Shang Yang as a historical personality and as a symbol

This article gives an overview of Shang Yang portrayals in four stages: from Han Fei’s sympathetic yet balanced assessment, passing over a variety of conflicting Han views, skipping through "the two millennia of vilification" to Zhang Taiyan’s (1869-1936) rediscovery of Shang Yang, and ending up at the Shang Yang fervor of the 1970s. Zeng shows how the figure of Shang Yang keeps popping up with a certain regularity, inciting conflicts about his legacy. He also argues that at each flare of the debate, what was really at stake was not a mere assessment of the long gone Warring States-period Qin reformer, but of the then current policies that needed to be indirectly addressed.