In the 1980s, the reform and opening-up policy was implemented, so that some regions and people got rich first, and the centralized and unified planned economy system was transformed into a market economy system. The form of public ownership of the means of production began to change, and private ownership gained certain legitimacy. The concept of social life has also changed from jealousy and suppression of wealth to worship and praise of wealth, while the theoretical circle has criticized and reflected on various drawbacks of the highly centralized planning system. These changes are quietly affecting the researchers' thinking on Wang Anshi's reform thought of "suppressing mergers and equalizing the rich and the poor". The train of thought focuses on two points: First, they criticize Wang Anshi's attempt to achieve "extinction and suppression of merger" by "returning the light and heavy power to the people": "extinction and suppression of merger is essentially the state's use of political power to exclude general mergers and self-merger.

"[80]" The retrogression of economic policy is mainly manifested in the strong intervention of * * in economic affairs ".

[8 1] The reform "expanded the scale of profitable operation in feudal countries, and the government-run economic system was developed, which was extremely unfavorable to the development of private industry and commerce.

"[82] Second, it refers to the measures of" destroying and suppressing mergers and helping the poor "such as the young crops law, the exemption law and the municipal easy law, which not only failed to destroy and suppress mergers, but increased the economic burden of" poverty ".

[83] These new ideas obviously bear a profound brand of the times.

(2) After the founding of New China, Marxist historical materialism occupied a dominant position in the field of historical research.

Under the guidance of historical materialism, historians reevaluate Wang Anshi and his reform.

Although Wang Anshi and his reform have also been positively evaluated, due to the different understanding and application of Marxism, the affirmation of the nature and times of Wang Anshi and his reform in the first half of the 20th century was different from that of Liang Qichao. This difference is manifested in: