Liu Kan

Biography

Family Background and Early Life

Liu Kan was a member of the Western Han imperial house and a collateral grandson of Emperor Yuan, Liu Shi. His father was Liu Xing, Prince Xiao of Zhongshan, and his mother was Lady Wei. Lady Wei came from an official family and was the daughter of Wei Zihao, Commandant of the Guards, elder brother of Consort Wei, a consort of Emperor Xuan. Liu Kan was born in 8 BCE, the first year of Suihe. On the ninth day of the eighth month of the same year, his father Liu Xing died. In 7 BCE, the second year of Suihe, the three-year-old Liu Kan inherited the title Prince of Zhongshan and became the new ruler of the Zhongshan kingdom.

Liu Kan was physically frail in childhood and reportedly had a bluish complexion. Later scholars have speculated that he may have suffered from congenital heart disease. He spent most of his childhood in Zhongshan under the close care of his mother Lady Wei. Because he lost his father at a young age, Lady Wei and her Wei relatives played a major role in his early environment.

Brought to the Throne

On the twenty-seventh day of the sixth month of the second year of Yuanshou, the wuwu day corresponding to August 15 in the source chronology, Emperor Ai of Han, Liu Xin, died without a son. Grand Empress Dowager Wang Zhengjun ordered Grand Marshal Dong Xian dismissed, and Dong Xian committed suicide that same day. Wang Mang, Marquis of Xindu, returned to the office of Grand Marshal, took charge of Secretariat affairs, and controlled the court. Wang Mang and the Grand Empress Dowager selected the nine-year-old Liu Kan, Prince of Zhongshan, as the successor. In the seventh month, General of Chariots and Cavalry Wang Shun and Grand Herald Zuo Xian were sent with imperial credentials to escort him. On the thirtieth day of the seventh month, Empress Dowager Zhao Feiyan was reduced to the title Empress Xiaocheng and moved to the Northern Palace, while Empress Fu of Emperor Ai moved to the Gui Palace. Fu Yan, Marquis of Kongxiang, Dong Gong of the Privy Treasury, and others were stripped of office and title and exiled to Hepu.

On the first day of the ninth month of the second year of Yuanshou, the xinyou day corresponding to October 17, 1 BCE in the source text, Liu Kan ascended the throne. He paid respects at the temple of Emperor Gaozu and proclaimed a general amnesty, taking the following year as the first year of Yuanshi. He was only nine years old. Grand Empress Dowager Wang Zhengjun ruled at court, while Grand Marshal Wang Mang controlled government. The court officials gathered in the eastern hall to receive Wang Mang's instructions.

Puppet Emperor

Throughout Liu Kan's reign, Wang Mang controlled government. Wang Mang styled himself after the Duke of Zhou; ministers submitted memorials claiming his virtue surpassed that of the Duke of Zhou, and he received the title Duke Who Brings Tranquility to Han. To consolidate authority, Wang Mang pursued a series of measures. He restored the clan registration of Liu imperial relatives whose names had been removed, thereby courting support within the ruling house. At the same time he created offices and attracted scholars and officials. In the second month of 1, the first year of Yuanshi, he created the office of Xihe together with Waishi and Lüshi. In the sixth month, he established posts under the Privy Treasury and thirteen regional assistant offices under the Minister of Agriculture to promote farming and sericulture.

In 2, the second year of Yuanshi, Liu Kan changed his name from Liu Jizi to Liu Kan in accordance with the ancient convention that the Spring and Autumn Annals disapproved of two-character personal names. In the same year severe drought and locust infestations struck the commanderies and kingdoms, especially Qing Province, and people fled their homes. Wang Mang, the Four Assistants, the Three Excellencies, high ministers, officials, and commoners—a total of 230 people—donated houses and land, which were allocated to the poor according to household size. Envoys were sent to organize locust control, and commoners who delivered captured locusts to the authorities were paid according to measured quantities. Sick refugees were treated in donated residences, and burial grants were distributed according to the number of deaths in a household. The Huchi imperial park in Anding was abolished and converted into Anmin County; poor people were recruited to move there and were given food, housing, land, and tools by the government.

In the spring of 3, the third year of Yuanshi, under Wang Mang's direction an imperial order initiated the formal betrothal of Wang Mang's daughter as the emperor's future Empress. At the same time Wang Mang feared the increasing influence of Liu Kan's maternal Wei relatives and strictly forbade Lady Wei from coming to Chang'an. Lady Wei missed her son and wept day and night. Wang Mang's son Wang Yu opposed his father's isolation of the Wei family and secretly corresponded with Wei Bao, instructing Lady Wei to petition for permission to enter the capital. When the affair was exposed, Wang Mang killed Wang Yu, exterminated the Wei clan branches, reduced Lady Wei to commoner status, and she died a little over a year later.

In the second month of 4, the fourth year of Yuanshi, Wang Mang's daughter was formally made Empress. That summer Wang Mang received the title Zaizheng and was ranked above princes and dukes. Wang Mang also proposed restoring ancient institutions such as the Mingtang and Biyong; Xihe Liu Xin and three others were placed in charge, presenting the Han as a revival of Zhou institutions. In the same year part of the capital region was divided into the new commanderies of Qianhuiguang and Houchenglie; the names of the Twelve Provinces were changed and commandery and kingdom boundaries reorganized. Wang Mang also sent Gentleman of the Household Ping Xian and others with large amounts of gold to induce Qiang groups beyond the frontier to offer territory and submit. Xihai Commandery was established and people convicted of prohibited offenses throughout the empire were moved there.

In 5, the fifth year of Yuanshi, Wang Mang received the Nine Bestowments and ceremonial treatment equivalent to that of the emperor. In the same year the court summoned experts from across the empire in lost Classics, ancient records, astronomy, calendrical calculation, musical pitch standards, elementary philology, historical texts, technical arts, materia medica, the Five Classics, the Analects, the Classic of Filial Piety, and the Erya. Several thousand arrived in the capital.

Sudden Death

On February 3, 6, the bingzi day of the twelfth month of the fifth year of Yuanshi, Liu Kan died at Weiyang Palace at the age of fourteen. The cause of death is disputed. Ban Gu's Eastern Han Book of Han, in the “Annals of Emperor Ping,” does not state a cause directly, but quotes an official document saying that whenever the emperor's illness recurred his breathing rose painfully and impaired his speech, so he had been unable to leave a testamentary edict. By contrast, Zhai Yi, who rebelled against Wang Mang at the time, and the later Gengshi regime both accused Wang Mang of poisoning Emperor Ping. Sima Guang's Northern Song Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance accepted the poisoning account.

After Liu Kan's death he received the posthumous title Emperor Xiaoping and was buried at Kangling, described in the source as twenty-five li west of present-day Xianyang in Shaanxi. After Wang Mang became emperor, he granted Liu Kan the temple name Yuanzong. Emperor Guangwu Liu Xiu later removed the temple name after founding the Eastern Han. Wang Mang established Liu Ying as Crown Prince, styled himself Acting Emperor, and later usurped the Han throne.

Liu Kan, whose original name was Liu Jizi, was a grandson of Emperor Yuan by a concubine and son of Liu Xing, prince Xiao of Zhongshan; his mother was the lady Wei of the Ji family. On the ninth day of the eighth month of 8 BC his father died, and in the next year Liu Kan, then three, inherited the princedom of Zhongshan and lived there with his mother.

On the twenty-seventh day of the sixth month of 1 BC Emperor Ai died at the Weiyang palace at twenty-five. That same day it was urged at court that the grand marshal Dong Xian, being young and not of the people's mind, should give up his seals and be dismissed, and Dong Xian killed himself at once. Wang Mang, marquis of Xindu, was made grand marshal in charge of the chancellery's business and became the real master of the government. In the seventh month the court sent Wang Shun, general of chariots and cavalry, and Zuo Xian, chief of the court of reception, with credentials to bring the prince of Zhongshan to the capital; on the thirtieth day the empress dowager Zhao was degraded to empress of Xiaocheng, retired to the northern palace, and the empress of Emperor Ai, lady Fu, retired to the Gui palace, while the marquis of Kongxiang, Fu Yan, and Dong Gong, the master of the privy purse, and others were stripped of rank and office and banished to Hepu. On the first day of the ninth month (17 October 1 BC) Liu Kan took the throne as Emperor Ping of Han, went to the temple of the High Ancestor and proclaimed a general amnesty.

He was then nine years old; the grand empress dowager Wang Zhengjun held court behind the screen, and the grand marshal Wang Mang conducted the government, the officials assembling in the eastern hall to receive his directions. Decrees were at once issued reaffirming the meaning of amnesty, forbidding the courts to bring up offences committed before it or to implicate the innocent thereby, and correcting the old abuses in recommending men. Wang Mang went on to receive such titles as chief counsellor and grand tutor and the nine bestowals, and his daughter was made Emperor Ping's empress, his power growing steadily. In 2 AD Liu Kan changed his name to Kan, the court issuing a decree that it was contrary to ancient rule for an emperor to bear a two-character name.

In his reign the measures of Wang Mang were mostly issued in the emperor's name: he memorialized for the restoration of Zhou institutions, the readjustment of offices and ranks, and used omens and prophetic texts to build up his own standing. The Wei family, meanwhile, hoped through the young emperor to win its own place, but Wang Mang restricted its honours and even put its kinsmen to death, so that the emperor bore him a grudge.

In 5 AD Emperor Ping died at the Weiyang palace at fourteen. On his death the sources differ: the annals of Emperor Ping record only that he died at the palace, while the life of Wang Mang says that at the winter sacrifice Wang Mang offered him spiced wine with poison in it, that the emperor fell ill, and that Wang Mang then wrote a prayer offering his own life in exchange, sealed it in a golden coffer and set it in the front hall, charging the ministers to say nothing. The account has been debated ever since. After his death Wang Mang set up the two-year-old Liu Ying as heir and called himself acting emperor, and in 8 AD he took the throne himself and changed the dynastic name to Xin, ending the Western Han. Liu Kan's life is commonly taken by later ages as an epitome of the last years of the Western Han: a child on the throne, without power, with the consort kin governing, and at length only one link in the change of dynasties.

The decrees of Emperor Ping's reign came mostly from Wang Mang's hand, and his step-by-step seizure of power ran parallel with the emperor's growing years. In 1 AD Wang Mang was made grand tutor with the title duke of Anhan and a great increase of fief; declining honours again and again, he let himself be raised ever higher by the ministers and the empress dowager. In 3 AD, when he would not let the emperor's mother, the lady Wei, and her kin enter the capital, his eldest son Wang Yu disapproved and made contact with the Wei family in secret; the affair came out, Wang Mang killed his son and destroyed the whole Wei clan as guilty of treason, and the emperor's tie with his mother's family was cut off entirely.

In 4 AD Wang Mang's daughter was made empress with the greatest pomp, a marriage that bound him the closer to the consort kin; and in the same year he received the title of chief counsellor, taken from the offices of Yi Yin and the duke of Zhou, with precedence over the princes of the imperial house. In 5 AD the ministers memorialized for the grant of the nine bestowals after the ancient ceremonial, and his power now stood level with the throne. In the same year Emperor Ping died at the Weiyang palace at fourteen, and was given the posthumous name Xiaoping and buried at Kangling.

The divergence in the accounts of his death has become a focus of later discussion of Wang Mang's usurpation: the annals of Emperor Ping record only that he died, while the life of Wang Mang tells of the poisoned wine at the winter sacrifice and of the coffer of prayer hidden afterward. Those who hold to the poisoning argue that Wang Mang already aimed at the throne, that the emperor was growing up and resentful, and that his death fell on the eve of the change of dynasties; the more cautious note that the sources were written under the Eastern Han and may already have coloured their account to favour its legitimacy. Whatever the truth, the imperial line was in name only after his death: the two-year-old Liu Ying was made heir and Wang Mang called himself acting emperor, taking the throne in earnest three years later.

In institutional terms the reign left its traces: in the emperor's name Wang Mang restored the offices of the Zhou, set up tutors and libationers, built the Mingtang, the Biyong and the Lingtai, and sent envoys through the realm to observe the customs — measures generally taken by later scholars as the prelude to his reforms. Of Liu Kan himself the histories say little, his figure being made up of his accession, his change of name and his death, and he is commonly cited as an instance of the child sovereign and the overmighty minister at the end of the Western Han.

Major Activities

Political Measures

Although Liu Kan was a puppet ruler, a number of political measures were issued in his name. In the first month of 1, the first year of Yuanshi, an edict allowed princes, dukes, marquises, and marquises within the passes who lacked sons but had grandsons or adopted sons of brothers to designate them as heirs. If the heir of a duke or marquis committed a crime punishable by shaving of the head or more severe penalties, the matter first had to be reported to the court. Members of the Liu imperial genealogy whose clan registration had been removed because of crimes were restored to the registers. In the second month, the Xihe office was created at a salary rank of two thousand shi to manage cosmological and calendrical order, while the Waishi and Lüshi offices were established at six hundred shi. In the sixth month one Hai Assistant and one Guo Assistant were created under the Privy Treasury, together with thirteen regional assistants under the Minister of Agriculture, each responsible for one province and for encouraging farming and sericulture.

In 4, the fourth year of Yuanshi, parts of the capital region were separated to create the Qianhuiguang and Houchenglie commanderies, the names of the Twelve Provinces were changed, and the administrative boundaries of commanderies and kingdoms were redrawn. In the same year, at Wang Mang's request, ancient institutions such as the Mingtang and Biyong were revived under the supervision of Xihe Liu Xin and three others so as to model Han institutions on those of Zhou.

Economic Relief

In 2, the second year of Yuanshi, widespread drought and locust disasters struck the empire, with Qing Province suffering most severely and large numbers of people fleeing famine. The court implemented extensive relief measures. Wang Mang, the Four Assistants, the Three Excellencies, high ministers, officials, and commoners—230 people in all—donated residences and land for distribution to the poor according to household size. Envoys organized locust extermination, and people who brought captured locusts to the government were paid according to the measured quantity. Households with property worth less than 20,000 cash, and households in disaster areas worth less than 100,000, were exempted from rents and taxes. Sick refugees were treated in donated residences. Burial grants were paid according to the number of deaths in each household. The Huchi park in Anding was abolished and converted into Anmin County, with government buildings and houses constructed there. Poor people were recruited to move, received grain rations from county officials, and after arrival were allocated housing, land, tools, plows, oxen, seed, and food loans. Two hundred residential compounds were also built within Chang'an for poor people.

Culture and Education

In the sixth month of 1, the first year of Yuanshi, Gongsun Xiangru, descendant of the Duke of Zhou, was made Marquis of Baolu, while Kong Jun, descendant of Confucius, was made Marquis of Baocheng. Sacrifices were maintained for the Duke of Zhou and Confucius, and Confucius received the posthumous title Duke Xuanni of Baocheng. In 4, Grand Coachman Wang Yun and seven others, each accompanied by deputies and bearing imperial instructions, were sent throughout the empire to inspect local customs. In 5, experts in lost Classics, ancient records, astronomy, calendrical calculation, musical pitch standards, philology, historical texts, technical arts, materia medica, and the teaching of the Five Classics, Analects, Classic of Filial Piety, and Erya were summoned from across the empire and brought to the capital by relay carriage. Several thousand arrived.

Frontier Affairs

During Emperor Ping's reign, the Xiongnu accepted Gu Gou, Later King of Jushi, and Tang Dou, King Who Came After Leaving the Hu, both from areas under the Protectorate of the Western Regions. The Han sent envoys to demand their return and assembled rulers of the Western Regions to execute the two men. A four-part agreement was then established with the Xiongnu: Chinese people who fled to the Xiongnu, Wusun fugitives who surrendered to the Xiongnu, members of Western Regions states who carried Chinese seals and ribbons and surrendered to the Xiongnu, and Wuhuan who surrendered to the Xiongnu were not to be accepted. Later, at Wang Mang's request, the Xiongnu Chanyu changed his name from Nangzhiyasi to the single-character name Zhi.

Wang Mang also sent Gentleman of the Household Ping Xian and others carrying large amounts of gold to induce Qiang groups beyond the frontier to offer territory and submit. In 4, the fourth year of Yuanshi, Xihai Commandery was established and offenders from across the empire were moved there.

Personal Relations

• Grandfather: Emperor Yuan of Han, Liu Shi
• Father: Liu Xing, Prince Xiao of Zhongshan
• Mother: Lady Wei, Empress Dowager of Zhongshan
• Adoptive father: Emperor Cheng of Han, Liu Ao
• Cousin: Emperor Ai of Han, Liu Xin, his predecessor
• Wife: Empress Xiaoping of the Wang clan, daughter of Wang Mang
• Adoptive son: Ruzi Ying
• Sisters: Lady Xiuyi Liu Yechen, Lady Chengli Liu Pi, Lady Zunde Liu Gezi
• Wang Mang: Grand Marshal, Duke Who Brings Tranquility to Han, and Zaizheng; actual ruler, later father-in-law, and eventual usurper of the Han
• Wang Zhengjun: Grand Empress Dowager who ruled at court
• Kong Guang: Grand Tutor and recipient of honors
• Liu Xin: Xihe official responsible for institutions including the Mingtang and Biyong
• Wei consort clan: exterminated by Wang Mang amid a struggle over political influence
• Wang Yu: Wang Mang's son; imprisoned and died after opposing his father's isolation of the Wei relatives

Historical Assessment

Han and Contemporary Accounts

• The appraisal in the “Annals of Emperor Ping” in the Book of Han states that during Emperor Ping's reign government came from Wang Mang, who rewarded the good and publicized achievement in order to exalt himself. It notes that official rhetoric claimed even distant peoples wished to submit and auspicious signs multiplied, but that Wang Mang could not disguise ominous changes above and popular resentment below.
• When Zhai Yi raised troops against Wang Mang, he accused Wang Mang of poisoning Emperor Xiaoping and made the alleged murder one of the stated reasons for rebellion.
• The Gengshi regime likewise maintained that Wang Mang had poisoned Emperor Ping.

Wei, Jin, and Northern and Southern Dynasties

• Xun Yue's Han Ji records the date of Emperor Ping's death as a bingzi day without taking a firm position on the cause; its broader narrative nevertheless depicts Wang Mang's monopoly of power as a cause of Han decline.
• Fan Ye's Book of the Later Han does not provide a separate appraisal of Emperor Ping, but Emperor Guangwu Liu Xiu's removal of the temple name Yuanzong reflects the Eastern Han court's negative view of the political order associated with Wang Mang's dominance during Emperor Ping's reign.

Tang and Song Periods

• Sima Guang's Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance accepted the claim that Wang Mang poisoned Emperor Ping, explicitly stating that Wang Mang placed poison in peppered wine presented during the year-end sacrifice.
• Tang commentator Yan Shigu did not challenge the illness description preserved in the official documents quoted in the Book of Han, but neither did he rule out the possibility of poisoning.

Modern Assessments

• Lü Simian, in History of the Qin and Han, argued that the truth of Emperor Ping's death is difficult to establish but that Wang Mang had ample motive and benefited most from the death of the powerless young emperor.
• Qian Mu, in History of the Qin and Han, noted that Wang Mang completely controlled court politics during Emperor Ping's reign and that the emperor was merely a puppet, with most political measures implemented by Wang Mang in his name.
• Modern scholars generally hold that whether or not Emperor Ping was poisoned, his short life made him a political piece in Wang Mang's path to usurpation and left him little opportunity to exercise personal agency.