look like a county, it is necessary to force immigrants, so 50 laws have been added and thousands of criminals have been added to meet the needs of immigrants. For this Xihai county, follwed attracted initial dissatisfaction. He reduced the princes and rulers of Xiongnu, Koguryo, Western Regions and Southwest Yi who surrendered to the Han Dynasty from the original "king" to "Hou". It also recovered and destroyed "Xiongnu Khan Xi" and awarded "New Xiongnu Khan Xi"; Even Xiongnu Khan was changed to "surrender slave", and Koguryo was renamed as "Xiasentence Li"; So all ethnic groups refused to submit to the new dynasty. Wang Mang took the initiative to provoke unnecessary disputes and rashly decided to use force, which not only led to border conflicts, but also caused hundreds of thousands of troops to be trapped on the border for a long time, consuming a lot of manpower and material resources and triggering endless border wars.

Some policies introduced during Wang Mang's restructuring violated the objective laws, such as the "Wang Tian system", which nationalized the whole country's land and redistributed it according to the well field system. Wang Mang's intention to immediately eliminate land annexation was not good at first, but this policy violated the development law of feudal private ownership of land at that time and doomed its failure.