张世平 / Zhang Shiping (late Han merchant)

Overview

张世平 / Zhang Shiping is a late-Han merchant presented as one of the early financiers who helps 刘备 gather followers.

Current Profile

The bounded source names Zhang Shiping with 苏双 as wealthy merchant backing for Liu Bei before he has a durable political base. Their contribution extends the early network beyond family and school: portable commercial wealth helps turn personal reputation and relationships into an organized following.

Key Characteristics

• Supplies early money to a political actor without an established territorial base.
• Represents merchant resources entering an emerging military-political network.
• Complements, rather than replaces, Liu-clan educational sponsorship.

Evidence

• Early finance: Hanji 1097 says Zhang Shiping and Su Shuang give Liu Bei resources used to gather capable followers.

Qualifications

The source’s amount is imprecise in the supplied transcript, and the page does not establish the merchants’ motives, later relationship with Liu Bei, or independent biographies. This route is deliberately disambiguated from 张诗平 / 张诗坪, the modern military-history podcast guest.

What Changed

• Created the late-Han merchant with a semantic suffix to avoid the existing Zhang Shiping identity collision.

Relationships

• 刘备 - emerging leader whose initial following receives merchant backing.
• 苏双 - fellow merchant named in the same financing episode.
• 宗族托举式早期资本 - adjacent early-resource concept extended beyond kinship by merchant money.