Knowledge and Power: China's Examination Hell

For centuries a rigorous series of examinations requiring deep knowledge of the Confucian Classics was the primary tool for the selection of government officials in imperial China. This system has been variously celebrated as a tool of meritocracy and excoriated as the intellectual “straightjacket” that impeded China’s entry into the modern world. This seminar examines the system and the profound impact it had, for better or worse, on Chinese society and government in the early modern period, and the role that its successor “examination hell”—the gaokao or university entrance examination—plays in society today.