The Study Of Zhang Juzheng’s Dissenters Group

Zhang Juzheng is an extremely important politician and reformer in the Ming Dynasty, his various reforms prevent the decline of the Ming. However, since he came into power, dissenters never give up their effort to oppose Zhang Juzheng’s policies, even after he’s death. His opponents came from different fields--some are his disciples, some are political opponents, some are righteous people who feel disappointed with the political situation at that time.The targets of the dissenters are various, some criticized the Zhang Juzheng’s personal conduct, such as being autocratic and despotic, eager for power and position, too strict to others, corruption, etc. Some criticized his reform measures and statecraft, such as his "the Law of Uniform Taxation According to Farmland" and "Law of Assessment". In this paper, we made in depth investigation and found that many of these seemingly unrelated dissenterswere in fact related with each other at some extent. Some of them were born in the same country or province, which is called "Xiang Yi (friendship for the same homeland)". Some of them passed the imperial examination in the same year and shared a same teacher, which is called "Nian Yi (friendship for the same year)".While some of them are relatives, which is called "Yin Yi (friendship for relatives)". These complex social relationships made them an alliance for opposing Zhang Juzheng.The purposes of this group are not only for moral and conscience, but also for complex crony interests.The main point of this paper is to use social history methods to co nnect the fragmented opposition of individuals in the historical records with each other, then reveal the deep ties between them after group conduct research, and explore the intentions and motives of their oppositions. The first chapter, which contains two sections,gives a summarization of the group of dissenters. The first section defines the concept of dissenters, pointing out that the dissenters of Zhang Juzheng and his reform is a complex dynamic concept. The dissenters group is constituted by those people who feel discontent with Zhang Juzheng’s morality, working style and reform measures. These people are either scattered individuals or joint organizations. Section2summarized the four different relationships between the dissenters, namely relatives’relationship, teacher-student relationship, the same year relationship and geopolitical relationship. The second chapter describes the dissenters from their emergence to coming into power. Chapter2contains4sections, which depict the dissenters for political reform, dissenters for economic reform, dissenters appeared in Mourning dispute and dissenters after Zhang Juzheng’sdeath respectively. The third chapter points out three reasons why the dissenters appeared. First, the reform measures of Zhang Juzheng dissatisfied some vested interest groups. Second, the concept and behaviorof Zhang Juzheng cannot be agreed by some righteous people. Third, some politicians or scholars were just fishing for fame and credit.Based on the group research of Zhang Juzheng’sdissenters, we have drawn the following three conclusions:First, the negative impact of the dissenters’opposition tothe reform of Zhang Juzheng is fatal for Ming dynasty. Second, the dissenters’opposition reflects some flaws and imperfections in Zhang Juzheng’s personality and his reform.Third, history is a mirror that teaches us how to perform better in our economic and political reform at present day.