Criticism And Transformation Of The Bourgeois Reformists Thinkers On The Imperial Examination System

After the opium war, China has reduced to a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society, China was involved in the tide of modern capitalist world by domestic trouble and foreign invasion. After entering the modern society, on the one hand, Confucianism as the mainstay of traditional culture has been suffered unprecedented impact; On the other hand, the Confucian classics as the main content and eight-legged essays as the fixed format of the imperial examination system also shows that it can not adapt to social development and change, when people feeled more about it. Especially modern bourgeois thinkers who had the nature of the alienation to the feudal system has criticized for more. The rise of China’s early bourgeois reformists is a product of the development of modern social contradictions at sixties and seventies, it has an important position in the history of China, a huge impact development to the modern Chinese society. They recognized that the examination system corrupted people and underemployed, so they proposed to abolish stereotype, change imperial examinations and learn the western education system and so on. Period of Reformation Movement later, Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao et al had absorbed and summarized the ideas of the early bourgeois reformists, who had took the imperial examination system reform, the establishment of modern education system as one of the central elements of the reform, shouted “Education theory of saving the nation”. Their appeal and practice directly contributed to the abolition of the imperial examination system in 1905.Firstly, this paper makes a longitudinal comb about the general situation of the emergence and development of the imperial examination system, and discusses the development of imperial examinations in the Ming and Qing dynasties reached its peak, but drawbacks and weakness also appeared. After entering the modern society, because of the imperial examination system can not adapt to the needs of society into a crisis, it was criticized by the emerging bourgeois reformers thinkers. Second, highlighting the bourgeois reformists thinkers in the late qing dynasty, such as: Feng Guifen, Zheng Guanying, Wang Tao and other early bourgeois reformers and bourgeois reformers Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, Tan Sitong, Yan Fu and others on the imperial examination system cognition and criticism. On the basis of the comprehensive observation of modern bourgeois reformers thinkers attitudes about the imperial examination system, this article also put a further reflection on their reflection of the imperial examination system. Pointing out that their criticism of the imperial examination system is a historical heritage, it generalizes and summarizes their criticism and change attitudes and ideas of reasonable and not scientific, and does further analysis on the reasons for this result. So the paper can be said to belong to another study of historical research, the layers of progressive research could not only bring us closer to the historical facts, but also in terms of the imperial examination system involved, due to the efforts under the context and history curtain, but also can help us to make more scientific interpretations and understandings.There is also research issues related to the criticism and transformation of the imperial examination system in the late Qing dynasty thinkers, but are generally studied from the perspective of contemporary people, unavoidable with subjective will. The existing achievements lack of integrity and basically not special study of this problem, but merely in all interpretations of the modern thinkers, involved in their attitudes toward the imperial examination system partially and sporadically. This article will break these research ideas, from the typical bourgeois reformists in the late Qing dynasty thinkers, to restore a review of the matter at that time, focus on analysis of their attitude and understanding of the imperial examination system. It also conforms to the historical research method, starting from the historical background of the historical facts to objectively research.