Autocracy, Exams and Stagnation: Imperial China's Modern Legacy

Yasheng Huang 黄亚生 is the author of one of the decade’s greatest books about China — The Rise and Fall of the EAST: How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success and Why They Might Lead to Its Decline. It’s a rich book, a product of a career of reflections, with each page delivering something novel and provocative.

In this first half of our two-part interview, we discuss…

How the imperial examination system (known as keju) shaped Chinese governance, culture, and society,
Why autocratic Chinese dynasties benefitted from a meritocratic bureaucracy,
Statistical methods for analyzing social mobility in imperial China,
How the keju system survived the Mongol conquest,
What the tradeoffs in the imperial exam system can teach us about the future economic prospects of China and Taiwan.

Co-hosting today is Ilari Mäkelä, host of the On Humans podcast.

NOTES (Courtesy of Ilari)

A Rough Timeline of Chinese history:

Pre–221 BCE: Disunity (e.g. Warring States)

221 BCE – 220: Unity (Qin & Han dynasties)

220 – 581: Disunity (“Han-Sui Interregnum”)

581 – 1911: Unity (Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing Dynasties)

Historical figures

Modern scholars

Ping-ti Ho 何炳棣 (historian) | Clair Yang (economist) | Joseph Needham (scientist and historian) | Daron Acemoglu | James Robinson

Historical terms

Keju civil service exams | Taiping Rebellion

REFERENCES

A lot of the original data discussed in the episode is original from Huang’s book. As an exception, Huang references his co-authored article on civil service exams and imperial stability, written with Clair Yang.

Outtro music: 等着你回来 by 白光, a 1930s Shanghai starlet https://open.spotify.com/track/0aHMT9dIdPDz094fc37Xq0?si=d1591ff2339d421c

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