Imperial Examination - Demise and Legacy

Demise and Legacy

The imperial examination system was abolished with the foundation of the Yuan Dynasty, but was revived in 1315 by Emperor Renzong of Yuan. It thrived under the Ming and Qing dynasties. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, which attempted to overthrow the Qing Dynasty in the middle of the 19th century, was the first in Chinese history to admit women as exam candidates, although they abandoned the system later. With the military defeats in the 1890s and pressure to develop a national school system, reformers such as Kang Yuwei and Liang Qichao called for abolition and the Hundred Days' Reform of 1898 proposed a set of modernizations. After the Boxer Uprising, the government drew up plans to reform, then abolish the exams. On 2 September 1905 the throne endorsed a memorial which ordered that the old examination system be discontinued at all levels in the following year. The new system provided equivalents to the old degrees; the Bachelor's Degree, for instance, would be considered equivalent to the xiu cai. The details of the new system remained to be worked out by the time of the fall of the dynasty in 1911.