The Real China Model

By Mark Elliott on November 13, 2012

As a historian, however, I cannot let pass unchallenged the characterization of premodern Chinese political culture as “meritocratic.” Over the last 20 years, research has shown that the keju was far from the “ladder of success” it was long widely reputed to be. We know that in the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), for instance, merchants’ sons were not allowed to take the examinations at all, and that in the Qing (1644-1911), as Benjamin Elman, a scholar from Princeton University, has decisively shown, “the content of the civil service competition clearly excluded over 90 percent of China’s people from even the first step on the ladder to success.”

History, Politics
Meritocracy, Civil Service Exams

China’s Great Political Leap Backward

By Qian Gang on November 13, 2012

After years of parsing China's political jargon, I wasn't expecting anything dramatic from the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which opened in Beijing last week. It was foolish, I knew, to look for bold statements on the issue most critical to China's future: political reform.

Standing in the Great Hall of the People and delivering the political report that would set the tone for the country's next generation of leaders, President Hu Jintao wouldn't call for bold change with words like "constitutionalism" or "separation of powers."

Politics
18th Party Congress, Political Reform, Propaganda

China’s Next Leaders: A Guide to What’s at Stake

By Susan Shirk on November 13, 2012

Just a little more than a week after the American presidential election, China will choose its own leaders in its own highly secretive way entirely inside the Communist Party. What’s at stake for China—and for the rest of the world—is not just who will fill which leadership posts until 2022 (two five-year terms are the norm) but whether, ten years from now, the Communist Party itself will still rule China.