The goal of Wang Anshi's reform during the Xining period of the Song Dynasty was to enrich the country and strengthen the military. In addition to some economic reform measures, many changes were also adopted in the military.

Song Dynasty During the Xining period Wang Anshi's reform aimed to enrich the country and strengthen the military. In addition to some economic reform measures, many changes were also adopted in the military. The Armor-Basing Law is an important part of Wang Anshi's military reform measures, and is one of the main means to achieve the goal of strengthening the army and saving the country. However, judging from historical records, the effect of the armor-preserving method is very poor. This measure not only failed to achieve the goal of strengthening the army, but also caused serious harm to the people, and even resorted to self-mutilation to escape Baojia. The rural soldiers trained by the Baojia method also made the frontline soldiers very dissatisfied. In the battle against and Xixia , the generals were unwilling to use these troops because of their low combat effectiveness. So the question is, why is the Baojia Law, which Wang Anshi had high hopes for, so unsatisfactory?

The Baojia Law came into being in the third year of Xining, the reign of emperor Shenzong of the Song Dynasty. It stipulates that for every ten households in rural areas, one guarantee is provided, five guarantees are one major guarantee, and ten major guarantees are one all-in-one guarantee. The richest person in the household serves as the Baochang , the big Baochang, and the Du Baochang. If there are more than two children in a family, one person will be the guardian. During the off-season, the guards are gathered for military training, and patrols are conducted at night to maintain public order. This decree allowed Baoding to participate in military training during his leisure time and become a paramilitary or militia army, called a rural soldier. In peacetime, rural soldiers are used to maintain local security, and when the country is at war, they supplement the regular army. At its core, it should be the prototype of the modern militia and reserve system, and has very advanced political significance.

Through the implementation of the Armor Protection Law and Wang Anshi's design, it can provide the country with a sufficient and stable source of soldiers, and can also save the country's expenditure on troop maintenance and public security, and solve the problem of redundant soldiers and redundant expenses. In normal times, the local government organizes the Baojia system , and the court does not need to bear any costs. During wartime, outstanding rural soldiers can be selected and added to the front line after simple training to ensure the frontline combat effectiveness of the Song Army. This method was well thought out when designed, especially when facing military threats from the north and northwest, it theoretically has a very good effect on strengthening the army. However, contrary to expectations, the combat effectiveness of the rural soldiers formed by the Baojia system was so poor that even the soldiers on the front line of the border were unwilling to use them. Moreover, this system also caused complaints from the common people, and their voices of opposition were extremely high.

According to historical records, as soon as the Baojia Law was promulgated, it received strong opposition from both the government and the public, which intensified the conflicts in the court and made the political struggle more intense. Among them, those who opposed were not only the conservative forces of the civil service group such as Sima Guang and Han Qi, but also powerful dignitaries such as Empress Dowager Cao and Empress Dowager Gao who represented the general forces of the Northern Song Dynasty. Even local people fiercely opposed this system. . It is said that in order to escape the Baojia Law, people in many places even resorted to injuring themselves, breaking off their arms and legs to avoid becoming Baoding. This kind of opposition from both the government and the public also caused unprecedented resistance to the reforms of Wang Anshi and Song Shenzong, so that Song Shenzong began to waver in his belief in reform, laying hidden dangers for Wang Anshi's subsequent dismissal from the prime minister.

Comprehensive analysis of the reasons why the Baojia Law triggered such public opinion is that its biggest root lies in the land system of the feudal dynasty. Land was the most important and main means of production in the ancient feudal dynasty. All villagers depended on the land to survive. By the middle of the Northern Song Dynasty, land annexation in the north was very serious, and a large amount of land was controlled by the scholar-bureaucrat class represented by big landowners and big businessmen. The scholar-bureaucrat family relied on the people above through land control to achieve the purpose of controlling the country. Wang Anshi's Baojia Law required some villagers to detach themselves from the land and become Baoding members of the Baojia system, taking on the important responsibilities of military and public security. This is not good news for the scholar-bureaucrat families who control the land or for the villagers who are dependent on the land.

The Baojia system requires "upcomings" and "teachings" on a regular basis, which means participating in military training, security inspections, and cooperating with local governments to suppress bandits and other activities. This activity will consume local financial funds and a large amount of human resources.These human resources come from villagers, which will have a negative impact on the income of the large landowners from whom they rent. Especially on the northern border where wars are frequent, there is no other income except the land economy. Big landowners and big businessmen all rely on villagers to farm the land to make profits. If all the villagers participate in Baojia, then the land income cannot be guaranteed. For ordinary people, this will also reduce their time and investment in agricultural activities, which will have a negative impact on their annual income.

In fact, in addition to the civil servants and bureaucrats, the families that actually caused serious land annexation in the north of the Song Dynasty were also the main components of the Northern Song Dynasty. Most of these families were military aristocrats from the founding of the Song Dynasty, and many of them were founding fathers. They did not have much say in the court of nobles and nobles, but they had intertwined interests at the local level and became powerful figures dominating local politics. The rural soldiers formed by the Baojia system deprived these powerful families of the benefits that originally belonged to them when they were responsible for regular activities such as local security inspections, so they received great opposition. So much so that Empress Dowager Cao, Empress Dowager Gao and others, who represented the generals of the Northern Song Dynasty, went to Song Shenzong and cried, asking Song Shenzong to stop the reform and restore the old system of their ancestors.

Since the rural soldiers who participated in the Baojia system were from peasant backgrounds and were tied to the land from the beginning, their survival was greatly restricted by large landowners. The land was controlled by the scholar-bureaucrat class and the powerful generals of the Northern Song Dynasty. They could threaten the people with survival problems, coerce the people to oppose the Baojia system, and persuade them to use various methods to escape Baojia. In order to survive, the common people themselves complained about the Baojia system, so they were coerced by the scholar-official class and the powerful generals, forming a political wave against the Baojia system. When this wave reached the upper echelons of the imperial court, it became evidence for the civil servant group and the generals of the Northern Song Dynasty to criticize Wang Anshi's reform. It was also known as a source of political pressure on Song Shenzong, which caused great resistance to the reform.

In addition, the strict Baojia system has created a hierarchy among policyholders and has become a hotbed of corruption. The Baochang, the Chief Baochang and the Du Baochang in Baojia all have certain powers. These people will use their power to seek personal gain and oppress the people under the banner of the government. This kind of corruption and depravity caused the Baojia system to harm the people, and was disgusted and resisted by the people.

In this atmosphere of internal and external opposition, the Baojia system became a mere formality during its implementation and did not play its original role in strengthening the army at all. The rural soldiers recruited under the Baojia system did not receive much military training. They often fooled people and could not even complete tasks such as local suppression of bandits alone. However, some local gangsters who participated in Baojia became the source of the deterioration of public security and laid hidden dangers for subsequent refugee rebellions.

From a military perspective, the original intention of the armor-protecting system to strengthen the army has many problems in military training, the most important of which is the lack of professional training. After the reforms of Zhao Kuangyin and Zhao Guangyi , the military system of the Song Dynasty formed a state of mutual restriction between the military administration and the military order system to prevent those in power from having too much power and threatening the imperial power. However, the Song Dynasty did not make any reforms in the military education system. The Song Dynasty did not have a specialized military education system, and the teaching of military doctrines and skills could only be formed in the regular army. These doctrines and skills were in the hands of the military aristocrats of the Northern Song Dynasty's general families, and did not become a separate military education system controlled by the court. In other words, soldiers must enter the Forbidden Army or the Xiang Army to learn the skills of fighting, which cannot be learned outside.

However, the Baojia system does not belong to the Forbidden Army or the Xiang Army, but to the independent militia reserve force. They were trained by local officials who had held official positions in the Forbidden Army or the Xiang Army, but there were no nobles with a military education system like Yang Jiajiang and Gao Jiajiang . So Baoding's training became two swordsmen teaching three swordsmen, everyone fooled each other, and there was no real learning at all. Therefore, Baoding's team had no military training results, had extremely poor military skills, and was vulnerable to combat effectiveness.When these troops are placed on the front lines of the northwest and northern battlefields, not only are they unable to support local operations, they actually hinder the regular army's operations. Therefore, in the later war between the Song Dynasty and Xixia, the generals who led the army tried their best not to accept soldiers from Baoding.

In fact, judging from the political atmosphere of the Song Dynasty, the court at that time did not allow the Baojia system to be highly integrated with the original Forbidden Army and Xiang Army. The Song Dynasty was an era of nobles and lowly military officials. Although the generals of the Northern Song Dynasty occupied a large amount of national resources, they had no say in the court. The scholar-bureaucrats and civil servants group were always on guard against suppressing the generals of the Northern Song Dynasty so that they could not fully control the army and prevent them from forming feudal towns. This is an unspoken rule that began in the Zhao Kuangyin era and had been in operation for hundreds of years by the Song Shenzong era. If the Baojia system is allowed to transport soldiers to the Forbidden Army to form a system, this will break the control of the military by the civilian clique and may allow the generals of the Northern Song Dynasty to break free. Therefore, from this perspective, civilian officials did not allow the Baojia system to exist independent of the military.

In summary, due to the land system of the Song Dynasty, Wang Anshi's reform was rootless and difficult to succeed. From the principle that the economic base determines the superstructure , it can be seen that Wang Anshi's reform based on the land resources controlled by scholar-bureaucrats and general families is doomed to fail. Scholar-officials and general families only need to use land to control the villagers, and they can dismantle all Wang Anshi's reform systems and turn good things into bad things.

The protection law cannot be implemented, and the result is counterproductive, which is the most typical phenomenon. These new laws also touched the interests of the scholar-bureaucrats and general families who controlled land resources, and naturally aroused strong opposition from the civil servants and military nobles. The common people did not understand this, but the tendency to benefit from having breasts became a tool for conservative forces to overturn the new legal system in Xining.