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China The Examination System
In late imperial China the status of local-level elites was
ratified by contact with the central government, which maintained
a monopoly on society's most prestigious titles. The examination
system and associated methods of recruitment to the central
bureaucracy were major mechanisms by which the central government
captured and held the loyalty of local-level elites. Their loyalty,
in turn, ensured the integration of the Chinese state and countered
tendencies toward regional autonomy and the breakup of the
centralized system. The examination system distributed its prizes
according to provincial and prefectural quotas, which meant that
imperial officials were recruited from the whole country, in
numbers roughly proportional to a province's population. Elites all
over China, even in the disadvantaged peripheral regions, had a
chance at succeeding in the examinations and achieving the rewards
of officeholding.
The examination system also served to maintain cultural unity
and consensus on basic values. The uniformity of the content of the
examinations meant that the local elite and ambitious would-be
elite all across China were being indoctrinated with the same
values. Even though only a small fraction (about 5 percent) of
those who attempted the examinations passed them and received
titles, the study, self-indoctrination, and hope of eventual
success on a subsequent examination served to sustain the interest
of those who took them. Those who failed to pass (most of the
candidates at any single examination) did not lose wealth or local
social standing; as dedicated believers in Confucian orthodoxy,
they served, without the benefit of state appointments, as
teachers, patrons of the arts, and managers of local projects, such
as irrigation works, schools, or charitable foundations.
In late traditional China, then, education was valued in part
because of its possible payoff in the examination system. The
overall result of the examination system and its associated study
was cultural uniformity--identification of the educated with
national rather than regional goals and values. This self-conscious
national identity underlies the nationalism so important in China's
politics in the twentieth century
(see Republican China
, ch. 1).
Data as of July 1987
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