July 17, 2014.

THE MING AND QING CIVIL SERVICE EXAMS SURPRISES

1. I am very surprised and intrigued how 1 examinee can spend literally his whole adult life pursuing this rather elusive “Keju” civil service examination degrees, which has 3 major stages he must passed, if he is to get anywhere!

2. The competition is intense – so much so, cheating, bribing exam officials were rampant, and they resort to even buying these degrees in the hope of landing government official positions.

3. Rote learning by memorization of these essential Confucian classics forming the major part of these civil service exams was fundamental to a person’s success in these exams. Past model performance essays were bought and memorized by heart. Thus, critics have argued that such rote learning nowhere made them Confucian experts, but instead, they stultify China’s intellectual growth, as well as limiting the individual’s growth and true progress in trying to run his part of the government machinery.

Hoi K. Suen and Lan Yu termed this weakness as “construct irrelevant” in their article: [“Chronic Consequences of High-Stakes Testing? Lessons From The Chinese Civil Service Exam” as in: http://suen.ed.psu.edu] “ ……. memorization of model essays from previous exams is construct irrelevant as its sole purpose is to perform well on the exam, without necessarily understanding Confucius’s thoughts.” (p. 52).

4. What was even more galling, as the video “A Short On The Civil Exam” show – is that both the Ming and Qing governments were guilty of conniving to sell these degrees “even to men who did not have any academic degree” especially when the Mongols invaded in 1451, and in their frantic efforts to raise cash to pay for their military expeditions to stop the Mongol hordes!


5. As such, the millions who will fail these exams over the years, will be left unfulfilled and angry at this exam system.

It is said that Hong Houxin (or his other name, Hong Xiuquan), failed the second-stage provincial exams at four different times that he sat. He had a big hatred at this Confucian state system, and later claimed that he now absorbed Christian beliefs and that he was the second man to Jesus Christ, when he founded the Taiping Tianquo (“Heavenly Kingdom”), and launched the “Taiping Rebellion” (1850-1864), against the Qing state. It was one of the bloodiest wars in human history, claiming some 20 million lives. Hong Xiuquan was finally defeated, but his mystic inspirations remained inexplicable – a “Christian” education system he helped introduced during this Rebellion (which was later abandoned) – did not solve his frustrations against the State civil service exam system.

6. Another surprising turnabout which became an unfortunate legacy – was that millions of such classically literate men who passed, but never reached the top palace exam or Dianshi level to become the “jinshi” (or “advanced scholar” or “literatus”) never then got into government official positions. They then had to employ their talents for many non-official positions such as physicians, pettifoggers, fiction writers, examination essay teachers etc – a sheer waste of talents and money spent – and again, ending up totally frustrated and angry at what they perceived as incompetent State control of the civil service examination system.

Radical reforms thus had to be instituted in the aftermath of the Taiping Rebellion, and more urgently, in the face of growing Western imperialism against a weakening Qing government. This finally led to the delegitimization and decanonization of this imperial “Keju’ civil service examination system, and abolishing its political, social and cultural functions. These were completed by 1904-1905.

Notwithstanding, it would appear that the ghost of some features of this imperial Qing exam system still survived in the new China school entrance exam system in 1912 (when Dr Sun Yat-sen took over and formed the First Republic of China) and to date – albeit in a different fashion and format. In this respect, the “old” “Keju” system still scored a moral victory and may have had the last laugh.


Yeow Eu Ming
10 July 2014.