Person1525 – 1582

Zhang Juzheng

Also called: Chang Chü-cheng

Senior grand secretary in the early Wanli reign who, for ten years from 1572, restored finances and discipline through performance reviews, a land survey and the Single Whip reform

A native of Jiangling in Huguang (today’s Hubei), he passed the jinshi in 1547 and entered the Hanlin Academy. He tutored the crown prince who would become the Wanli Emperor and joined the Grand Secretariat in 1567. In 1572, allied with the eunuch Feng Bao, he ousted the senior grand secretary Gao Gong and governed for ten years on behalf of the boy emperor. After his death in 1582 his enemies had him stripped of rank and honours and his family’s property confiscated; his name was cleared only in 1622, late in the Ming.

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1572 – 1582Zhang Juzheng’s Reforms and the Single Whip Lawleader
For ten years at the start of the Wanli reign the senior grand secretary Zhang Juzheng re-surveyed the land and tightened official discipline, and in 1581 extended across the empire the Single Whip law, which merged taxes and labour service into one payment in silver.

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Wanli Emperor (Shenzong of Ming)1563 – 1620
Ming emperor (r. 1572–1620) who, after Zhang Juzheng’s death, long refused to hold court; the “three great campaigns” including the Korean war and the defeat at Sarhu drained the dynasty

Themes this person appears in

Ming, Qing and Edo Japan1500 – 1800
The age when the Ming, shaken by northern raiders, southern pirates and the silver economy, fell to Li Zicheng’s rebels, and the Manchu Qing reached its greatest extent and prosperity under Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong — as Japan was unified out of the Warring States into the Edo shogunate’s bakuhan order and closed country, and Joseon, after two great wars, met its neighbours through embassies to Edo and the Northern Learning