The civil service examination system, a Â
method of recruiting civil officials based on Â
merit rather than family or political connections, played an especially central role in Â
Chinese social and intellectual life from 650 Â
to 1905. Passing the rigorous exams, which Â
were based on classical literature and philosophy, conferred a highly sought-after status, Â
and a rich literati culture in imperial China Â
ensued.
Civil service examinations connected various aspects of premodern politics, society, economy, Â
and intellectual life in imperial China. Local Â
elites and the imperial court continually influenced the Â
dynastic government to reexamine and adjust the classical curriculum and to entertain new ways to improve Â
the institutional system for selecting civil officials. As a Â
result, civil examinations, as a test of educational merit, Â
also served to tie the dynasty and literati culture together Â
bureaucratically.
Premodern civil service examinations, viewed by Â
some as an obstacle to modern Chinese state- building, Â
did in fact make a positive contribution to China’s emergence in the modern world. A classical education based Â
on nontechnical moral and political theory was as suitable Â
for selection of elites to serve the imperial state at its highest echelons as were humanism and a classical education Â
that served elites in the burgeoning nation-states of early Â
modern Europe. Moreover, classical examinations were
Explanation:
an effective cultural, social, political, and educational Â
construction that met the needs of the dynastic bureaucracy while simultaneously supporting late imperial social structure. Elite gentry and merchant status groups Â
were defined in part by examination degree credentials.
Civil service examinations by themselves were not an Â
avenue for considerable social mobility, that is, they were Â
not an opportunity for the vast majority of peasants and Â
artisans to move from the lower classes into elite circles. Â
The archives recording data from the years 1500 to 1900 Â
indicate that peasants, traders, and artisans, who made Â
up 90 percent of the population, were not a significant Â
part of the 2 to 3 million candidates who usually took the Â
local biennial licensing tests . Despite this fact, a social Â
byproduct of the examinations was the limited circulation in the government of lower-level elites from gentry, Â
military, and merchant backgrounds. Â
One of the unintended consequences of the examinations was the large pool of examination failures who used Â
their linguistic and literary talents in a variety of nonofficial roles: One must look beyond the official meritocracy Â
to see the larger place of the millions of failures in the Â
civil service examinations. One of the unintended consequences of the examinations was the creation of legions Â
of classically literate men who used their linguistic talents Â
for a variety of nonofficial purposes: from physicians to Â
pettifoggers, from fiction writers to examination essay Â
teachers, and from ritual specialists to lineage agents. Â
Although women were barred from taking the exams, Â
they followed their own educational pursuits if only to Â
compete in ancillary roles, either as girls competing for Â
spouses or as mothers educating their sons.