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The World’s First Meritocracy Through the Lens of Institutions and Cultural Persistence

In: The Palgrave Handbook of Comparative Economics

Author

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  • James Kai-Sing Kung

    (The University of Hong Kong)

Abstract

China was the first in the world to have developed a meritocratic bureaucracy in the form of keju, a civil exam system through which top government officials were selected on a competitive basis. As an institution, keju provided room for social mobility as evidence shows, although “family background” also mattered. More interestingly, keju nurtured a culture of valuing learning and educational achievements that persists to this day in terms of higher human capital and entrepreneurial outcomes as proxied by years of schooling and occupational choice. However, a potentially worrying sign of this persistence is local elite entrenchment, as keju culture is transmitted via the channels of educational infrastructure, social capital, and political elites alongside human capital, suggesting meritocracy may have cast a “long shadow”.

Suggested Citation

  • James Kai-Sing Kung, 2021. "The World’s First Meritocracy Through the Lens of Institutions and Cultural Persistence," Springer Books, in: Elodie Douarin & Oleh Havrylyshyn (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Comparative Economics, edition 1, chapter 7, pages 159-184, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-030-50888-3_7
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-50888-3_7
    as

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