Guanzi

What it is

The Guanzi is an anonymous foundational Chinese political and philosophical text of more than 135,000 characters. It originally had 86 chapters, and 76 survive. It is traditionally attributed to Guan Zhong, a 7th century BCE philosopher and statesman, but it was written by several anonymous authors over several centuries. The Han scholar Liu Xiang edited the received text around 26 BCE.

Why it matters

Most scholars date the text to the late Warring States period or later. The Han Feizi is the first reference to it, so the Guanzi was probably circulating in or near Han Fei's lifetime. The text covers price regulation of goods through the concept of light and heavy, and it treats law (fa) as an adjunct to Confucian ritual (li). It shows how Han Fei's contemporaries and successors debated rulership, economy and order.

Look closer

• Which problems of government does the text name first, and what solutions does it propose?
• Why might a text attributed to a 7th century statesman have been written by many later authors, and why would that attribution matter?
• What does the text say about the ordinary people being governed, and what does it leave out?