Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues

In this online webinar, professor Erik Wang (New York University) will give a talk on his forthcoming book The Political Economy of China's Imperial Examination System, coauthored with Clair Yang. The book argues that (a) the imperial examination system (keju) contributed to political stability, and (b) the emergence of keju was a process, not a shock, with consequences initially unanticipated by its contemporaries. The authors document the emergence of keju using diverse evidence from early Chinese empires to the end of the Tang Dynasty in the ninth century, including epitaphs and government documents. They then trace the selection criteria of the exam system and trends in social mobility over the second millennium, leveraging biographical information from over 70,000 examinees and 1,500 ministers and their descendants across time. Finally, they use a panel of 112 historical polities to quantify the keju’s association with country-level political indicators against the backdrop of a global convergence in political stability and divergence in institutions.