Цинь мемлекетінің саяхатшысы Шан Ян

Statesman of the Qin state

Shang Yang (; c. 390 – 338 BC), also known as Wei Yang and originally surnamed Gongsun, was a statesman, chancellor and reformer of the State of Qin. Born in the Zhou vassal state of Wey during the Warring States period, he took up office in the Qin state, where his policies laid the administrative, political and economic foundations that would eventually enable Qin to conquer the other six rival states, unifying China into a centralized rule for the first time in history under the Qin dynasty. Scholars consider it likely that both he and his followers contributed to The Book of Lord Shang, a foundational philosophical work for the school of Chinese legalism.

Shang Yang was born as the son of a concubine to the ruling family of the minor state Wey (衞). His surname (氏, lineage name) was Gongsun and his personal name Yang. As a member of the Wei family, he was also known as Wei Yang. to become the chief adviser in Qin. His numerous reforms transformed the peripheral Qin state into a militarily powerful and strongly centralized kingdom. Changes to the state's legal system (which were said to have been built upon Li Kui's Canon of Laws) propelled the Qin to prosperity. Enhancing the administration through an emphasis on meritocracy, his policies weakened the power of the feudal lords. In 341 BC, Qin attacked the state of Wei. Yang personally led the Qin army to defeat Wei, and eventually Wei ceded the land west of the Yellow River to Qin. For his role in the war, Yang received 15 cities in Shang as his personal fief and became known as the lord of Shang (Shang Jun) or Shang Yang. According to the Records of the Grand Historian, with his personal connections while serving in the court of Wei, Shang Yang invited Gongzi Ang, the Wei general, to negotiate a peace treaty. As soon as Ang arrived, he was taken prisoner, and the Qin army attacked, successfully defeating their opponents. and Mark Edward Lewis considered reorganization of the military as potentially responsible for the orderly plan of roads and fields throughout north China. This might be far fetched, but Yang was as much a military reformer as a legal one. The Shang Yang school of thought was favoured by Emperor Wu of Han, and John Keay mentions that Tang figure Du You was drawn to Shang Yang.

Yang introduced land reforms, privatized land, rewarded farmers who exceeded harvest quotas, enslaved farmers who failed to meet quotas, and used enslaved subjects as (state owned) rewards for those who met government policies. As manpower was short in Qin relative to the other states at the time, Yang enacted policies to increase its manpower. As Qin peasants were recruited into the military, he encouraged active migration of peasants from other states into Qin as a replacement workforce; this policy simultaneously increased the manpower of Qin and weakened the manpower of Qin's rivals. Yang made laws forcing citizens to marry at a young age and passed tax laws to encourage raising multiple children. He also enacted policies to free convicts who worked in opening wastelands for agriculture. Yang partly abolished primogeniture (depending on the performance of the son) and created a double tax on households that had more than one son living in the household, to break up large clans into nuclear families. Yang moved the capital from the city of Yueyang to Xianyang, in order to reduce the influence of nobles on the administration. Xianyang remained Qin's capital until its fall in 207 BC.

Yang was deeply despised by the Qin nobility According to Zhan Guo Ce, Yang went into hiding; at one point Yang was refused a room at an inn because one of his own laws prevented admission of a guest without proper identification. Yang was executed by jūliè (車裂: dismemberment by being fastened to five chariots, cattle or horses and being torn to pieces); his whole family was also executed. Despite his death, King Huiwen kept the reforms enacted by Yang. A number of alternate versions of Yang's death have survived. According to Sima Qian in his Records of the Grand Historian, Yang first escaped to Wei. However, he was hated there for his earlier betrayal of Gongzi Ang and was expelled. Yang then fled to his fiefdom, where he raised a rebel army but was killed in battle. After the battle, King Hui of Qin had Yang's corpse torn apart by chariots as a warning to others.

A. F. P. Hulsewé considered Shang Yang the "founder of the school of law", and considers his unification of punishments one of his most important contributions; that is, giving the penalty of death to any grade of person disobeying the king's orders. Shang Yang even expected the king, though the source of law (authorizing it), to follow it. This treatment is in contrast to ideas more typical of archaic society, more closely represented in the Rites of Zhou as giving different punishments to different strata of society. Hulsewe points out that Sima Tan considered equal treatment the "school of law's" most salient point: "They do not distinguish between close and far relatives, nor do they disriminate between noble and humble, but in a uniform manner they decide on them in law." The Han dynasty adopted essentially the same denominations of crimes, and conception of equality, as Shang Yang set down for Qin, without collective punishment of the three sets of relatives.

Portrayed by Shi Jingming in The Legend of Mi Yue (2015) as a guest appearance, depicting his execution. Portrayed by Wang Zhifei in the TV series The Qin Empire as a main character.