Wang Anshi's New Policies Group (Xin Fa), also known as the 'Reformers', are opposed by the ministers in the 'Conservative' faction led by the historian and Chancellor Sima Guang.

As one faction supplants another in the majority position of the court ministers, it demotes rival officials and exiles them to govern remote frontier regions of the empire.

One of the prominent victims of the political rivalry, the famous poet and statesman Su Shi, is jailed and eventually exiled for criticizing Wang's reforms.

The tide has tilted in favor of the conservatives due to renewed foreign conflict.

Like many Chinese officials of the era, Wang's career has experienced many ups and downs, but the beginning of the end had come in 1074.

A famine in northern China had driven many farmers off their lands, their circumstances made worse by the debts they had incurred from the seasonal loans granted under Wang’s reform initiatives.

Local officials insist on collecting on the loans as the farmers were leaving their land.

The empress dowager is also an opponent of Wang, who is blamed for the crisis.

Wang wanted to resign, but the emperor had supported him, giving him high honors and an appointment to Jiangning (present-day Nanjing.)

He had been recalled by the emperor in 1075, but now he is seen as vulnerable and is openly attacked from groups of conservatives.

Wang returns to Nanjing, which he prefers to Kaifeng, to write and engage in scholarship through to his death in 1086.

With Shenzong's death in 1085, the New Policies will be rolled back—some temporarily, some permanently.