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黄克武：魏源与《皇朝经世文编》

Through the structure and editorial practice of the Huangchao jingshi wenbian, the essay argues that Wei Yuan and his circle fashioned a deliberately selective statecraft canon that reveals the intellectual baseline of Chinese literati on the eve of the Opium War.

/ The Paper · 9 July 2026 · read the original in Chinese →

道光五年（1825）魏源应江苏布政使贺长龄之邀编辑《皇朝经世文编》（以下简称《文编》），道光六年（1826）成书（初刻本），此书为近世经世思想的代表性著作，道咸以下倡言经世者多受其影响。《皇朝经世文编》的重要性，在于此书出现之时间，道光五年（1825）是鸦片战争爆发前的十四年，因此《文编》一书可以反映西力冲击前夕中国士人的思想状况；在此之后中国受到西力冲击，迈入现代化阶段，接受新式教育的知识分子在思想内涵上有十分剧烈的改变，而这些变化的重要基础之一正是《文编》所代表的经世思想。由此观察，《文编》的研究亦有助于了解现代化前夕中国思想之“基调”。

In the fifth year of Daoguang (1825), at the invitation of He Changling, Jiangsu provincial treasurer, Wei Yuan undertook the editing of the Huangchao jingshi wenbian (hereafter Wenbian). The book was completed in the sixth year of Daoguang (1826), in its first printed edition. It is a representative work of modern statecraft thought, and many who advocated statecraft in the Daoguang and Xianfeng eras and after were influenced by it. The importance of the Huangchao jingshi wenbian lies in the moment of its appearance: the fifth year of Daoguang (1825) was fourteen years before the outbreak of the Opium War. The Wenbian can therefore reflect the condition of Chinese literati thought on the eve of the impact of Western power. After this, China was struck by Western power and entered the stage of modernization; intellectuals educated in the new style underwent extremely drastic changes in the substance of their thought, and one of the important foundations of these changes was precisely the statecraft thought represented by the Wenbian. Seen from this angle, the study of the Wenbian also helps us understand the “keynote” of Chinese thought on the eve of modernization.

《文编》一书卷帜浩繁，全书共120卷，搜集了清初至道光三年（1823）的文章2241篇。共分为8纲65目，全书之纲目如下表：

The Wenbian is vast in scale. The whole work comprises 120 juan and gathers 2,241 essays dating from the early Qing to the third year of Daoguang (1823). It is divided into eight major categories and sixty-five subcategories. The table below gives the book’s full structure of categories and headings:

If one analyzes the number of essays in each category, the section on fiscal and household administration contains 517 essays, ritual administration 379, and works administration 392; these three are the largest. They are followed by military administration (352), official administration (213), principles of governance (170), and scholarship (129), while penal administration has only 83 essays, the smallest number. As for authors, most have only one to three essays included, but a small number are represented by more. Authors with more than thirteen essays are: Gong Zizhen (14), Zhu Yunjin (16), Ruan Yuan (16), Yan Ruyi (16), Chu Dawen (16), Wei Yuan (16), Wang Huizu (19), Ortai (19), Yao Wenran (20), Tang Zhen (21), Lu Yao (21), Fang Bao (22), Lu Shiyi (23), Zhao Yi (24), Li Fu (24), Chen Hongmou (52), and Gu Yanwu (98). The editors evidently considered the writings of these men to possess the richest statecraft value.

Among them, Chen Hongmou and Gu Yanwu have the greatest number of essays. Chen Hongmou, courtesy name Ruzi, was from Lingui in Guangxi. He became a jinshi in the Yongzheng reign and once inscribed for himself the maxim, “One must become a person indispensable to the world, and do things that others in the world cannot do.” He served outside the capital for more than thirty years, holding provincial office in twelve provinces; after being recalled to the center, he served as minister of the Boards of War, Personnel, and Works, and was appointed grand secretary. Among eminent officials of Neo-Confucian learning, He Changling most admired Chen Hongmou, regarding him, among the famous ministers of the illustrious dynasty, as one whose “Neo-Confucian learning and practical administration were pure and without blemish.” While serving as governor of Guizhou, He Changling had Chen Hongmou’s Keshi zhijie printed and distributed to students. The Wenbian includes Chen Hongmou’s essays as follows: one on scholarship, two on principles of governance, sixteen on official administration, fourteen on fiscal and household administration, three on ritual administration, one on military administration, one on penal administration, and fourteen on works administration. From the quantity of these essays, one can see that his principal interests lay in official administration, fiscal and household administration, and works administration. Gu Yanwu was a renowned statecraft scholar, deeply revered by Qing literati and influential in the development of scholarly style. The Wenbian includes his essays as follows: ten on scholarship, nine on principles of governance, twenty on official administration, nineteen on fiscal and household administration, thirty-two on ritual administration, seven on military administration, and one on works administration. The differing numbers of essays included under each section for the two men reveal both common and divergent interests. Official administration and fiscal and household administration were shared central concerns; beyond these, Chen Hongmou leaned toward works administration, while Gu Yanwu leaned toward ritual administration. Apart from these two, all authors represented by more than fifteen essays deserve closer investigation.

According to the editors’ explanation, the opening “Scholarship” section is the programmatic guide to the whole book:根据编者的说明，卷首之“学术”部分为全书的纲领：

Each book has its ultimate purport; the Way abides in practical use. Since our intention is to set matters right and put them into practice, what need is there for winding byways and broad detours? Since statecraft is used to mark the whole anthology, scholarship is its guiding framework. Whatever is so lofty as to pass into profundity and subtlety, or so low as to sink into dross, is not taken. (Wei Yuan, “Five Principles”)

The “Principles of Governance” section, in turn, gives a comprehensive account of the basic principles of politics, serving as the foundation for discussion of practical problems in official, fiscal, ritual, military, penal, and works administration below (hereafter the Six Administrations):而“治体”部分则综述政治的基本原则，作为讨论以下吏、户、礼、兵、刑、工各政（以下简称六政）中实际问题之基础：

Nothing in current affairs is more urgent than the present age; nothing among the myriad affairs is more complete than the six offices. The court is the source from which governance issues; the ruler and ministers are the sum of all offices. We therefore place the section on principles of governance first, using it to order the many administrations. Whatever is ancient but unsuitable, or general and rarely pertinent, is not taken. (Wei Yuan, “Five Principles”)

If we borrow the traditional Chinese philosophical notion of “substance and function” to explain this, we may say that “scholarship” is substance and “principles of governance” function; “principles of governance” is substance and the “Six Administrations” function. The three are linked ring by ring to form an intellectual whole in which “substance and function are one” and “substance and function are both complete.” The scholarship and principles-of-governance sections may therefore be called the theory of statecraft learning in the Wenbian, while the Six Administrations section constitutes its statecraft technique, which may be called “methods of governance.” In terms of quantity, the essays in scholarship and principles of governance account for only 13 percent of the whole book, while the Six Administrations together account for 87 percent. This shows that, in the editors’ minds, “statecraft technique” weighed far more heavily than “statecraft theory.” Thus, if we wish to understand thoroughly the intellectual content of the Wenbian, it would be best to achieve a “unity of substance and function” ourselves and analyze the entire work. For the moment, however, I cannot complete such a task. This essay therefore chooses first to analyze the scholarship and principles-of-governance sections, in order to understand on the basis of what political and scholarly ideas Chinese literati on the eve of the Opium War put forward their statecraft proposals.

Because the Wenbian is not the work of a single person, but a book compiled from selected writings by many people, several methodological questions must be clarified before analyzing it.

First, the Wenbian contains, on the one hand, the differing opinions of several hundred authors and, on the other, the subjective choices and arrangement of the editors. Its intellectual content therefore includes two levels of meaning at the same time. The first level is the meaning each essay possessed, at the time it was written, within the author’s own intellectual context, which may have been in the Kangxi or Qianlong reign. The second level is the meaning produced when the editors, reading these essays in the early Daoguang period, judged them valuable for contemporary literati and therefore selected and compiled them into a book, placing them within another set of intellectual relations. In my humble view, these two levels of meaning combine to form the intellectual whole of the Wenbian, while the first level is also incorporated into the second. When a literatus of the Daoguang or Xianfeng period read the Jingshi wenbian, what passed through his mind was a new whole formed in the shape of a “book.” From this angle, this essay holds that the intellectual content of the book represents the editors’ statecraft thought and can also represent an important part of the value orientation of statecraft thinkers in the early Daoguang period.

Second, there is the question of method in intellectual history. Some scholars believe that thought consists of concrete views, or doctrines, and that one can therefore understand a person’s thought by describing his basic ideas or system of teachings. Others hold that thought is a system, and that the study of intellectual history need only grasp the central concept of that system and describe the relation between this concept and other derivative concepts. This essay adopts neither of these directions. I believe that thought is a dynamic process of debate, not a static doctrine or belief. In human thought there are concepts affirmed, concepts denied, and views neither affirmed nor denied. To describe a body of thought, one should identify its basic “issues” and the different answers proposed to those issues. This essay also adopts a perspective influenced by cultural anthropology, holding that researchers should not subjectively decide which parts of a body of thought are important and which are not. We shall therefore carefully describe the words, phrases, or concepts repeatedly used in the book, what in English would be called clichés, because these details disclose the messages of thought.

The method of analysis in this essay is to identify the problems that concern the essays in the scholarship and principles-of-governance sections of the Wenbian, and the possible answers they offer to each problem. These questions and answers together constitute the statecraft theory of the Wenbian and represent an important part of literati statecraft thought in the early Daoguang period.

Wei Yuan’s Life and the Changes in His Thought魏源的生平与思想变迁

Wei Yuan, courtesy name Moshen, was from Shaoyang in Hunan. Born in the fifty-ninth year of Qianlong (1794), his life coincided with the period in which the Qing house moved from prosperity into decline. Wei Yuan’s grandfather never held office, while his father had served in minor posts such as patrol inspector and registrar; the family was poor. As a child Wei Yuan was quiet by temperament and fond of deep reflection; his courtesy name Moshen was taken from the phrase “silently fond of deep thought.” He especially loved reading and often chanted texts until dawn without his parents knowing. At fifteen he began to take an interest in Wang Yangming’s learning of mind-and-nature and in historical studies. He believed that the substance of the mind was the root of all things, and that “pursuing inquiry and study” and “honoring the moral nature,” knowledge and action, could proceed side by side without contradiction. This had a major influence on his later statecraft thought. At twenty-one (1814) he accompanied his father to the capital to study. On the journey north, he saw the social distress caused by the Yellow River’s disrepair, military calamity, and famine. This was a turning point in Wei Yuan’s life. Coming from the Hunan countryside to the prosperous, culturally rich capital, he began to attend to complex social realities. In Beijing he studied the methods of Han Confucian scholarship with Hu Chenggong (1776-1832), Song Confucian learning with Yao Xueshuang (1766-1826), and the Gongyang tradition of the Spring and Autumn Annals with Liu Fenglu (1776-1829), and he exchanged views on ancient-style prose with Gong Zizhen (1792-1841). He also associated with a group of congenial friends, such as the Hunan men Tao Shu and He Changling, while the famous scholars and officials Lin Zexu and Bao Shichen were also close friends. These friends shaped the course of Wei Yuan’s life.

In 1822, when Wei Yuan was twenty-nine, he passed the Shuntian provincial examination and obtained the juren degree, but thereafter his progress in the civil examinations was consistently unsuccessful; he did not become a jinshi until he was fifty-two. During this interval he made his living by teaching and serving as a secretary in official staffs. At thirty-two, at He Changling’s invitation, he compiled the Huangchao jingshi wenbian, and he also successively planned and discussed economic questions such as grain transport, water conservancy, and salt administration for Tao Shu, Lin Zexu, and others. These experiences in handling practical affairs developed in tandem with his statecraft thought.

In 1840 the First Opium War broke out. Wei Yuan joined the staff of Yuqian (1793-1841), governor-general of Liangjiang, and personally took part in planning the war against the British in Zhejiang. He witnessed the defeat of the Qing court. The war deeply shocked him, shifting the focus of his concern from domestic problems to the world situation. After the war he compiled two books, Shengwu ji and Haiguo tuzhi. Shengwu ji records the major wars from the early Qing through the Daoguang period; its purpose was to remember the military achievements of predecessors and take them as models. In the preface he wrote:

Late in life, living sojourning by the Yangzi and Huai rivers, with maritime alarms coming suddenly like squalls and military reports arriving one after another, I was moved with indignation by what had long accumulated within me, and so brought forth all that had been stored in my cabinets ... In all, 400,000 words were completed in the month when the sea barbarians accepted terms at Nanjing. ... Therefore, when later sages take earlier sages as their teachers, and later kings take earlier kings as their teachers, none among the earlier sages and earlier kings is nearer to us than our glorious ancestors and divine sovereigns.

The compilation of Haiguo tuzhi was undertaken at Lin Zexu’s request. After the Opium War, Lin was dismissed from office and banished to Ili for service. On his journey north he met Wei Yuan and handed over to him all the materials he had had translated in Guangzhou, including the Sizhou zhi, the Macao Daily, Yuedong zougao, and drawings and models of ships and cannon, hoping that Wei Yuan would compile Haiguo tuzhi. Wei Yuan did not fail this charge. Consulting both Chinese and foreign materials, he completed the book. It records the history and geography of the world, summarizes experience in diplomatic affairs and negotiations, and issues the call to “learn the superior techniques of the barbarians in order to control the barbarians,” holding that understanding foreign conditions and absorbing the strengths of others were the foremost tasks of the time. This book was epoch-making and had a profound influence on the development of modern history in both China and Japan.

Wei Yuan died only in 1857, sixteen years after the Opium War. His life spanned the two stages before and after that war. Before the Opium War, he was concerned with various domestic problems, compiled the Huangchao jingshi wenbian, and vigorously advocated statecraft learning. After the Opium War, he extended this spirit outward and compiled Haiguo tuzhi. These two books may be called milestones in the development of Wei Yuan’s thought. Yet his intellectual content was not limited to this; his scholarly interests changed several times over the course of his life. Many scholars have noted his importance in the development of New Text learning. He was as famous as Gong Zizhen, and the two were jointly called representative figures of mid-Qing New Text learning: “Among the robust figures of New Text learning, one must name Gong and Wei.” In this field he wrote such books as Shiguwei, Shuguwei, and Dongzi chunqiu fawei, vigorously advocating the living use of the classics and demanding that one seek the subtle words and great meanings through philological exposition of chapters and sentences, “making classical studies, political affairs, and literature one.”

Liang Qichao’s Qingdai xueshu gailun describes Wei Yuan’s contribution to New Text learning: “Wei Yuan wrote Shiguwei, and for the first time launched a major attack on the Mao Commentary and the Greater and Lesser Prefaces, saying they were late and spurious works ... After Wei’s book appeared, the authenticity of the Mao Poems became a question.” He also wrote Shuguwei, arguing “not only that the Old Text Documents that appeared late in the Eastern Jin were forgeries, but that the Old Text explanations of Ma and Zheng in the Eastern Han were also not Kong Anguo’s original tradition.” Liang further pointed out that Gong and Wei “both liked to discuss practical administration, and paid closest attention to frontier affairs ... Thus later scholars of New Text learning liked to use classical studies to make political arguments; this was the legacy of Gong and Wei.”

In addition, he studied Neo-Confucian learning, Laozi, the Zhouyi, and Sunzi deeply; he also studied Yuan history and Buddhism, producing works such as Yuanshi xinbian and Jingtu sijing. Another important late work was Mogu, “Mo” referring to Moshen and “gu” to writing slips. Wei Yuan placed it in the inner collection of his collected writings, and the book may be regarded as the distilled essence of his lifelong thought. Liu Guangjing has pointed out that “the writing of Mogu, on the basis of Mencius’ people-centered theory, affirms certain concepts of Song-Ming mind learning, then adds the Yijing and the teachings of the various masters, creating for himself a thought concerning the cosmos, Heaven and man, constancy and change.”b Comparing the contents of the Huangchao jingshi wenbian and Mogu reveals some very interesting phenomena. Mogu is divided into two parts: the first, “Essays on Learning,” contains fourteen essays; the second, “Essays on Governance,” contains sixteen. These correspond exactly to the “Scholarship” and “Principles of Governance” sections of the Wenbian. A careful reading of their intellectual content shows that in many places the two hold precisely the same views; indeed, several passages that in the Wenbian were originally the words of others become, in Mogu, Wei Yuan’s own words. This proves the overlapping relation between the content of the Wenbian and Wei Yuan’s statecraft thought: the essays he compiled in his early years left an incomparably deep impression on his mind. To show the relation between the two more clearly, we have set out the relevant historical materials in the following table:

The five pieces of historical material above are examples of passages in Mogu and the Wenbian whose wording is almost identical. In addition, there are many cases in which the wording differs but the ideas are similar. For example, both affirm the principle that good fortune comes to the good and calamity to the licentious; both hold that the distinction between kingly and hegemonic rule “lies in the mind, not in the traces” (see Wei Yuan, Mogu, second part, “Treatise on Governance I,” Wei Yuan ji, Dingwen shuju, 1978, p. 36). Other positions are also consistent: support for commanderies and counties, opposition to enfeoffment, reluctance to alter institutions lightly, and criticism of Wang Mang and Wang Anshi for being mired in antiquity. He Guangru has also noticed the relation between Mogu and the Wenbian: the two contain many similar passages, though the examples he cites differ from mine.

Surveying the works mentioned above, one discovers the complexity of Wei Yuan’s thought. Yet it seems possible to thread these complex interests together through the idea of “statecraft for practical use.” The Huangchao jingshi wenbian, Shengwu ji, Haiguo tuzhi, and other works were undoubtedly written for statecraft and practical application. The works of New Text learning themselves contain the intention to “master the classics for practical use.” With regard to Neo-Confucian learning, Wei Yuan advocated “knowing the root” and “not engaging in empty words”; it had to possess both “substance and function,” and by function he meant the demand for statecraft. His studies of Laozi, the Zhouyi, Sunzi, and history directly cultivated in him a spirit that valued adaptation with the times and refused to be bound by antiquity. The same is true of the Buddhism to which he devoted himself in later life. He held that although Buddhism and Daoism are world-transcending, the combination of “saving oneself” and “saving others” also has a statecraft dimension. Thus he sought not only his own liberation but also the universal salvation of sentient beings. He advocated the joint cultivation of Chan and Pure Land, hoping, as described in the Samantabhadra Practices and Vows chapter, to “rescue sentient beings from the great sea of afflictions and suffering, cause them to depart from it, and enable all to be reborn in Amitabha’s Land of Ultimate Bliss.” All these points show that “statecraft for practical use” was the core concept of Wei Yuan’s thought. Under his advocacy and that of other statecraft scholars of his day, the scholarly climate of the Qing gradually changed, turning from Qian-Jia evidential scholarship toward statecraft and practical application; by the late Qing, statecraft thought had risen to the mainstream of the scholarly world. From the perspective of modern intellectual history, Wei Yuan’s place in nineteenth-century intellectual history can be compared with Gu Yanwu in the seventeenth century and Dai Zhen in the eighteenth: he may be called a master of enlightenment in the scholarly world of the middle and late Qing.

The Editing of the Wenbian《文编》的编辑

In the fifth year of Daoguang (1825), He Changling, Jiangsu provincial treasurer, invited Wei Yuan to preside over the editing of the Wenbian. He, courtesy name Ougeng, was from Shanhua in Hunan and became a jinshi in the thirteenth year of Jiaqing (1808). While in Beijing, he associated with Wei Yuan, a scholar ten years his junior. Because the two were fellow provincials and shared similar interests, they became close friends. In the twenty-fourth year of Jiaqing (1819), when He was serving as education commissioner of Shanxi, he had already invited Wei Yuan to serve on his staff. In the early Daoguang years, He was promoted to Jiangsu provincial treasurer and directly handled administrative affairs such as grain transport and water conservancy. Feeling deeply the complexity of the various problems, he invited Wei Yuan to compile the Huangchao jingshi wenbian. From then on Wei Yuan began to pay attention to “the learning of practical administration.” Other editors who took part at the time included members of He’s staff such as Cao Yu, courtesy name Jiashan, from Wuxian in Jiangsu, and Ren Sheng, courtesy name Shutang, from Yixing in Jiangsu.

He Changling laid down the guiding principles for the Wenbian and entrusted the editing to Wei Yuan. Once the work began, Wei Yuan read widely in the relevant literature from the early Qing onward. Later, in a letter to a friend, he described the conditions of the work at the time: “When I earlier selected materials for the Jingshi wenbian, the memorials and collected writings from the Yongzheng period onward that I read numbered by the hundreds.” The materials cited in the Wenbian also show the breadth of the collection. In addition to selections from the collected works of several hundred authors, it drew on more than forty books, including memorial collections, local gazetteers, and literary anthologies. Books that had a relatively great influence on the editing included Huangming jingshi wenbian, Qiewenzhai wenchao, and Da Qing huidian. Huangming jingshi wenbian was compiled by Chen Zilong, Xu Fuyuan, and others at the end of the Ming and published in 1638. This book first created the name “jingshi wenbian,” but in its organization it followed the arrangement of traditional collected writings, gathering memorials and discussions from the early Ming onward under the names of their authors. In the Qianlong period of the Qing, Lu Yao, a local official in Shandong, published another collection of statecraft essays entitled Qiewenzhai wenchao. This book made a breakthrough in form: it no longer classified by author, but by the nature of the essays, dividing them into twelve categories, including scholarship, customs, household instruction, official service, selection and examination, finance and taxation, famine policy, baojia, military institutions, penal law, calendrical matters, and river defense. Qiewenzhai wenchao was reprinted in the early Daoguang period and had a direct influence on Wei Yuan’s editing. Yet Wei was evidently still dissatisfied with the scattered mode of classification in the Wenchao. He tried to conceive a more systematic organization of categories and headings to control the complex affairs that concerned him. At this point, the classification in the Da Qing huidian into Personnel, Revenue, Rites, War, Punishments, and Works provided him with a new inspiration. Thus Wei Yuan followed Qiewenzhai wenchao in placing “Scholarship” at the beginning, then created on his own a category of “Principles of Governance,” and finally, following the method of the Da Qing huidian, divided the material into the Six Administrations of official, fiscal, ritual, military, penal, and works affairs. In this way the new form was completed.

Before the main text of the Wenbian, Wei Yuan wrote two pieces, “Preface” and “Five Principles,” whose contents may be taken to represent the editorial policy of the book. In the preface he first set out four major principles:魏源在《文编》正文之前撰有《叙》和《五例》两篇文章，其内容可以代表该书的编辑方针。叙文中他首揭四大原则，即：

Affairs must be rooted in the mind ... Those who speak well of the mind must have verification in affairs. Laws must be rooted in men ... Those who speak well of men must have recourse to laws. The present must be rooted in antiquity ... Those who speak well of antiquity must have verification in the present. Things must be rooted in the self ... Those who speak well of the self must have command of things.

That is to say, when discussing statecraft problems one cannot attend only to mind, men, antiquity, and self; one must integrate mind, men, antiquity, and self with affairs, laws, the present, and things. In fact, this is a criticism of earlier scholars for valuing inner cultivation alone and neglecting outward achievement; for stressing government by men while not knowing how to coordinate rule by men with rule by law; for knowing only how to revere antiquity and not how to adopt adaptive measures suited to the times; and for knowing only the self while failing to value consultation and discussion with others. The four sets of concepts above, namely the integration of affairs, laws, the present, and things with mind, men, antiquity, and self, may be called the fundamental purpose of the Wenbian.

In “Five Principles,” the editors discuss the process of editing the book in detail:在《五例》中，编者则详细地讨论到该书的编辑过程：

1. Careful selection: that is, choosing materials with caution. Since the main purpose of the Wenbian lies in practical use, the first principle is that selected writings must answer the needs of the age and be genuinely usable; anything not conforming to this principle is eliminated. Thus, “whatever is ancient but unsuitable, or general and rarely pertinent, is not taken.” Astrology, pitch-pipes, astronomy, and the like are not urgent tasks and are therefore treated only briefly, not in detail. Narrative and commemorative writings, such as stele inscriptions and biographies, are difficult to classify and, even when skillfully written, are not included.

2. Broad preservation: under the standards above, relevant literature was widely gathered and inclusively preserved. Wei Yuan noted that technical issues such as baojia, military colonies, the opening or closing of mines, salt taxes, grain transport, and water conservancy were extremely complex; different opinions each had their own insights, advantages, and disadvantages. The editors therefore placed these views side by side for reference: “Only by gathering many thoughts can one broaden benefit; perhaps by grasping both sides one may use the mean. Thus one should be broad in taking what is good.”

3. Ordering: the essays are assigned according to their nature to eight major categories and sixty-five subcategories. But all kinds of affairs are related to one another, and in classification the same problem is inevitably assigned to different categories and headings. Readers should consult them in relation to one another, allowing them to illuminate each other.

4. Editing and collation: biographical materials on the authors of the essays are placed at the beginning of the book for reference. The essays included all follow commonly circulating editions, selecting from them the portions that possess statecraft value, what is meant by “since those are already books circulating in the world, I take from them the benefit for ordering the world.” At the same time, to increase readability, the editors carried out the work of “cutting redundancies” and “removing partialities” in essays that were “overgrown, prolix, and liable to obscurity” or whose “selection was not refined.” For “if redundancies are not cut, lack of literary order will impede wide circulation; if partialities are not removed, small flaws will cause great purity to be discarded. Why must one wait for a Han Yu to excise Xunzi? Rather, one conceals blemishes in order to preserve the jade whole.” This work of “cutting redundancies” and “removing partialities” reflects the editors’ careful tailoring of each essay. Finally, for convenience in reading, punctuation and circle marks were added to all essays.

5. Unprinted works: the editors’ original compilation plan was very large. In addition to the Wenbian, they intended to edit Huidian tigang to examine institutions, Huangyu tubiao to map geography, Zhiguan yinge to detail the evolution of offices, and they further planned to compile Mingdai jingshi in order to trace problems to their roots. Had the whole plan been completed, one could have understood fully the urgent tasks of aiding the age. But because of time constraints it could not be finished, and so the Wenbian was published first, in order to seek instruction from contemporary scholars.

Putting these five points together, one sees that when editing the Wenbian, Wei Yuan first established a set of standards for selecting materials and then cautiously chose essays according to those standards. From the essays that met them, he preserved a range of views, each with its own insight, and placed the essays, according to their nature, within clearly ordered categories and headings. At the same time, to increase readability, he tailored the essays by cutting redundancies, removing partialities, adding punctuation, and so forth. Finally, he explained the overall plan originally conceived and the direction of future effort.

The foregoing account shows that the editorial work of Wei Yuan and the others was highly selective and was by no means an undirected compilation of essays. Mr. Lu Baoqian’s judgment is correct: “The Huangchao jingshi wenbian is better than the Huangming jingshi wenbian in classification. This was due to the objective factor that the latter book was produced in haste. But when Wei Yuan edited his book, he had definite principles; he treated it as a work of authorship, not purely as the compilation of a book.” Helen Dunstan has also said that “many of the texts in the Wenbian are abridged; they may be only summaries.” If we look further at the materials in the Wenbian and compare the original sources of essays with the selections in the Wenbian, we can see still more clearly that the editors used the mode of compiling a book to express a particular value orientation centered on “statecraft.”

First, with regard to the nature of the essays, the Wenbian includes many works by Neo-Confucian scholars, but none discusses such abstract problems as the Supreme Ultimate, principle and vital force, or mind and nature, and there are few works devoted exclusively to personal self-cultivation. This differs markedly from Xingli jingyi, compiled in the early Qing. Moreover, the Wenbian includes works by famous evidential scholars such as Ruan Yuan, Dai Zhen, and Duan Yucai, but the selected essays have nothing to do with evidential research. These two kinds of writing were extremely common at the time, yet both were excluded by the editors.

Second, with regard to a single author, the Wenbian selects only part of that author’s writings and ignores his other opinions. For example, the editors must have carefully read Lu Shiyi’s Sibian lu, but the book includes only Lu’s essays on learning and ignores his views advocating the restoration of enfeoffment and the well-field system. The editors must also have read Tang Zhen’s Qian shu. The Wenbian includes more than twenty of Tang’s works, yet none of them contains Tang Zhen’s radical political statements such as his denunciation of monarchs as all being robbers. Again, the editors were certainly very familiar with Gu Yanwu’s writings. The Wenbian includes as many as ninety-eight of Gu’s works, the highest number in the whole book, but Gu’s most radical reform essays, such as “On Students,” “On Land Taxes,” and “On Commanderies and Counties,” are not included. Huang Zongxi’s writings are similar. The editors unquestionably read Mingyi daifang lu, but they selected from it only “Selecting Scholars” (ritual administration), together with “Civil Examinations” (ritual administration) from Nanlei wenyue, as well as “Questions and Answers on Reading Burial Books” (ritual administration) and “Epitaph for Wan Chongzong” (scholarship), while not including Huang Zongxi’s more radical criticisms of autocracy, such as “On the Ruler” and “On Ministers.” Again, authors such as Wang Jin, Luo Yougao, and Peng Shaosheng were all famous Buddhist laymen and had many writings on Pure Land Buddhism, but the editors took only their essays discussing scholarly questions in general and did not select the Buddhist writings most representative of their thought. In sum, the essays included in the Wenbian cannot represent the full picture of the authors’ thought. They are a new whole formed after the editors’ subjective selection, combining the writings that best conformed to the purpose of the Wenbian.

Third, with regard to a single essay, the editors also made careful cuts and adjustments, that is, the “cutting redundancies” and “removing partialities” mentioned above. Take Zhang Erqi’s “Discriminating the Will,” the first essay in the Wenbian, as an example. In the Wenbian the sentence reads:

When people are born, they do not at first differ; yet in the end they become greatly different. Why is this? A person is born crying wa-wa and laughing ya-ya ... (Zhang Erqi, 1, 1a) Yet in Zhang’s collected writings the original essay is quite different:

When people are born, they do not at first differ; yet in the end they become greatly different because habituation makes them so. When people have habituations, at first one does not know why they differ, yet they come to differ day by day because the will makes them so. When the will differs, habituation differs; when the will differs, habituation differs; when habituation differs, people differ. The will is the pivot of scholarship, the shaft and oar by which one goes toward good or toward evil. If the pivot is correct, nothing will fail to be correct; if the pivot is not correct, nothing can be made correct. One whose destination is Yan turns his shaft northward; even if he has not yet reached Yan, he will certainly not mistakenly enter Yue. One whose destination is Yue turns his oar southward; even if he has not yet reached Yue, he will certainly not mistakenly enter Yan. Alas! Can one fail to be cautious about the will?

Now, when a person is born, he cries wa-wa and laughs ya-ya ...

We can see that a large intervening passage was deleted by the editors, and in order to preserve continuity of tone, the first sentence was also changed from a declarative sentence into a rhetorical question. In terms of word count, the original has 1,176 characters, while in the Wenbian it has only 881, with nearly 300 characters deleted. This is an example of the editors’ work of “cutting redundancies.” Again, in Lu Yao’s “Reply to Dai Dongyuan on Principle and Desire,” the editors changed the title in the Wenbian to “Reply to Dai Dongyuan,” while also deleting the following passage in which Lu criticizes Neo-Confucian learning:

Thereupon everyone named his learning after principle. As earlier generations mocked it, with “Supreme Ultimate circles” and the tall hats of great masters, this has already gone on for more than one age; it is because the name of Neo-Confucian learning can be attached emptily to things.

Inferring the editors’ intention, the change of title may have been because they thought the selection of this essay was not meant to emphasize discussion of the “problem of principle and desire,” so they removed those words. At the same time, however, the editors did not wish to disseminate negative writings criticizing Neo-Confucian learning, and therefore deleted the passage above. This is one example of the editors’ work of “removing partialities.” There are many similar cases in other essays in the Wenbian, all carefully selected and edited by the editors. The case of Lu Shiyi shows the editors on the one hand cutting text to make it concise, and on the other hand adding text to suit current conditions. Juan 22 of the Wenbian, “Official Administration VIII (Magistrates, Middle),” includes Lu Shiyi’s “On Governing a County” from Sibian lu. This essay is very short, divided into three paragraphs:

Governing the empire must begin with governing one state; governing one state must begin with governing one village; governing one village must begin with making five households a group and ten households an association. I once drew up three covenants for governing villages: first, according to terrain, divide the county into several villages; then organize the people by tens and fives, distinguishing every item in detail and causing all to return to the village covenant head. All lawsuits and prisons, military levies, household registers, land numbers, and corvée duties arise from this. In this way one rather obtains the method by which governing a county is made coherent.

Those who govern today are quick to carry out village covenants, community granaries, baojia, and community schools, producing them in profusion and confusion. This is not knowing the essentials of governance. The village covenant is the guiding thread; community granaries, baojia, and community schools are the particulars. A village covenant is the covenanting of the people of one village to jointly carry out community granaries, baojia, and community schools. Community granaries concern the sufficiency of food; baojia concerns the sufficiency of arms; community schools concern the people’s trust. All the many lines of order and winding details must be studied in this one day. Otherwise, if people merely gather for one day and speak a few empty words, what benefit is there?

To govern the empire, one must employ several worthy governors-general and governors; worthy governors-general and governors are the ancient shepherds and chiefs. To govern one province, one must employ several worthy county magistrates; worthy county magistrates are the ancient feudal lords. To govern prefectures and counties, one must employ several good village heads; good village heads are the ancient village grandees. If one obtains the right men, there is order; if one does not obtain the right men, there is disorder.

If one compares this with the text in juan 18 of Sibian lu jiyao, “The Governance and Pacification Category (Enfeoffment),” one discovers the following. First, in the title, Wei Yuan does not use the original “Enfeoffment,” but changes it to “On Governing a County.” Second, the first two paragraphs are largely the same, but after the words “what benefit is there?” in the second paragraph, more than three hundred characters are deleted. The original third paragraph in Sibian lu jiyao reads:

To govern the empire, one must employ several good county magistrates; county magistrates are the ancient feudal lords. To govern prefectures and counties, one must employ several good village heads; village heads are the ancient county grandees. If one obtains the right men, there is order; if one does not obtain the right men, there is disorder.

The Wenbian changes it to:《文编》改为：

Wei Yuan seems to have added, in view of actual circumstances, the “governors-general and governors” that were not in the original. This move was criticized by a late-Qing reader, Xu Zhaowei, who thought that Wei had distorted the original meaning: “Although it closely fits the present system, it gravely loses the master’s original intention of following the current system of commanderies and counties while restoring the ancient ranks of the feudal lords. This is one error. The discussions of the ancients each have their own standpoint; one must not alter them according to one’s own ideas and thereby cause them to lose their truth. Wei Moshen still did not understand this principle.” (May 6, 1899)

From the analysis above, we can know that the editors attempted, through the method of compiling a book, to express their own concrete views on “statecraft learning.” They therefore strictly selected the nature of the essays and even carefully added to and deleted from every piece of writing. Through this mode of compilation, in the winter of the sixth year of Daoguang (1826), the 120-juan Huangchao jingshi wenbian was finally completed.