Elman, Benjamin. Civil Examinations and Meritocracy in Late Imperial China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013.

Summary
This book assesses the role of education, examination, and China's civil service in fostering the world's first professional class (the literati) based on demonstrated knowledge and skill. Civil examinations had been instituted in China as early as the seventh century CE, but in the Ming and Qing eras they were the nexus 'linking the intellectual, political, and economic life of imperial China'. Local elites and members of the court sought to influence how the government regulated the classical curriculum and selected civil officials. As a guarantor of educational merit, civil examinations served to tie the dynasty to the privileged gentry and literati classes--both ideologically and institutionally. These examinations thus took on 'cultural salience: they represented the focal point for imperial interests, family strategies, and individual hopes and aspirations'. Moreover, the education ethos carried over in the domains of medicine, law, fiscal policy, and military affairs. The ninety-five percent that failed often became doctors, Buddhist priests, teachers, notaries, merchants, astronomers, and printers. He argues that these civil examinations restructured the complex relationships between social status, political power, and cultural lineage, in which civil examinations, as a test of educational merit, “tied the dynasty and its elites together bureaucratically via culture.” (318) It was also key precedent to late adaptations by western countries (especially in France). He writes: “A classical education based on nontechnical moral and statecraft theory was as suitable for selection of elites in China… as humanism and a classical education served elites in the nation-states of early-modern Europe.” (317)

See Also: John Carson