Decline
It was in the 14th century during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) that the imperial exams changed format and adopted the Eight Part Essay writing. Gu Yanwu, a celebrated Qing Dynasty scholar, declared the Eight Part Essay practice as “more disastrous than ‘book burning’” (the purge of Confucianism ordered by Qin Shihuang, first emperor of the Qin Dynasty, when Confucian books were burnt and Confucian scholars buried alive).
The Qing Dynasty’s decline matched the deterioration of the imperial exam system. By the late 19th century, the system’s failure to produce competent officials was being cited as the cause of successive domestic and diplomatic crises. Officials began sending imperial memorials to the throne, imploring it to “abandon the imperial exam system and operate modern schools instead.” The Qing Government issued a decree in 1905 announcing the suspension of imperial exams. This marked the end of the 1,300-year-old system. The 1911 Revolution ended the Qing Dynasty six years later.
The merits and demerits of the keju system, however, remained an historical topic. Sun Yat-sen, father of China’s democratic revolution, spoke of the keju (in his Five-Power Constitution) as “the best ancient system for the selection of talented people in the world.” Western scholars commend the keju system as the “fifth invention of ancient China,” in addition to the compass, gunpowder, papermaking and printing. The positive role that the keju system played in China’s history is clearly evident in its literary treasures, as well as in the legacies of its masters of statecraft and military strategy.
Editor: Zhang Xinjie
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