The Northern Song "Dynasty suffered poverty as well as weakness. The redundancy of officials and soldiers, and extravagant expenditure resulted in a severe financial crisis. Ever since the early years of the Song Dynasty, peasant uprisings had increased and the royal government faced political crisis. Although it maintained a large army, they lost every battle in the war with the Liao Regime and the Western Xia Regime. Therefore, it had to pay them a great deal of money every year. Since its founding, the Northern Song Dynasty had struggled in misery and crises, never having a strong national power.

A sense of misery impelled many reformers of political foresight to initiate reform and seek the way to build a prosperous country with efficient military forces. In 1069, Song Shenzong, Emperor who was eager to find the way of governing the country, appointed Wang Anshi, vice prime minister, to carry out reform. The reform was pursued mainly in financial and military areas.

The chief content and purpose of Wang Anshi's political reform lay in bringing about national prosperity and powerful military forces. He restrain-ed himself from putting forward such crucial proposals as reducing the number of redundant officials, cutting down redundant expenditure and controlling annexation of land. His reform achieved remarkable success .in the increase of national revenue, the construction of water conservancy works, and they improvement of combat effectiveness. In spite of this, the old liners were stilt strongly opposed to the reform, throwing obstacles in its way. After Song Shenzong's death, the conservatives came to power, and the reform ended in failure.