Imperial Examination

The imperial examination (科舉, kējǔ) was an examination system in Imperial China designed to select the best administrative officials for the state's bureaucracy. This system had a huge influence on both society and culture in Imperial China and was partly responsible for changes in the power structure of the Tang and Song Dynasties that would hold long after their dissolution. The system assisted in the replacement of what had been relatively few aristocratic families with a more diffuse and populous class of typically rural-dwelling, landowning scholar-bureaucrats, organized into clans. Neighboring Asian countries such as Vietnam, Korea, Japan and Ryūkyū also implemented similar systems, both to draw in their top national talent and to maintain a tight grip on that talent's time, resources, and ideological goals.

Established in 605 during the Sui Dynasty, the system was used only on a small scale during the Tang Dynasty. Under the Song dynasty the emperors expanded the examinations and the government school system in order to counter the influence of military aristocrats, increasing the number of those who passed the exams to more than four to five times that of the Tang. Thus the system played a key role in the emergence of the scholar-officials, who came to dominate society. Under the Ming Dynasty and Qing Dynasty, the system contributed to the narrowness of intellectual life and the autocratic power of the emperor. The system continued with some modifications until its 1905 abolition under the Qing Dynasty. The system had a history (with brief interruptions, e.g. at the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty) of 1,300 years. The modern examination system for selecting civil service staff also indirectly evolved from the imperial one.