VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 7, SECTION 1

VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 7, SECTION 1

The Examination of the Twenty-First Century, Five Shared Features

Last chapter came to the abolition of the examination in nineteen oh five. The first question of this section is just this: did the examination truly die? By its name, yes. But by its substance, the examination not only did not die, it expanded greatly across the globe in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in a new form. This section looks at what today's examination looks like, and at how, just as thirteen centuries ago, it still has not touched that highest boundary.

In nineteen oh five the Qing government formally abolished the examination that had run for nearly thirteen centuries. From that year the traditional channel of rising for Chinese scholars was cut. So did the examination vanish from then on? By its name, yes, the name examination was not used again by the Chinese state after nineteen oh five. But by its substance, the examination did not vanish, it expanded greatly across the globe in a new form. After abolishing the examination, China first replaced it with a school system, and in the Republican period built systems of higher examinations and ordinary examinations, and after the founding of the new China built the college-entrance exam to select students for universities, later restoring the college-entrance exam and at the same time building a national civil-service exam system, so that today the college-entrance exam, the civil-service exam, and every kind of professional-qualification exam make up the new examination system of present-day China. And outside China, Britain formally built a modern civil-service exam system in the mid-nineteenth century, directly inspired by the Chinese examination. France, Germany, and America built their own civil-service exam systems one after another from the second half of the nineteenth century into the early twentieth, likewise influenced by the spirit of the Chinese examination. Since the twentieth century, large-scale standardized exams like the SAT, the GRE, the LSAT, and the MCAT have appeared in America and become a core mechanism of the global educational system, and internationally common professional-qualification exams, the certified public accountant, the chartered financial analyst, the TOEFL, the IELTS, have become the standard of global professional mobility. So the examination did not vanish in nineteen oh five, it completed in nineteen oh five its transformation from a Chinese institution into the shared underlying infrastructure of all humankind, the name changed, the form changed, but the skeleton of one line.

Look at the various mechanisms of examination-plus-channel-of-rising in the world today together, and you find they share common features, all inherited from the Chinese examination and at the same time carrying present-day extensions. First, no bar of origin, anyone of any country, any people, any family background, so long as they meet the eligibility, may sign up. Second, a unified exam, the topics, content, and standard fixed by a specialized body, so that every place tests the same set. Third, admission by score or by comprehensive assessment, those who pass ranked by score or comprehensive assessment and entered on a list of candidates. Fourth, tied to a channel of rising, those who pass able to enter a university, a graduate school, a professional qualification, a company, a government, and begin their road of rising. Fifth, global mobility, today's examination already breaking through borders, an Indian student able through an exam to enter an American university, a Chinese student to enter a British one, a Brazilian student through a qualifying exam to enter a financial firm in London, the global mobility of talent become the norm. These five features are at bottom the present-day unfolding of the spirit of the ancestors' examination of fourteen hundred years ago. That half dream of the ancestors keeps unfolding across the globe, and yet it still has its boundary.

Here we set the deepest claim of this section: the examination of the world today, like the Chinese examination of thirteen centuries ago, still has not run through to the highest position in politics. The head of state, the president, the premier, the prime minister, is not selected through an exam, but comes up through election, party, parliament, the various ways of enfeoffment. The highest-level government officials, ministers, senior advisers, cabinet members, none of these positions come up through the civil-service exam, but through political appointment, intra-party election, political faction, that is, the various ways of enfeoffment. The highest-level political judgment, war and peace, constitutional amendment, the root direction of monetary policy, none of these decisions is made through an exam, all through a political process. So the world of the twenty-first century is still doing the ancestors' half dream, the examination for the middle and lower ranks, no examination for the highest. Why? The reason is of one line with thirteen centuries ago, enfeoffment will not abolish itself. If the highest leader of a state were selected through an exam, then the whole political structure would have to be redesigned, the electoral system, the party system, the hereditary system all made void, which would be to change the very root of the whole modern political institution. Today's government, like the Chinese court of thirteen centuries ago, cannot let the examination run fully through to the highest position, because that would be the government abolishing itself. From Mozi teaching raise up the able, to the global civil-service exam of today, this dream has always been there, and has never been fully realized.

So here is the position this section lays down. We set one layer firm: the examination did not vanish in nineteen oh five, it completed in that year the transformation from a Chinese institution into the shared underlying infrastructure of all humankind. Today's examination has five shared features, no bar of origin, a unified exam, admission by score, tied to a channel of rising, and global mobility, and these five are the present-day unfolding of the spirit of the ancestors' examination. But it still has that boundary, and like thirteen centuries ago it has not run through to the highest position in politics, because enfeoffment will not abolish itself.

But here a strange thing surfaces. Government cannot manage a full examination, because enfeoffment will not abolish itself. Yet there is a kind of organization that not only can run a full examination but must, or it cannot live, and that is the enterprise. Why, when both are organizations made of a group of people, can government do only the half dream while the enterprise must do the whole? Behind it is the root difference between the logic of the work and the logic of enfeoffment. The next section is about that two-track division, and about a line proven again and again in today's business world: a CEO who staffs by kinship will perish.

Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.