Alexander the Great vs Wang Shichong

I swear these scoring systems are just numberwang. How do you quantify ‘influence’ for Wang Shichong when most of what we know about him comes from Tang-dynasty historians who had every reason to smear him? Alexander’s score gets inflated because his propaganda machine survived intact—Plutarch and Arrian were writing hagiographies centuries later. And why is political acumen worth less than military? Wang seized power in a chaotic civil war and held Luoyang against multiple sieges; Alexander couldn’t even keep his empire together for a decade after his death. The weight distribution here clearly favors flashy conquest over actual statecraft. Until we adjust for source bias and add a ‘stability’ metric, this is just clickbait.

Let’s cut the PR and look at the numbers. Alexander’s 96 military score is generous but defensible: he fought 12 major battles across three continents with zero defeats, and his use of the oblique phalanx at Chaeronea and Gaugamela set a tactical template for the next 2,000 years. Wang’s 94 is inflated. Yes, he ambushed Li Mi at Luoyang using a feigned retreat, but that was a civil war skirmish against a rebel leader, not a field army of 100,000 Persians. Wang never fought a pitched battle against a peer adversary like the Tang’s Li Shimin, who later crushed him. Alexander’s logistics were also superior—he marched through the Gedrosian desert with an army of 50,000; Wang couldn’t hold the Yellow River supply lines for six months. The military gap is wider than these numbers suggest.

This comparison reeks of Eurocentric bias dressed up as objectivity. Alexander gets a 90 for ‘influence’ because Western historians treat Hellenization as a universal good, ignoring the genocide at Thebes, the destruction of Persepolis, and the forced assimilation of cultures from Egypt to Bactria. Wang Shichong’s influence is dismissed because it didn’t produce a ‘golden age’—but his administrative reforms in Luoyang directly shaped the Tang tax system, which governed millions more people than Alexander’s empire ever did. Why is spreading Greek statues more influential than stabilizing a food supply for a war-torn region? The very definition of ‘legacy’ here assumes that military conquest is the only history that matters. Until we decolonize the scoring rubric, these comparisons are just reinforcing imperial nostalgia.

这个评分体系对王世充明显不公。政治分54.4？唐太宗李世民自己都说王世充‘机辩有余，然非帝王之器’，但他在洛阳推行的‘公廨田’制度实际上缓解了关中粮荒，比亚历山大在苏萨搞的强制通婚高明多了。军事分57.8更是离谱——王世充在偃师击败李密时，李密拥兵二十万，王世充只有两万残兵，这仗打得比亚历山大在高加米拉对阵大流士还险。亚历山大赢波斯靠的是马其顿方阵加伙伴骑兵的降维打击，王世充赢李密靠的是心理战和地形利用，难度系数完全不同。建议把‘逆境系数’加入公式，王世充至少能涨20分。

西方人总喜欢吹亚历山大，但放到中国历史里，他顶多算个加强版项羽——打仗猛，治国烂。王世充在洛阳搞‘折箭为誓’收买人心，虽然虚伪，但至少懂政治手腕。亚历山大让马其顿人和波斯人通婚，结果手下直接哗变；王世充招降李密旧部时，给田地、免赋税，反而稳住了洛阳局势。评分里‘影响力’90比84，但亚历山大的希腊化只维持了三百年就被罗马取代，王世充的税制改革却被唐朝继承，影响了整个中国封建社会。跨文化比较时，西方学者总低估中国‘治术’的长期价值，高估军事征服的瞬时光芒。要我说，王世充的政治智慧至少值80分，亚历山大最多55。