Wang Mang, the Chinese emperor who first experimented with Communism, was deeply involved in earlier Confucian discussions over the optimal role of the state in the country’s economy, to the point that his experiments can only be described as the logical outcome of such discussions: a radical attempt at optimizing patterns of ownership across the countryside.

Building up on oft-repeated Confucian land redistribution schemes with the support of strident fellow Confucians like Huan Tan (43 BC-28 AD), Wang Mang instituted a completely new property system, banning land transactions and ordering that all land in the empire become legally the property of the state.

Just how revolutionary this change was is a matter of debate. Japanese scholars like Hiranaka Reiji have argued that land ownership in China was always relative, and remained somewhat vested in the state (as it is to this day), so Wang Mang simply turned an underlying assumption into official policy, which would make sense given his (very Confucian) penchant for clarity and straightforward arrangements.

Regardless, Wang Mang’s brazen announcement turned former landholders into tenants at the sufferance of the bureaucracy – which was also required to redistribute “excess” land from the well-off to fellow clan members, neighbors, or other members of the same village. The result was absolute chaos.