Politics of Literati-officials: Political Power and Culture of Imperial Examination System

Ever since Sui and Tang Dynasties, the imperial examination system had sustained a stable civil service institution for more than 1,300 years. Owing to individual decision, there could be a system of selection of officials for all students. Owing to the examination for selection, there could be a common and real equality in examination and selection for all. As compared to the previous recommendation system, the right of employment transferred from local officials to the central court and, thereby, the influential families were eliminated, resulting in a mutual reliance between literati-officialdom and monarch in an unprecedented way. For a comparatively wholesome significance, it brought forth a literati-official politics in which literati-officialdom and the monarch held the political power together, making a unity of the cultural subject and the political subject. This unity, on one side, proved reason and ration of political legitimacy, and, on the other side, the political power should be restricted by the culture under the regulation of Confucian orthodoxy. Obviously, culture was more stable and more essential than politics in the history of China. Therefore, the institutional civil officialdom was more constant and more opposed to change than relying on the monarch’s talent, which directly maintained the whole country’s stabilization. During a time of more than 1,300 years, the examination-selection system produced a like-nature bureaucratic class. In Ming and Qing Dynasties of more than 500 years, this system produced a great number of examination-losers who constituted a local gentry of like-nature. Within the whole country, the imperial examination system helped to complete a political unity by the way of cultural unity in historical China.