The only Emperor of the short-lived Chinese Xin dynasty, one of the most controversial social reformers in East Asian antiquity.
By happenstance, his ill-fated reign almost coincided with traditional years of Jesus' early life, hence Wang is sometimes called "Christ-in-Power," because his attempts at installing social (or socialist?) utopia in China have quite a few common features with teachings of early Christianity (or Christian Socialism) about common good, despite Wang being, of course, a reverent Confucian.
His reign was, alas, plagued by natural disasters, famines, river deluges, and harvest failures, which, in aggravation, sparked the civil war of monumental scale: about 8/10 of the then-Han population had perished.
Interestingly, even some details of Wang’s fall, as Chinese sources tell it (see, e.g., in History of the Former Han Dynasty by Ban Gu), resemble the Biblical stories about Jesus’ sacrifice. For example, Wang was slain late in the afternoon, after his three-day fast during siege of the palace sector he found his last refuge in, his head that wore the regalia severed, his body torn to pieces by soldiers who cast lots upon the most prized body parts as proofs of their victory over the Emperor; finally, as Ban Gu remarks dryly, Wang’s head was taken to the rival Han Emperor Liu Gengshi, who ordered to hang it up in the temporary capital Wancheng, “in the market place to be spat on and pelted with stones and dung, and someone cut out the tongue, and ate it.”
(Compare Mark 15:17, 15:19, 15:24:
And they clothed him with purple, and platted a crown of thorns, and put it about his head… And they smote him on the head with a reed, and did spit upon him, and bowing their knees worshipped him… And when they had crucified him, they parted his garments, casting lots upon them, what every man should take.)
Somehow, through all of this, Wang’s head had been preserved (almost miraculously) in a condition good enough that for three more centuries it could have been seen in a court vault, until, in 311, the great fire in the besieged capital destroyed the remains.
