
If rulers’ own behavior is ethical, what difficulty will they have in governing? If their own conduct is improper, how can they demand lawfulness from their citizens? Confucius. Analects.
Matthew Archer’s recent What if we Lost our Smartest 5%? suggests that, without our scientists and engineers we would struggle even to maintain our quality of life. It also helps explain the West’s current governmental decline and China’s rise. That’s because, like most sentient beings, our smartest 5% – scientists and engineers – are repelled by our toxic political process. No wonder Western governments have failed to deliver democratic outcomes1.
China’s top 5%, by contrast, are entirely involved in government, and thereby hangs our tale..
The smartest guys in the room
Imagine the impact on European civilization of a series of Imperial dynasties maintaining the self-same style and significance from Caesar Augustus until the First World War. Now imagine such a civilization existing on the other side of the planet unaware of Greek philosophy, the alphabet, Roman governance, Christianity, feudalism, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment or democracy, but with its own, unique cultural and institutional correlates that exceeded all of them in intellectual subtlety and material success. Fernand Braudel
2500 years ago a government consultant named Confucius designed a low-maintenance, harmonious state by modeling it on the nuclear family and its natural hierarchy. The head of each little family would be responsible to the family clan head –as they still are – who is responsible to the extended clan head and so on, up to the head of the Big Family, the emperor.
The emperor’s responsibility would be to find honest, competent, selfless geniuses willing to devote their lives to serving the dynasty. The trick, he said, was finding them, “The administration of government lies in getting men of strong moral character – the kind who will only be attracted a the ruler’s own good character, which he cultivates by treading the path of duty. And treading the path of duty is cultivated by practicing compassion”. Because honesty rises with intelligence and running a kingdom is the hardest job on earth, choose officials for their moral integrity and intellectual abilities.
Alas, rulers of the day were comfortable with their chain of command and their nobles were hostile to meritocracy and Confucius, convinced that he had failed, died.
For centuries, corrupt eunuchs, scheming regents, dowager empresses, usurpers, concubines, wicked uncles and rebellious generals continued their massacres, kidnappings, taxing and warring. Confucius’ disciples persistently advocated his plan, however, until, in 188 BC, they persuaded Emperor Wen of Han to stop imprisoning parents, wives, and siblings of common criminals. When things went awry, he wrote Letters of Public Apology, as Confucius advised. So positive was the public response that he began lowering taxes, abolishing corvée labor and giving monthly pensions to widows, orphans and retirees and, as Confucius had predicted, peace and prosperity prevailed. Emperor Wen next began examining nobles’ suitability for office and soon, ambitious families were sending promising offspring to Confucian cram schools. A century later, thirty-thousand earnest young men were enrolled at Imperial Colleges where, as a form of meditation, they memorized the Master’s teaching on compassionate service until it permeated their feelings, thoughts, and dreams.
Getting serious
Eight centuries of increasing meritocracy passed until, in 600 AD, Emperor Yang of Sui opened imperial examinations to peasants. He instructed examiners – from whom candidates’ identities were concealed – to find men with intellectual depth and moral maturity. To emphasize the importance of morality, he said, they should execute cheaters.
Examinees answered questions on the economy, analyzed current government policies and composed original essays to demonstrate their brushwork, literacy, creativity, and knowledge of the World. The Emperor himself queried top candidates who quoted from memory case studies in governance and passages from the Analects (as they still do). Advancement by examination was class-blind (it still is) because, said Censor Wang Ji, “If selection by examination is not strict, the powerful will struggle to be foremost, and orphans and the poor will have difficulty advancing”.
By 1204 AD, of two-hundred seventy-nine senior officials whose families we know, forty-four percent had forebears in government (by 2020, it was twelve percent). Successful applicants became national celebrities, their feats memorialized in family books and their homecomings semi-hysterical:
When a scholar rides in a high carriage drawn by four horses, flag-bearers running ahead with a mounted escort bringing up the rear, people gather on both sides of the road to watch and sigh. Ordinary men and foolish women rush forward in excitement and humbly prostrate themselves in the dust stirred up by his carriage. This is a scholar’s joy. This is when his ambition is fulfilled.
Poor scholars who ascended on talent were the Emperor’s men entirely. They could neither own land, serve in their home provinces, nor have relatives in the same branch of government (prohibitions that still hold). They competed for promotion by constructing public works and, though dynasties rose and fell, there was just one official to serve eight thousand citizens, often in regions far from family and friends, under terrible conditions, regularly at the cost of their lives.
Though few in number, they sustained the most harmonious, advanced, prosperous nation on earth, and so lustrous is their record that Chinese heroes and villains –historical or fictional – were or are government officials. One such hero-official has even been deified: by democratic agreement, Governor Li Bing, who designed and constructed the Dujiangyan water diversion project in 250 BC (below), is God of Waters. His temple still stands at the site where he diverted the waters to create one of the country’s great rice bowls.

That was then, this is now
The top 20% of Chinese university graduates, the smartest two-million (out of eleven-million) youngsters, will take the guokao civil service exam this summer. The written examinations are challenging, the orals intimidating and exhausting, and applicants need a 140 IQ (enough for a PhD in theoretical physics) to get an interview, and only 27,000, 1.3% of them, will receive job offers.
The successful applicants will take vows of selfless service stricter than a Jesuit priest’s, then those with leadership aspirations will be sent to poor villages on the edge of the Taklamakan Desert – barely out of poverty – to live until they lift everyone’s incomes by 50% and get a chance to repeat the process at the county level. Both Xi Jinping and his father began this process as teenagers and repeated it on a grand scale in their later careers. As to the moral tone of his government, when a TV interviewer asked Xi about his governing style, he responded by quoting the Analects: “He who rules by virtue is like the North Star, which maintains its place and the multitude of stars pay homage”. It seems to be working.
The hundred-year challenge
Let people see that you only want their good and the people will be good. The relationship between superiors and inferiors is like that between the wind and the grass. The grass must bend when the wind blows across it. If good men were to govern a country continually for a hundred years they would transform the violently bad and dispense with capital punishment altogether. Analects.
By 2049, the centenary of the Party’s founding, good men will have governed China continually for a hundred years. The number of executions and the number of offenses that attract the death penalty have fallen steadily. Its elimination would bring a fittingly Confucian conclusion to a century of unparalleled achievement.
Further Reading (click image)
Follow China’s greatest officials through the Middle Kingdom’s Golden Ages. Gracefully written and keenly observed, FW Mote’s Imperial China is a must-read.