Humble before he usurped
Before his rise, Wang Mang was a model of virtue: when his uncle was gravely ill he tended him for months without undressing, and once high in rank he shared his fief’s income with his guests, his wife dressed so plainly she was mistaken for a servant. Bai Juyi later wrote: "In the days the Duke of Zhou feared the rumors, in the time Wang Mang was humble before usurping — had each but died at that early hour, who could tell their true from false for all their lives?" Had Wang Mang died before usurping, history would count one more sage. These two lines became the best gloss in Chinese on "the verdict comes only when the coffin is closed."
Reform in the name of antiquity
Wang Mang’s blueprint was the Rites of Zhou: the realm’s land was renamed "royal fields," barred from sale, in an attempt to restore the well-field system; slaves were renamed "private dependents" and their trade banned; the government monopolized salt, iron, and wine and ran the "five equalizations" of loans and price controls. A genuine concern for land concentration and the gap between rich and poor can be read in the design, but in practice it was orders changed overnight, the currency altered four times in five years, offending magnates and the poor at once. A reform that used a two-thousand-year-old classic as its blueprint reformed the dynasty out of existence.