Civil Examinations and Meritocracy in Late Imperial China

(Harvard University Press) Long before the SAT existed, civil examinations opened doors into China’s literary elite — for one percent of the millions of candidates who took them every two or three years. Elman examines the world’s first political meritocracy and its implications for the intellectual, political, and economic life of China in the late imperial period. Elman is a professor of Chinese studies, East Asian studies and history at Princeton University.