Sang Hongyang

Sang Hongyang was the son of a Luoyang merchant, gifted at mental arithmetic, who entered the palace as an attendant at thirteen. In 110 BC, as commandant of grain, he took charge of the Grand Ministry of Agriculture and set up the equable transport and price-levelling systems, buying and shipping local goods and steadying prices in the capital, and tightened the salt and iron monopolies to pay for Emperor Wu's wars. On his deathbed the emperor made him imperial counsellor and named him with Huo Guang, Jin Midi and Shangguan Jie as regents for Emperor Zhao. At the court conference of 81 BC he defended the monopolies against the classically trained literati. In 80 BC he was implicated in Shangguan Jie's plot with Liu Dan, King of Yan, to bring down Huo Guang, and he and his clan were put to death. Under Emperor Xuan, Huan Kuan worked the record of the conference into the sixty chapters of the Discourses on Salt and Iron (Yantie lun).