The Civil Service Examination System Of The Qing Dynasty: Fall And Implications

Selection of talent for the society and for the country has been a constant topic of educational and personnel reform in the government and in the educational and academic communities. As the civil service examination system has had a tremendous historical, social and cultural impact, and implications for the establishment of a world-wide civil service system, a summary of the lessons from its failure implies much for current personnel selection and education reform.We have chosen to study the fall and implications of the Qing civil service examination system because the system itself had once thrived and reached its zenith in that dynasty. The drawbacks of the system were also the most obvious in the Qing. Although the Qing worked hard to design and practice its reform, the system failed to grow with the times. Indeed, the shock from that history is forewarning, and an investigation into the internal factors for its fall has many implications.There are few studies of the fall of the Qing examination system using the system itself as the point of departure and incorporating both internal and external factors. With the system acting as the point of departure and examinations as the point of penetration, and with the assistance of quantitative and qualitative data from historical documents, analyzed with historical and logical methods within the frameworks of historical materialism and testing theory, this paper investigates the relationship between internal factors of civil service examinations such as writing papers, grading and management, and that between the examination system and external factors such as talent recruitment criteria and talent training, with a view to unveiling both the reasons behind the fall of the system and its implications for today.This paper is divided into three chapters of 8 sections in 23 subsections.Chapter 1 describes the manifestations of the fall of the Qing civil service examination system: Similarity in examination topics, use of tricky and unusual questions, lack of a unitary grading standard, emphasis of form at the expense of content, prevalence of cheating, lack of ability due to empty knowledge, and intermittence of the translation examinations, which led to the depression of the examination system and the ultimate death of its two major branches.Chapter 2 analyzes the reasons behind the fall of the Qing civil service examination system, i.e. the specific cultural, political and cultural elements. The reasons for the fall of the Qing system for its large scale run as follows. Following the mid Qing, the basic system remained almost unchanged, leading to its drawbacks and self-denial.Confronted with unforeseen challenges, personnel recruitment criteria saw radical changes, but the traditional system, due to its never-changing subjects, became a 'chicken rib' of little value, leading to its fall. The Qing did try to train talent qualified for the times by developing a new approach to education, but due to the failure of the reforms, the examination system failed to accommodate the new approach, which was thriving and had an increasingly tremendous impact on the fall of the examination system.Chapter 3 suggests implications of the fall of the Qing civil service examination system, based on the previous two chapters, the many implications for current personnel selection and educational reform in socialist modernization with large-scale examinations as its major feature. Firstly, the liberal arts examinations in the Qing test feudal political theory, and test standardization led to education in knowledge of political theory. This suggests the role of Marxist-Leninist, Maoist and Deng Xiaoping's classics in political theory education and examinations, and necessity of analyzing and solving social problems with viewpoints and methods in those classics. Secondly, the new approach to education requires new examination forms, but the Qing reform failed to be innovative to fit education forms to its content. This suggests that examinations should be considered a branch of learning in updating political theory, and that well-oriented studies of examination theory and technology are necessary to achieve true effects. Finally, the examination system itself cannot select talent of both ability and political integrity, because of the exterior environment. This suggests that external factors should be a focus in the selection of such talent, such as a clean government, in order to prevent the 'hiring' behavior of public servants in talent training and selection.