In 9 BCE Wang Mang, former regent to the infant Han emperor, declared himself the founder of the Xing (or 'new') dynasty. He tried reforms in keeping with stricter Confucian ideas, but many of his plans failed. He attempted to strengthen government monopolies and introduced agricultural reforms to try to allay the fiscal crisis faced by the government. Most notably, he tried redistributing the land, taking it from powerful nobles and giving it to the peasantry. Massive famine compounded his troubles, and the Xiongnu, a Turkic people that was the main threat to China for several hundred years, attacked. Massive flooding and a change in the course of the Huang He river destroyed his authority once and for all.
In 23 CE a secret society of peasants, the Red Eyebrows, so named because they painted their eyebrows red, executed Wang Mang. Between 23 and 25, China was chaotic and without real leadership. Finally, in 25 CE, Liu Xu (a member of the previous Han royal family) took control of the throne and declared that he was reinstituting the Han dynasty. Thus, Chinese histories of the period consider the Han dynasty to be a single dynasty with the 'usurper' Wang Mang's rule considered an interregnum. | 
