The Fifth Great Chinese Invention:

Examination and State Power in Twentieth Century China and Taiwan

By Shiu On Chu

B.A., The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2004

M.A., National Tsing Hua University, 2008

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the

Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

In the Department of History at Brown University

Providence, Rhode Island

May 2018

© Copyright 2018 by Shiu On Chu

i This dissertation by Shiu On Chu is accepted in its present form by the Department of History as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Date ______Rebecca Nedostup, Advisor

Recommended to the Graduate Council

Date ______Cynthia Brokaw, Reader

Date ______Tracy Steffes, Reader

Approved by the Graduate Council

Date ______Andrew Campbell, Dean of the Graduate School

ii Curriculum Vitae

Shiu On Chu was born in Hong Kong. He obtained his B.A. and M.A. degrees in Chinese intellectual history from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and National Tsing Hua

University in Taiwan. In 2011, he enrolled as a graduate student in Brown’s history department. Chu’s research has been published in T’oung Pao, Chinese Studies, and the

Journal of Chinese Studies. He is currently teaching at Hamilton College, Clinton NY.

iii

Acknowledgements

This dissertation is a historically informed critique of the imbalanced power dynamic between the educators the educated in twentieth century Sinophone societies. It attributes such dynamic to specific decisions that shaped institutions of testing, rather than an abstract modern

“structure” of power and surveillance. This approach not only enables us to hold the makers of the unjust rules accountable; but also reveals the possibility that institutions of assessment and distribution of social resource can be improved. During my research and writing, a belief in the possibility of betterment prevents me from cynically dismissing all institutions as machines enslaving minds and bodies. Such belief is not based solely on historical knowledge, but also the fact that I am surrounded by individuals who have treated me generously and sincerely.

I am indebted to my dissertation advisor Rebecca Nedostup, who guided me into the fascinating field of modern Chinese history. She has also shaped the way I approach the “rivers and lakes” in the history profession. From writing proposals for small grants and write-up grants to post-docs and job applications, she always provides timely advices on how to present my work, and also myself, honestly and effectively. Cynthia Brokaw opened to me the door of

Department of History at Brown. Since then, she has spent countless hours in reading my writings, ranging from response essays to dissertation chapters, and consistently provided her insightful comments and feedbacks. For me, they are teachers of both knowledge and life.

At Brown, my research is also nurtured by a community of outstanding historians from their respective fields. Tracy Steffes read drafts of this project from the stage of the prospectus to the dissertation chapters. Her expertise in state and education in the US helped me to situate my work in fundamental questions regarding power and knowledge production. Kerry Smith not only laid the foundation of my knowledge of Japanese history, but also provided valuable

iv advices on my development as a teacher of history. Seth Rockman’s classes on history of capitalism enabled me to put my research and teaching in transnational and interdisciplinary contexts. Robert Self and Tara Nummedal generously shared their experiences of historical writing and professional development. In the positions of director of graduate studies and department chair, they ran the Department as an institution which served its members’ pursuits of knowledge with both efficiency and warmth. This is also true during Professors Brokaw and

Nedostups’ terms as chair and DGS. Moreover, such success will not be possible without the amazing staff members Julissa Bautista, Mary Beth Bryson and Cherrie Guerzon.

This project benefited enormously from my undergraduate and master studies in Hong

Kong and Taiwan. I am honored to have worked with Chu Hung-lam, Chang Yung-tong and

Wang Fan-sen, who are leading scholars in late imperial intellectual history. As a historian who have produced field-defining works in both late imperial and modern periods, Prof. Wang’s encouraging words had been crucial in the early stage of the current project, when I doubted if I could shift from the late imperial field to the modern field. Earlier in the 2000s, I had the chance to take classes of late Chan Hok-lam and Hsiao Chi-ching, which first sparked my interest in the late imperial examination system. The seeds of the present project were sowed a decade ago.

Colleagues at Hamilton College, Thomas Wilson and Kevin Grant in particular, have been supportive in my transition from a graduate student to a teacher. I am also grateful to

Jennifer Ambrose, who kindly worked with me on the editing of this dissertation. My work is also encouraged by the colleagues in the field of Chinese history. Robert Culp has read part of the dissertation and provided extremely helpful suggestions on the framing of the argument. In a

2017 AAS Panel with Hilde de Weerdt, Lawrence Zhang, Yifei Huang and Liang Chen, I was exposed to innovative approaches to fundamental questions regarding the examination tradition

v in China.

Support from long-time friends Tang Kowk-leong, Shi Chunyi and Ben Tsang Wing Ma enables me to endure the challenges in a profession with increasingly uncertain prospects. We understand our rewards and struggles as grad students and junior scholars. I am also thankful to friends at Brown, especially He Tai-sen, Chang Yu-chi, Wu Kuan-ju and other members of the

TGSA, who filled my years in Providence with pleasant memories.

As a historian concerning with the institutional foundation of knowledge production, I wholeheartedly appreciate the supports on research I have received for this project. Chen

Yunqian at Nanjing University generously wrote in support of my research at the Second

Historical Archives. Chan Liangshou helped me to access the wealth of digitalized materials at the Academia Sinica. I am also thankful for the help of archivists and librarians at the Academia

Historica and KMT Party Archive. For my research trips, I received funding from institutions at

Brown—including the Department of History, the Joukowsky Summer Research Award, the

International Office and the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs—as well as the

American Historical Association. In the final stages of this project, a five-month fellowship at the National Central Library and the Chiang Ching-kuo Dissertation Fellowship enabled me to focus on writing. All these supports are indispensable for the completion of this dissertation.

I am fortunate to live in a family that appreciates my work as a scholar, even when I doubt if I can withstand the challenges in the profession. Over the years, my mother Inney Ho has never stopped from guiding me with her wisdom and love. Lastly, I would like to thank my wife Ruei-pu. Together we (and also Xianxian) have embarked on wildly idealistic adventures; and confronted the brutality of disillusionment. What remains unchanged is her unlimited love, support, and constant inspirations in my everyday life. This dissertation is dedicated to her.

vi Table of Contents Curriculum Vitae ...... iii Acknowledgements ...... iv Table of Contents ...... vii List of Figures ...... viii

Introduction: The End of Keju and the Birth of Modern Chinese Examination ...... 1

Chapter 1: Don't Corrupt the Students with Money and Status: The Stigmatization of Rewards in the Late Qing Education Reforms (1895-1911) ...... 14

Chapter 2: Lukewarm Objectivity: The Standardized Test Movement in Modern China (1920- 1937) ...... 47

Chapter 3: Creating Legitimate but Defective Examinees: Examination Orthodoxy and Politics of Bureaucratic Reform under the Nationalist Regime (1928-1947) ...... 79

Chapter 4: Huikao (Centralized Graduation Examination, 1932-1957): State-School Cooperation and the Separation of Assessment and Resource Allocation ...... 123

Chapter 5: Civil Examinations under the 1947 Constitution and the Ideology of Competition in the Republic of China in Taiwan (1947-1992) ...... 154

Conclusion: Examination and State Power in Modern China ...... 191

Bibliography ...... 209

vii List of Figures Figure 1: Covers of test essays from the Tingyang 嵉陽 Academy (Shanxi) ...... 20 Figure 2 Right: A stipend ticket issued by the Heyang Academy in 1896 ...... 20 Figure 2 Left: A stipend ticket issued by the Gujing Jingshe in 1866 ...... 20 Figure 3: A Template of the Student Contract Used on the Jiangnan Chucai ...... 29

viii INTRODUCTION

The End of Keju and the Birth of Modern Chinese Examination

In contemporary Sinophone societies, examination persists as a trusted institution used by the state to distribute resources not only in education but also in politics. This authority of examination is often attributed to the long history of the civil service examination system in imperial China (keju, c. 605-1905), which awarded official titles and offices according to classical knowledge for more than thirteen centuries. Despite the abolition of keju in 1905— during the last decade of the last monarchic empire of China—examination has been regarded as a system independent from classical contents which thus can function in the modern state. Since the turn of the twentieth century, leaders in politics and culture, represented by the reformist

Liang Qichao (梁啟超, 1873-1929) and the revolutionary Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙, 1866-1925), have promoted examination as an institution invented by the Chinese. They argued that this great

Chinese invention was eventually adopted by modern Western states, in particular England and the U.S. Since then, the assumption of continuity between keju and modern examination has been reproduced by ideologues of modern Chinese regimes, particularly those developed from the Nationalist Party, which based its ideology on Sun Yat-sen-ist ideas. Yet it is also shared by historians and social scientists with presentist concerns, such as those who seek to connect the history of keju to the on-going debate over college entrance examinations in the contemporary

People’s Republic of China.1 Based on this assumption, examination is either celebrated as

1 Liu Haifeng, “Rehabilitation of the Imperial Examination System,” Frontiers of Education in China 1, no. 2 (2006): 300-15. Andrew B. Kipnis, Governing Educational Desire: Culture, Politics, and Schooling in China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), pp. 90-94.

1 another Chinese invention along the lines of the compass, gunpowder, or paper and printing, or condemned as a curse reproducing the obsession with academic competition.2

Even in the broader international field of Chinese history, the assumption of continuity remains unchallenged by new scholarship on keju studies. Historians have revised the understanding of keju as a rigid system of top-down ideological control imposed by a state with static Confucian ideology.3 They have demonstrated that in imperial China classical learning— the content of the keju—was indeed a vivid field of contest among actors and conflicting ideas.

Scholars have also explored the practicality of classical knowledge in imperial Chinese society and bureaucracy, which revises Max Weber’s assertion that the mystical and impractical test content—the four books and the five classics—disqualified keju from being a rational institution.4 While sophisticating our knowledge of the imperial keju, this scholarship may lead to a leap in how we understand the history of examination after the 1905 abolition. Following these sympathetic views of keju, it is tempting to obscure the different power dynamics in both keju and modern examination when acknowledging the former’s rationality.

Nor has this conflation between keju and modern examination been tackled by scholarship on the 1905 abolition, which flourished in the 2000s in response to the centennial commemoration of the end of keju. Most of this scholarship has developed along three lines: the

2 Naming examination “the fifth great invention of China” was popularized in the mid-2000s People’s Republic of China due to the centennial commemoration of the abolition of the imperial examination system (1905-2005) and the 30th anniversary of the reestablishment of gaokao (高考 centralized college entrance examination in PRC China, 1977-2007). 3 Including Benjamin A. Elman, A Cultural History of Late Imperial Civil Examinations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); Kai-wing Chow, Publishing, Culture, and Power in Early Modern China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004); and Hilde De Weerdt, Competition over Content: Negotiating Standards for the Civil Service Examinations in Imperial China (1127– 1279) (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2007). 4 Stephen P. Turner, “Blind Spot? Weber’s Concept of Expertise and the Perplexing Case of China,” in Max Weber Matters: Interweaving Past and Present, eds. David Chalcraft, Fanon Howell, Marisol Lopez Menendez and Hector Vera (Surrey: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 121-134.

2 policy changes immediately connected to the abolition5; personal experiences of the rapid change in culture after the abolition6; and the hybridity of classical and modern knowledge and its consequences.7 The institutional differences between keju and modern Chinese examination have received little attention. As a result, without critical reflection on the assumption of continuity, examination in modern China has continued to be simplified as “keju minus classical content.”

The history between the end of keju and the contemporary concepts of examination in Sinophone societies has been seen as insignificant, if not irrelevant.

I) Scope and Periodization

This dissertation historicizes the formation of examination as a modern Chinese state institution in the twentieth century. The five chapters focus on the making of policies of civil service and education examinations, two major sites of state power in China after the abolition of keju. Chapter 1 accounts for the abolishment of monetary reward in traditional academies and title reward in modern schools in the context of the termination of keju in 1905. Chapter 2 explores the ambiguity of quantitative assessment in modern China as shown in the negotiation between U.S.-trained experts on testing and the Nationalist Nanjing Government in the 1920s

5 In her 2013 book, Guan Xiaohong provides a convincing account of the contingencies leading to the sudden abolition of keju in 1905, which I will further discuss in Chapter 1. Guan, Keju tingfei yu jindai zhongguo shehui 科舉停廢與近代中國社會 (Beijing: Shehuikexue wenxian chubanshe, 2013). For an early study of the abolition, see Wolfgang Franke, The Reform and Abolition of the Traditional Chinese Examination (Cambridge: Harvard East Asian Research Center, 1960). 6 Luo Zhitian, Quanshi zhuanyi: Jindai Zhongguo de sixiang yu shehui 權勢轉移：近代中國的思想與社會 (Beijing: Beijing sifan daxue chubanshe, 2014); Henrietta Harrison, The Man Awakened from Dreams: One Man's Life in a North China Village, 1857-1942 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005); Lin Chih-hung, “Shibian xia de shibian: kejufeichu he zhishi jieceng de dingwei” 世變下的士變：科舉廢除和知識階層的定 位（1900s-1930s）, in Shenfen, wenhua yu quanli—Shizu yanjiu xintan 身分、文化與權力——士族研究新 探, ed. Gan Huai-chen (Taipei: National Taiwan University Publish Center, 2012). 7 Liu Lung-hsin, “From Civil Service Examinations to New Schools—Tse Lun and Knowledge Transformation in the Late Qing Period 從科舉到學堂－策論與晚清的知識轉型(1901-1905),” Bulletin of the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica 58 (2007); Zhang Qing, “Policy Questions and the Reception of ‘Western Learning’ in the Imperial Examination System—A Study Based on the Full Collection of Domestic and Overseas Policy Questions,” Bulletin of the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica 58 (2007).

3 and 1930s. Chapter 3 focuses on the civil service examination and the narrative of bureaucratic reform under the Nationalist Government during the Nanjing decade (1927-1937) and the “War of Resistance” against Japan (1937-1945). Chapter 4 deals with the Centralized Graduation

Examination (huikao) for secondary school students introduced in China between 1932 and 1949 and resumed briefly in Taiwan by the Nationalist Government in 1957. Chapter 5 looks into the definition of the state’s power of examination in the 1947 Republic of China Constitution and its complicated consequences after being brought to post-war Taiwan by the Nationalist

Government.

This dissertation covers the last decade of the Qing empire (1901-1911) and the broadly defined “Republican period”—from the fall of the Qing in 1911 to the 1949 relocation of the

Republic of China in Taiwan, and eventually the comprehensive reform of the Republic in the

1990s after the end of martial law in 1987. In comparison to the conventional periodization of the field—in which the Communist People’s Republic replaced the Republic of China in 1949— my approach enables us to grasp the long-term development of modern Chinese examination explicitly institutionalized under Nationalist regimes: the Nanjing Government, the Wartime

Chungqing Government, and the post-1949 ROC in Taiwan Government. Based on Sun Yat- sen’s blueprint of an ideal modern Chinese government, the power of examination is one of the five major functions of the state. Sun’s design was first institutionalized in 1928—when the

Nanjing Government was established—as the Examination Yuan (kaoshiyuan 考試院), which was one of the five basic government branches alongside the Judicial Yuan (sifayuan 司法院),

Legislative Yuan (lifayuan 立法院), Executive Yuan (xingzheng yuan 行政院), and the Control

Yuan (jianchayuan 監察院) in charge of the power to sensor the administrative practices of the

4 state. In 1947, the definition of the state’s use of examination was written into the Constitution of the Republic of China, which has been in effect in Taiwan until the present day.

The high degree of institutionalization under the Nationalist regimes generated a rich body of materials, including government documents available in the Second Historical Archive in Nanjing and the Academia Historica and Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) Archive in Taipei.

Combining the Nationalist/Republican materials with a wide range of published materials on the late Qing and education policy before 1928, I am able to explore the formation of state power by looking at both policy-making processes and individual experiences with examinations.

In contrast, examination in the People’s Republic of China experienced a rupture during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). In the 50s and 60s, there were various experiments to fit examination to the political economy of the Communist People’s Republic. But on the eve of the

Cultural Revolution, the PRC took an alternative path as Mao Zedong called for a complete abolition of all examination, which he denounced as a tool of bourgeoisie dominance. The ten- year vacuum of examinations ended only after Mao’s death and the conclusion of the Cultural

Revolution in 1976. The reestablishment of examination—notably the first College Entrance

Examination in 1977 that was attended by an unprecedented number of students because of the decade-long suspension of examinations for academic advancement—became a symbol of the normalization of the PRC and a prelude to the open and reform era in the 1980s. While the

Communist experiment and the termination and revival of examination are no less important and fascinating, research on the PRC requires a wholly different combination of materials, including archives on the post-1949 Communist government and the experiences during the decade without examination that need to be retrieved in literary works and interviews. In the conclusion of this dissertation, I will provide preliminary observations on the PRC in comparison with my

5 findings from the late Qing and Republican periods, which suggest possible directions for further research.

II) Three Features of Examination as Institution

Thematically, this dissertation focuses on three aspects of the development of examination in modern China: 1) ways of encouraging participation; 2) quantification of assessment; and 3) examiner- examinee relationship. These themes are developed from a broad comparison between the institutional features of late imperial (the Ming and Qing dynasties) Chinese keju and examination in Euro-American modern states. They are ideal typical, thus, by no means comprehensive, accounts of variations of keju and examinations across time and space. Their function is to provide perimeters within which to situate modern Chinese examination among keju and examinations used by Euro-American states. i) Incentivized Participation versus Routinized and Functional Assessment

In late imperial China, participation in keju and the essay writing test in state academies was incentivized by specific rewards in terms of status and money. The rewards included not only offices and titles (connected to social status and privileges, gongming 功名), which only a few successful candidates obtained by passing the higher levels of keju—namely the provincial examination (xiangshi 鄉試, awarding juren 舉人 titles) and the metropolitan examination (huishi 會試, awarding the highest jinshi

進士 titles). Even for those who passed keju with only an extremely low score, registration as licentiate

(shengyuan 生員) eligible for keju created considerable benefits, ranging from tax exemption and financial credit to be used in business activities, to payments from academies (shuyuan 書院). As I will discuss in Chapter 1, the Qing state institutionalized payment for participation in essay tests at state- sponsored academies in part to compensate the cut of generous tax privileges for licentiate in the Ming dynasty.8 These specific statuses and financial gains, as argued in the 1930s by Gu Jiegang, the prominent

8 In comparison to the Ming, the Qing state had significantly reduced the taxation benefit to title holders— especially as the exemption was no longer applicable to extended family members. As I will discuss in Chapter 1, the Qing policy also marked a significant shift from nurturing without precondition to the commodification

6 Chinese historian, constitute the “method of rewarding” (jiangli zhi shu 獎勵之術) that was the core of popular faith in the keju system.9

This exchange of rewards for participation can be compared to two types of modern examinations in the West. School examinations, according to Foucault, emerged in France after the eighteenth century and were based on the model of regular inspection of patients in hospitals.10 Assuming the students as objects confined to the institution of the school to be tested indefinitely, the Foucaultian examination involved neither individual choice of participation, nor the need to incentivize by visible changes in status. On the other hand, civil service examinations, such as the British system developed from the competitive examination for civil service in colonial India in 1855, were more functional than the Chinese keju. Unlike its Chinese counterpart, which enhanced its participants’ social status and material wealth, civil service examinations in the West connected only successful examinees to particular offices. ii) Quantification of Assessment

Quantification is a distinctive feature of modern examinations in Europe and America. Building on Foucault’s concept of documentation of the individual, Keith Hoskin argues that numerical grading in education, which was the product of routinized rigorous examination, was the most significant part of the development of documentation techniques that turned individuals into cases.11 In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, methods of quantitative assessment were further developed in areas like intelligence testing and education psychology. The use of numerical scores and statistical analysis became essential parts of the rites that naturalized judgements in examinations.

In the Chinese keju, however, assessments were presented mostly as uneven written comments by multiple examiners, while numerical ranks were only given to the extremely small number of candidates

of scholarship and essay writing. Nevertheless, the logic of exchanging participation for specific rewards remained dominant until the last decade of the Qing. 9 Gu Jiegang 顧頡剛, “Preface,” in Zhongguo kaoshi zhidu shi 中國考試制度史, Deng Siyu 鄧嗣禹 (Nanjing: Kaoshiyuan kaoxuan weiyuanhui, 1936), p. 3. 10 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage, 1995), pp. 185-6. 11 Keith Hoskin, “Education and the Genesis of Disciplinarity: The Unexpected Reversal,” in Knowledges: Historical and Critical Studies in Disciplinarity, eds. E. Messer-Davidow, David R. Shumway, and David Sylvan (Charlottesville; London: University Press of Virginia, 1993), 273.

7 who passed and earned official titles.12 Neither the comments nor the ranks were seen as accurate and commensurable indicators of candidates’ achievement. Despite the highly developed logistical practices, including the confinement of the enormous number of examinees in individual examination wards, numerical scores had never been used.13 The trustworthiness of keju therefore did not rest on a mechanic, stable and objective standard, but instead on the interaction between specific examiners and examinees, which was open to interpretation. iii) Examiner-Examinee Relationship

Given their communication via written examination comments, keju examiners and examinees were imagined as a community subject to a shared standard of excellence. This was also rooted in two conventions of the keju system. First, nearly all examiners came from those who had been successful examinees in the past. This not only provided the authority for the examiners’ assessment, but also created a sense of mobility between examinees and examiners, which is clearly reflected in the words of the Qianlong Emperor of the Qing Empire, “Today’s examinees are tomorrow’s examiners” (jinri zhi juzi, mingri zhi kaoguan 今日之舉子, 明日之考官). Second, the achievement of the examiners was measured by the quality of the examinees’ performances and careers, as the examiners were in a position to promote the examinees they passed. Therefore, it was commonplace in the Ming and Qing for examiners to share with their examinees connections in the officialdom, as well as the fame for classical knowledge and literary skills.14

Foucault places examiners into a somewhat obscure role in his narrative, not least because he sees invisibility as the major source of disciplinary power.15 Yet scholarship on quantification suggests

12 Shiuon Chu, “Failure Stories: Interpretations of Rejected Papers in the Late Imperial Civil Service Examinations,” T'oung Pao 101-1-3 (2015): 168-207. 13 For the most detailed and comprehensive English account on these practices, see Elman, A Cultural History, pp. 173-238. 14 The bond between examiners and the successful examinees they passed was known as “masters and disciples” (zuozhu mensheng 座主門生). This relationship became so powerful in the late Ming that the Qing Emperors had to introduce various policies to hold it in check after inheriting the examination system from the Ming. 15 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, pp. 187-8.

8 different mechanisms that held examiners/assessors accountable in Europe and the U.S. These forms of accountability are demonstrated in the respective developments of intelligence testing in France, the origin of the Alfred Binet Test, and the U.S., where IQ testing dominated the shaping of testing formats and methodologies. Based on Theodore Porter’s categorization of disciplinary objectivity and mechanic objectivity16, John Carson attributes the difference to contrasting institutional cultures of accountability.17

In the U.S., the quantitative approach—in either intelligence tests, academic tests, or other fields of application, such as realty appraisal—implied a low threshold for participating in measurement and assessment. The high degree of quantification also meant, at least in theory, that a wide spectrum of non- professional and non-official actors could scrutinize public policies by the numbers. In France, on the contrary, the credibility of measurements and assessments relied mostly on the judgment of experts who were authorized by fellow experts in the discipline and closely monitored by the state.

III) Modern Chinese Examiners as Outsiders Who Wrote Their Own Rules

In modern China, the combination of the influx of “Western” concepts, the impact of global imperialism, and the socio-political transformation in the twentieth century opened a space in which actors taking the position of examiners could fundamentally redraw the rules in the name of reform

(bianfa 變法) and revolution (geming 革命). Acting as reformers and revolutionaries, these examiners— as builders of the modern Chinese state—were able to overcome limitations from tradition and convention and write the rules of examination in relation to politics and education. Without being judged by the examination they shaped, they created the rules of the game, rules in which they occupied the position of judging examinees. Therefore, modern Chinese examination was not a simple replacement of keju by the

Euro-American model(s) of modern schooling and quantitative assessment. Nor was it derived automatically from the rapid social changes—namely the expansion of a population to be educated— sparked by the introduction of modern schooling at the turn of the twentieth century and the 1905

16 Theodore Porter, Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 4-7. 17 John Carson, The Measure of Merit: Talents, Intelligence, and Inequality in the French and American Republics, 1750-1940 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).

9 abolition of keju. The creation of modern schools, the abolition of the keju, and the rapid increase in the number of students—all parts of the New Policy Reform launched in the last decade of the Qing

Empire—were the results, rather than the causes, of the actions of builders of the modern state.

The process of “writing their own rules,” to borrow from Pierre Bourdieu’s conceptualization of the state, is the moment of initial accumulation of symbolic capital, and thus the “genesis” of state power.

“Genesis” does not imply that there was one watershed moment after which the modern state was completed. While capturing the peculiar features of modern European states, Bourdieu tends to see the genesis of the state as a recurring phenomenon throughout history.18 For my discussion of modern

Chinese history, this concept of genesis is especially useful to capture the constant rebuilding of the state under twentieth century Chinese regimes. In the institutional building of education and examination, the

Qing Empire had started to established a modern education system in the New Policy Reform. After the

1911 Revolution, which terminated the empire and the long history of Chinese monarchy, educators trained in the West (in particular in the U.S.) enjoyed a great degree of autonomy to restructure the field of education under the relatively lenient Beijing Government. But after the Nationalists launched a revolution later called the “Northern Expedition” (beifa 北伐) and established the Nanjing Nationalist

Government in 1927, reforms were directed at the bureaucracy and the field of education, which were alleged by the Nationalists as corrupted under the so-called warlords (junfa 軍閥) and “academic bullies”

(xuefa 學閥). Similar calls for demolishing the past errors and rebuilding state institutions were seen again in the wartime mobilization of the Chungqing Nationalist Government—which coined the term kanzhang jianguo (抗戰建國 “fighting the war of resistance and (re)building the nation-state”)—and the

Republic of China Government in Taiwan, which justified its rule via projects to remove the evil left by colonial Japanese rule. In reality, the transitions between these regimes were certainly more complicated

18 Pierre Bourdieu, On the State: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1989-1992, eds. Patrick Champagne, Remi Lenoir, Franck Poupeau, and Marie-Christine Rivière, trans. David Fernbach (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014), pp. 89-94. In Bourdieu’s account of French and European history, the jurist is the major example of “those who theorize the public good are those who profit from it.”

10 than the propaganda suggests. This sense of rupture with existing institutions was nevertheless powerful in shaping the role of state builders as outsiders of the establishment who one-sidedly generated new rules.

During the constant “burning and building” of institutions in the periods covered by this dissertation, those in the position of examiners were mostly outsiders to the existing systems of examination and education.19 As shown in Chapter 1 on the late Qing New Policy Reform, the use of incentives in schools was initiated by a network of powerful provincial governors, non-official educators and publishers, who emerged from a keju and testing system that incentivized participation with titles and monetary rewards. In the 1920s discussed in Chapter 2, Chinese educators trained in the U.S. introduced methods of quantitative assessment that they had never experienced as local students before studying abroad. After the Nationalists came into power in 1927, only by passing the civil service examinations held by the Examination Yuan could one become an “orthodox” (zhengtu 正途) government official according to Sun Yat-sen’s definition. However, neither leaders in the Nationalist Party and the

Examination Yuan, nor advocates of bureaucratic reform by examination, had passed equivalent civil service examinations in previous regimes (Chapter 3). Meanwhile, the centralized graduation examination

(huikao 會考) introduced in 1930 was the product of Nationalist Party ideologues who asserted that the existing schooling system developed under late Qing and pre-Nationalist regimes was a complete failure

(Chapter 4).

The power of examination in the 1947 Constitution, which is the subject of Chapter 5, is especially interesting, as it involved outsiders on multiple fronts. During the making of the Constitution, the definition of state examination was shaped by jurists trained in Europe and the U.S., represented by

Carson Chang (Zhang Junmai 張君勱, 1887-1969), and leaders of the Nationalist Party and military men from peripheral provinces who fought for positions in the bureaucracy. None of these groups emerged

19 The phrase is borrowed from Brian Platt, Burning and Building: Schooling and State Formation in Japan, 1750-1890 (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2004).

11 from civil examinations or served in the Examination Yuan. Moreover, after the relocation of the

Nationalist Government in 1949, the civil service examination developed from the Constitution alienated both the Examination Yuan officials, who had to engage with the social-political reality in Taiwan, and the Taiwanese examinees, who had to take tests in Mandarin, an unfamiliar language, under a provincial quota system that limited the number of passing candidates according to the population of mainland

Chinese provinces and Taiwan in the early 1940s.

IV) The Power of Negativity and Ambiguity in Modern Chinese Examination

“Examiners” in modern China, who constructed and exercised the state power of examination, faced challenges—including the still prevailing traditional ideas of keju, the conflict between western models and local socio-political realities, and the discontent of those whose lives were affected. Their strategies for managing these challenges varied, but sharing a position as outsiders, the strategies generally tended toward negativity and ambiguity.

Instead of incentivizing participation, examination in modern China emphasized the obligation to take examinations that would expose examinees’ weaknesses through rigorous testing. To justify the abolition of rewards in schooling, education reformers in the late Qing blamed students for lust for money and fame (Chapter 1). During the Nationalist Government’s rule of China proper (1927-1949), state education examinations, notably the huikao, were built on the assumption that students were defective products of the failure of modern Chinese education. (Chapter 4). A similar narrative—that is, the bureaucracy needed to be reformed by more frequent civil service examinations—was used to support the establishment of the Examination Yuan. And more ironically, as most of the leaders of the Party and head officials of the Yuan had never passed civil service examinations, their power over the successful examinees was based on constructed weaknesses of the latter, such as their lack of experience in actual administrative work and contributions to the Nationalist Party’s revolutionary wars (Chapter 3).

Instead of adhering to rules which were at least seemingly consistent, such as quantitative methods and statutes of examination, ambiguities were to a large extent tolerated, if not encouraged, in modern Chinese examination. With the introduction of standardized testing in the 1920s, the quantitative

12 education scholars called for a complete abolition of conventional essay-type examinations that they dismissed as subjective. But soon after these scholars came to occupy prominent positions in the education field after the 1922 Education Reform, they turned to a more ambiguous definition of objective tests that included even tests on classical knowledge in late imperial keju. Such ambiguity, as shown in

Chapter 2, also enabled compromise and cooperation with the Nationalist Government’s traditionalist policies of examination after 1927. In post-war Taiwan, officials of the Examination Yuan and Taiwanese political activists intentionally “bracketed” the regulations on state examination in the 1947 Constitution, especially the provincial quota system based on the population of mainland China in the 1940s. To prevent confrontation caused by the contradiction between a Chinese constitution and Taiwanese society, they advocated administrative means to circumvent the Constitution. This ambiguous approach, as I argue in Chapter 5, consolidated the authority of the ROC Government in Taiwan and expanded its executive power.

In the following chapters, I will demonstrate how the tendencies of negativity and ambiguity— mostly related to the first and second features of examination listed above—emerged in the interactions between the “outsider-examiners” and socio-political circumstances throughout the twentieth century.

13 CHAPTER 1

Don't Corrupt the Students with Money and Status: The Stigmatization of Rewards in the Late

Qing Education Reforms (1895-1911)

Introduction

Since its implementation in the sixth century, the imperial examination system (keju) has been blamed for contaminating Chinese scholars with lust for power and wealth. The system that rewarded classical knowledge and literary skill with official degrees and potential government positions, which could be translated into considerable wealth and social capital in imperial China, was in constant tension with the Confucian moral doctrines that suppress utilitarian views on learning. This is revealed in the recurrent debates over the argument of “keju as an impediment to the Way” (juye fangdao 舉業妨道) throughout the long history of the exam, especially after the Song dynasty, when an expanding educated population met the intensifying moral rigor of Neo-Confucianism (daoxue 道學). But condemnation of rewards did not end with the abolition of the Imperial Examination System in 1905, nor with the decline of the authority of Confucianism. In turn-of-the-century modernization projects initiated by the Qing central state and provincial reformers, education was shaped as a means toward national strength. Yet educators who advocated autonomy from the statist agenda did not resort to arguments of individual wellbeing, but rather to abstract concepts of self-improvement. In both narratives, the pursuit of status and money through education was seen as a traditional evil custom to be eliminated in modern China.

The similarity between the Confucian and modern education discourses obscures the fundamental changes in testing that occurred at the turn of the twentieth century. In the 1902 and 1904 Education

Charters, monetary rewards for test-takers in academies, which had been institutionalized since the eighteenth century as the “stipend and testing” (gaohuo- keshi 膏火-課試), were officially removed in modern schools. To incentivize enrollment in modern schools, which were expensive and lacked social recognition, the Qing state launched a program to award graduates with titles equivalent to those earned from the keju (gongming 功名). This policy continued after the 1905 abolition and was regarded as a

14 compensation for the loss of opportunities generated by keju. However, since the beginning of this policy to “reward with title and qualification for officialdom” (jiangli chushen 獎勵出身) in 1903, more and more restrictions had been imposed before the actual awarding of titles, ranging from long review processes to additional examinations. By the time of its eventual suspension in 1911, less than half a year before the Revolution that overthrew the empire, the late Qing state had been using the jiangli chushen as a means to gradually terminate, instead of rebuild, the connection between education/qualification and official titles. The traditional practices of incentivizing examinees with status and monetary rewards, which were sustained for centuries despite the Confucian critique, were for the first time removed from the institution of education.

Moreover, enabled by the proliferation of new print media—particularly the increasingly accessible newspapers and the new genre of “education journal” published mainly by provincial education reformers and textbook publishers—the arguments for the abolition of money and title rewards, which became a consensus between the state and the non-governmental education reformers, were transformed into a dominant discourse that supressed individual interest in education among the growing reading public.

These institutional and ideological changes were not the natural outcome of the 1905 abolition of keju.20 Instead, they resulted from separate policy negotiations, initiated mostly by a network of powerful

20 Historians of modern China often see the 1905 abolition as a watershed moment that marked the decline of the status of the educated population (broadly defined as dushuren 讀書人). Not only did the detachment of official recruitment from education end the traditional social order in which the status group of shi (士 scholar- literati-official) occupied the top position in the social hierarchy, the introduction of modern popular education further downgraded the status of the educated population in a modernizing Chinese society. This assumption is not challenged despite the recent academic interest in the 1905 abolition of keju. Historical works that excavate the experiences of individuals affected by the end of keju have broadened our understanding of the impact of the 1905 abolition but further naturalized post-keju power configurations by highlighting the passiveness of actors under great transformation. Luo Zhitian, Quanshi zhuanyi: Jindai Zhongguo de sixiang yu shehui 權勢 轉移:近代中國的思想與社會 (Beijing: Beijing sifan daxue chubanshe, 2014); Lin Chih-hung, “Shibian xia de shibian:kejufeichu he zhishi jieceng de dingwei 世變下的士變:科舉廢除和知識階層的定位 (1900s-1930s),” in Shenfen, wenhua yu quanli—Shizu yanjiu xintan 身分、文化與權力——士族研究新探, ed. Gan Huai- chen (Taipei: National Taiwan University Publishing? Center, 2012); Henrietta Harrison, The Man Awakened from Dreams: One Man's Life in a North China Village, 1857-1942 (Stanford: Stanford University Press,

15 education reformers—consisting of central and provincial officials, publishers of new textbooks, and employers in new industries—who benefitted from the modernization projects. By occupying multiple official and non-official roles, these powerful reformers were able to translate particular practices, which often accorded with their political and financial interests, into state policy and conventions in the non- official field of education (known as the “education sector” ( jiaoyujie 教育界).

This process is best exemplified by Zhang Zhidong 張之洞, one of the most prominent political figures in the last decade of the Qing Empire. As the governor of Hubei, Zhang cancelled student stipends in the modern schools he established in order to maintain the financial sustainability of his project and prevent criticism of over-expenditure from the central government. This practice, along with Zhang’s moral argument that students should not be obsessed with monetary reward and should instead focus on the pursuit of knowledge, was cited as a precedent by other local education reformers. Later in 1903, when he entered the central state under the order of the Empress Dowager Cixi to take charge of education reform (while remaining in office as the Hubei governor), Zhang included the abolition of rewards in schools in the Education Charters as an empire-wide policy.

In this chapter, I will trace the transition between traditional and modern practices of monetary and status/credential rewards. The first section of this chapter reconstructs the “stipend and testing”

(gaohuo-keshi) system, an under-researched but prevalent practice in both state and private academies from the eighteenth century until the 1902 and 1904 Education Charters. I then contrast this system with the new financial practices that emerged in the education reform projects stimulated by China’s defeat in the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895)—including the suspension of prize money and stipends, and the introduction of tuition and penalties for dropouts—that reversed the traditional logic of incentivizing participation in education with specific rewards. The second section details the context in which the title reward system was enacted in 1903 and the challenges that eventually led to its abolition in 1911, notably

2005); Guan Xiaohong, Keju tingfei yu jindai zhongguo shehui 科舉停廢與近代中國社會 (Beijing: Shehuikexue wenxian chubanshe, 2013).

16 the diplomatic pressure to award titles to those educated in overseas institutions and missionary schools in

China, and the conflict between individualistic pursuit of official titles and management in modern schools. In the conclusion, I outline the new sense of obligation in education that prevailed in early twentieth century China, which was shaped by these institutional changes and ideas that originated from the education reformers.

I) The Qing Institutionalization of Monetary Reward for Testing and Its Abolition

As an institution of “nurturing scholars” (yangshi 養士), the academy (shuyuan 書院) has a long history in imperial China. Since at least the tenth century, stipends, supported by gains from farmland

(known as the xuetian 學田, usually attributed to the design of Fan Zhongyan 989-1052), were provided to the scholars affiliated with the academies. But before the eighteenth century, the exchange relationship between test-taking in academies and monetary rewards had not been explicitly established. This is not only because the anti-imperial examination tendency in the private academies (shuyuan 書院) followed the traditions of the Southern Song “learning of the way” (daoxue 道學) and the Ming heart-mind learning (xinxue 心學), both of which emphasized lectures, discussions and other methods of self- cultivation. Even in the official academies (guanxue 官學) and the private institutions focused on examination preparation, financial support for scholars was not tightly related to test taking. There are scattered materials showing that a kind of essay competition called “prize-examination” (shangshi 賞試) was practiced in Jiangxi and Huizhou in the 1320s (during the Yuan dynasty). Yet no substantial monetary rewards were involved. In these competitions, only symbolic gifts, such as brushes and the books published by the academy, were awarded to the winners.21

According to surviving academy regulations and charters, since the early nineteenth century, most newly established academies, whether “official” or “private,” had adopted a system that paid

21 For details of the prize examination practiced in Huizhou during the Yuan, see Mingjing shuyuan lu 明經書 院錄, ed. Cheng Mei 程美 (National Central Library (Taiwan) Rare Book Collection, 1515).

17 stipends/rewards (gaohuo 膏火) to scholars for participation in periodic essay writing tests (keshi 課試).22

These tests were usually conducted twice per month on the first and fifteenth day (shuowang 朔望).

Those held by mentors in academies were called “studio tests” (zhaike 齋課), and those conducted by officials inspecting the academies were called “official tests” (guanke 官課). Competitions were open to both registered academy members, who earned their position in the annual placement exam in the spring, and drop-in test takers, who had not passed the placement exam or else took the tests on an ad-hoc basis, differentiated by the of gaohuo rewards.23 Since the 1860s, during the academy reconstruction movement that occurred after the destruction casued by the Taiping Rebellion, the managers of academies in the

Jiangnan area had simplified the payment method by abolishing the difference in rewards. According to

Yu Yue 俞樾, a prominent philologist who presided over several academies in the latter half of the nineteenth century, this reform ensured that scholars received monetary rewards every time they took tests in academies.

i) Assumption of Self-Sustaining and Limited Degree of Personal Control

This exchange relationship of testing and reward was embedded in the academy as a financially self-sustainable institution. In addition to the conventional academy regulations (xuegui 學規 or xueyue

學約) outlining the academies’ ideals and restrictions on scholars’ behavior, a new format of “charter”

(zhangcheng 章程) emerged about the same time as the Qing gaohuo-keshi system.24 In a typical academy charter, the source and allocation of funds, especially the use of interest derived from the

22 Based on a survey of Deng Hongbo’s three-volume anthology that includes most of the surviving regulations and charters of late imperial academies. Deng Hongbo 鄧洪波, Zhongguo shuyuan xuegui jicheng 中國書院學 規集成 (Shanghai: Zhongxi shuju, 2011). 23 Xu Yanping 徐雁平, Qingdai dongnan shuyuan yu xueshu ji wenxue 清代東南書院與學術及文學 (Hefei: Anhui jiao yu chu ban she, 2007), 51. 24 Li Bing, “Zhangcheng: Qingdai shuyuan keju hua de zhongyao baozheng 章程：清代書院科舉化的重要保 證,” Yunmeng Xuekan 雲夢學刊 4 (2005): 51-52.

18 principle (benjin 本金) or the rent of the property owned by the academies, were clearly identified.25

Because the ratio (or amount) of interest used on gaohuo for tests was specified, the rights of test takers, including both the regular registered scholars and those who had dropped in to participate in essay competitions, were secured in the charters. This correlation of reward to the academy’s profit is shown in naming the extra monetary rewards given to high-ranked test takers “dividends” (huahong 花紅). In this sense, under the gaohuo-keshi system, test takers enjoyed a status comparable to stakeholders in modern companies. Their right to earn money for taking tests was an integral part of the organization of the academy as a financial institution sustained by generating interest from the benjin.

Various practices were invented to ensure that this system was properly executed. To prevent the academy managers from delaying payments, silver was forged into ingots to enable payment for each test.

To prevent fraud by repetitive reimbursement, the amount of gaohuo paid would be written on the graded test paper (see fig. 1), and in some cases, stamps saying “gaohuo paid 膏火給發” or “prize silver paid 獎

銀給發” were used.26 Gaohuo tickets (gaohuo piao 膏火票, see fig. 2) were also issued to keep record of participation in tests and payment.

25 The managers of the Yuexiu shuyuan 粵秀書院 in Guangzhou produced one of the most detailed surviving records of the investment and interest flow in a Qing academy. Liang Tinglan, Yuexiu shuyuan duzhi 粵秀書 院度支. 26 Such as the Leyi Academy 樂儀書院 in Yizheng. Xu, 330.

19

Figure 1. Covers of test essays from the Tingyang 嵉陽 Academy (Shanxi), on which the amount of

gaohuo was marked.

Figure 2. Right: A stipend ticket issued by the Heyang Academy in 1896; Left: A stipend ticket issued

by the Gujing Jingshe in 1866.

20

Imperial attempts to manage education throughout the realm triggered the gaohuo-keshi system in the early eighteenth century, but the financial practices mentioned above were not designed and imposed by the central state. In 1727, the Yongzheng Emperor issued a new restriction stating that all registered scholars in official academies were required to take the monthly and seasonal essay tests to maintain their affiliations.27 Six years later in 1733, following the imperial initiation to construct academies in provincial capitals, the gaohuo rewards of these academies were officially included in the provincial budgets. The sum given to each scholar was also standardized as three maces of silver (qian 錢) per month (increased to one tael, six maces and five candareens per month in 1750).28 Yet the regulation on attending tests was not officially connected to the payment of gaohuo. Nor was the standard sum of gaohuo strictly followed in practice. As seen in the surviving academy charters, including those for the provincial academies established in the Yongzheng Emperor’s initiation, the amount of gaohuo was adjusted according to academies’ respective financial conditions.29

In terms of state control over scholars, the gaohuo-keshi system never formed a disciplinary regime similar to that in modern public education. The physical presence of students/scholars was not the main concern under the system. Attendance and absences were counted only by participation in tests.30

27 “乾隆元年覆准, 雍正五年定例, 士子每年四季 季考, 按月月課. 考課不到者戒飭, 三次不到者詳革. 但 三次 月課, 為期不過三月. 士子或因住 居遙遠, 不能如期赴課, 亦閒有之. 嗣後月課三 次不到者, 該學教 官嚴傳戒飭, 其或並無事故, 終年不到者, 詳請褫革.”Daqing huidian shili (Guangxu) 大清會典事例 (光緒 朝), Scripta Sinica Database, 5: 39-2. 28 “京師設立金台書院，每年動撥直隸正項銀兩，以為師生膏火，由布政司詳請總督報銷.” Qing Huidian 清會典, Scripta Sinica Database. See also Tang Hongbo, Zhongguo shuyuan xuegui jicheng 中國書 院學規集成 (Shanghai: Zhong xi shu ju, 2011), 1259, 1269. 29 Conventional accounts of the high Qing state often conflate the personal will of the emperors and the capacity and consequences of control. The increase of official intervention in academies is thus automatically interpreted as a tightening of state control. In fact, not least because of the scarcity of information on all existing academies, the Qing state’s management of education was quite limited. The tianxia shuyuan zongzhi 天下書院總志 (compiled in the Qianlong guoshiguan) and the genre of officially compiled 志 in general were more records of the literary achievement (wenzhi 文治) of the empire, rather than tools of quantified management. Comprehensive surveys of academies, not to mention of the licentiates and academy scholars, were not available before the first educational survey launched in the new policy period. 30 Take the example of the regulation of the Yuhuan shuyuan 玉環書院 (est. 1849) in Sichuan: “在院內而於 三，八課期無詩文可見者，不得私行將名列入，混領膏火.” Tang, 1567.

21 There was no structured grade system or timeframe of progress leading toward graduation—the scholars participated whether as practice for keju examinations or purely as a way to use their essay writing skills and scholarship to earn rewards. Therefore, scholars were free to take tests in different academies and to engage in other non-academic ventures.31 The system of reward focused more on the fulfilment of particular tasks, rather than on direct control of bodies in time and space.

This loose control over scholars is obvious in comparison to that exerted by the “board” of academies over the headmasters (shanzhang 山長), who played the roles of manager and teacher in the academies. This was especially true in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when a new trend of sponsoring academic activities was sparked by the Qianlong Emperor’s enormous imperial projects of compilation and research during. The service of prominent shanzhang was in great demand by the local officials (especially the governors), who wanted to enhance cultural performance—usually known as a broadly-defined “literary quality” wenfeng 文風 that included achievement in keju, classical scholarship and literary creation—under their jurisdictions. As a result, the average stipend (for scholars enrolled to academies) rose to the level of 350 teals of silver per annum.32 Some famous shanzhang thus occupied posts in multiple academies by grading the essays from the competitions by mail—a practice known as remote-office holding (yaoling 遙領) or remote examination (yaoke 遙課). To tackle this problem, some of the new academy charters included specific requirements for the shanzhang to be physically present. The moralistic critique of greed in academies often targeted these profit-seeking shanzhang, rather than the scholars who received gaohuo for taking tests.33

Since the mid-eighteenth century, reforms of the assessment method for the award of gaohuo led to varied degrees of personal control over scholars in the academies. In response to the problems of focusing solely on essay tests—such as the narrow scope of knowledge tested in keju essay practice—diaries were

31 The acknowledgement of credit in the “resume” of keju examination. Xu, 329. 32 Xu Yanping, 316-18. 33 For example, in his critique of the contemporary scholastic environment, late nineteenth century bibliophile Xiao Mu 蕭穆 blamed the headmasters’ greediness for the corruption in academies. Xu, 320.

22 introduced as an alternative form of assessment around the mid-nineteenth century. Contrasting systems were developed, but they generally follow the model of writing with monetary reward found in the gaohuo-keshi system. In one system, diaries were used to keep track of individual actions in a confined time and space. In the diaries of the late nineteenth century Longmen Academy (Shanghai) and Mingdao

Academy (Henan), for instance, exits from and entrances into academies, as well as the progress of study

(usually indicated by the pages read every day) were recorded in detail to support decisions to extend gaohuo.34 In another system, diaries were commonly used in research, especially in philological studies on the classics. The Gujing jingshe in Hangzhou represents this model of management. Since its establishment by governor Ruan Yuan in 1801, scholars in Gujing had been devoted to in-depth studies of classics and antiquity, rather than merely producing examination writings.35 Diaries recording the progress of students’ reading and research would be inspected by the headmaster. There were also monthly competitions in Gujing, but participants were allowed to consult books, or even to do their writing at home.36 The resulting diaries and essays were selected and published in compilations named after the academy: Anthology of the Gujing Jingshe. As a system supporting scholastic lives, this model of research journal tended to focus rewards on the exceptional few with the ability to innovate in philology and classical studies, rather than to cover any scholars who were willing and able to participate in tests.37

ii) New Financial Ideas and Practices in Late Qing Education Reform: From Local Experiments to

National Policies

It was not until the New Policy Reform in the early twentieth century that the logic of testing (or writing) for reward became institutionally revered. In 1901, the Empress Cixi issued a decree that all

34 Xu, 347, 365. Longmen Shuyuan 龍門書院 in Shanghai, Tang, 119; Mingdao shuyuan 明道書院 in Henan (est. 1896), Tang, 846. 35 Not necessarily mutually exclusive with keju, as seen in Chu, Searching in the Dark. 36 “課士月一番，三人者迭為命題評文之主，....各聽搜討書傳，條對以觀其識，不用扃試糊名之法.” In Sun Xingyan 孫星衍, “Gujing jingshe timing beiji 詁經精舍提名碑記”. 37 Hong Liangji 洪亮吉 wrote in 1775 that his gaohuo could reach one hundred taels per year. Xu, 331.

23 traditional academies (shuyuan) were to be reconstructed into modern schools (xuetang).38 The abolition of test-based reward and collection of tuition were then codified in the 1902 and 1904 Education Charters

(Qinding xuetang zhangcheng 欽定學堂章程 and Zouding xuetang zhangcheng 奏定學堂章程).39 In the

1902 Charter, the maximum amount of tuition in state-established schools was specified with a clause that tuition should not be collected in the first three years (five years for primary schools) under the new system.40 On one hand, the tuition cap and window period alleviated the students’ burden (though it was limited to those in state schools, as private schools were not subject to the restriction), but the more significant consequence of these clauses was that they established tuition as a norm in modern schools; this had been unthinkable in academies under the gaohuo-keshi system. Then in the 1904 Charter, monetary rewards were excluded. The section on “principles of school management” (ge xuetang guanli tongze 各學堂管理通則) stated that only symbolic rewards were acceptable in modern schools, including verbal encouragement, honours in school, and gifts such as books, stationery, and instruments for

38 Before the Education Charters, the names “academy” (shuyuan 書院) and “school” (xuetang/xuexiao 學堂/ 學校) were not necessarily related to the practicing and abolition of the gaohuo-keshi system. Take the examples of two institutions managed by Cai Yuanpei (1868-1940), the 1892 jinshi who eventually became the model educator in modern China: when he accepted the appointment as the general manager (zongli 總理) of the Shaoxing Chinese-Western School right after the 1898 Coup, he maintained the gaohuo reward in the newly-established modern school. “Shaoxing zhongxi xuetang guiyue 紹興中西學堂規約,” Xiang Xuebao 湘 學報 24 (1897): 1-3. After a conflict with Shaoxing Chinese-Western’s major sponsor, governor Xu Shulan 徐 樹蘭, Cai left and took the headmastership of the Erdai Academy 二戴書院, where gaohuo was abolished probably by Cai himself. 39 Zhang Zhidong gained a dominant position in the drafting of new education systems via a series of well- orchestrated political moves. The 1902 system was attributed to Zhang Boxi 張伯熙, who was removed from office in 1898 because of his sympathy to Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao. Zhang Boxi’s appointment as the Minister in Charge of Academies after the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 thus represented a recognition of the agenda of modernization in education proposed by the 1898 Reformists. Lacking actual experience in managing modern education, Zhang Boxi relied heavily on Zhang Zhidong, who had built a reputation as a successful reformer in Hubei, when he drafted the 1902 Charter. Not surprisingly, the proposal of modernization faced fierce attack from officials in the establishment, which Zhang Boxi was not able to withstand. In the midst of controversy, Zhang Zhidong accepted a summons from the Empress Cixi—which he had eluded before to prevent direct confrontation with the conservatives—to be the mediator. The product was the 1904 Charter, which, in fact, made hardly any concessions from the 1902 Charter. It was even more radical in terms of the reduction of classical studies in the syllabus. The 1904 Charter would not have been successful if Zhang Zhidong had taken over the drafting process from the beginning 40 Schools of tertiary education: less than two teals per month; middle schools: less than one teal; high level primary schools: less than five cents; entry level primary schools: less than three cents. Qinding xuetang zhangcheng (Taipei: Wenhai, 1986), 21, 30, 38.

24 learning. 41

It is striking that the gaohuo-keshi system—a practice institutionalized for nearly two centuries with an ideological foundation in the tradition of “nurturing scholars”—was abolished by the minor articles of the Charters without evoking significant policy debate. This is mostly because the new model of school management had already been established in the local education reform projects launched in the wake of defeat in the 1904-05 Sino-Japanese War. These local reformers, who later became active in national politics, had developed their arguments against monetary rewards in education based on an obligation for national progress during a time of crisis. This position was represented by Liang Qichao, one of the most influential intellectuals in early twentieth century China, who was then among a group of examination-title-holding promoters of modernization reform after the 1895 defeat. In “A General

Discourse on Reform” (Bianfa tongyi 變法通議, 1896), Liang proposed the suspension of gaohuo rewards to reduce the cost of establishing modern schools in the early phase of education reform.42

Despite the lack of monetary rewards, he argued, the ambitious and noble gentlemen (haojie zhishi 豪傑

之士) who shared the vision of saving China through reform would be eager to enroll and obtain new knowledge.

This rhetoric of sacrificing individual interest for national progress was employed by local education reformers when gaohuo was either reduced or sacked in the fledgling modern schools of the

1890s. For instance, in 1897 Zhang Zhidong, the Hubei governor who became famous for his provincial modernization projects, responded to student protests against the termination of gaohuo with strong moral language. Emphasizing the enormous cost of modern schooling—including school infrastructure, books and instruments, and high salaries for teachers with western knowledge—covered mostly by official funds

(guankuan 官款), Zhang explained that he had no intention of saving the significant cost of gaohuo. The

41 Zouding xuetang zhangcheng (Taipei: Wenhai, 1986), 16b-17a (94-5). The Charter also set the precedent for tuition exemption for students in normal institutes. 5b. 42 Liang Qichao, “今創辦之始, 或經費未充, 但使能改科舉於學校以號召天下, 學中惟定功課, 不給膏火, 天下豪傑之士, 其群集而俛然從事者, 必不乏人. 如是, 則經費又可省三之一,” Bianfa tongyi-Xuexiao Zonglun 變法通議-學校總論 (1896).

25 suspension of gaohuo, he claimed, was indeed to test the students’ determination to learn—those who went to school only for gaohuo would be dissuaded from the very beginning.43

Zhang further argued that the gaohuo was a backward Chinese custom in his famous “Exhortation to Learning” 勸學篇 (1898),44 which was later used as a blueprint for education reform in the New Policy

Period. Based on partial information about the Japanese education system introduced via Japanese diplomats and teachers in the foreign affairs (yangwu 洋務) schools, Zhang asserted that charging tuition and eliminating rewards were universal in countries around the world.45 Instead of adhering to the traditional custom that corrupted students with greed, he argued, China should follow the modern international convention, which led toward progress in education.

But neither the “cutting gaohuo to lower costs” explanation or Zhang’s moral language can fully capture the importance of students in the financing of modern education. In contrast to the logic of self- sustainability embodied in the financial practices of traditional academies, late Qing reformers assumed unrestricted expansion of public expenditure on education.46 This was especially true between post-1895 modernization initiatives and the introduction of centralized budget review by the Duzhibu in 1907.47

43 Zhang Zhidong, “Ziqiang xuetang bugei gaohuo shi 自強學堂不給膏火示,” in Zhang Zhidong quanji 張之 洞全集 (Shijiazhuang: Hubei renmin chubanshe, 1998), 4899. For other examples, see Guan, 192, 200. 44 Published right before the 1898 Coup that aborted the Reform initiated by Liang Qichao and Kang Yowei. 45 “外國大小學堂, 皆須納金於堂, 以為火食束脩之費, 從無給以膏火者.” Zhang’s understanding of the Japanese system could come from Japanese diplomat Hayashi Gonsuke’s description (that no regular stipend was given except to military students), which was frequently cited by Chinese reformers in this period. See Su Yunfeng 蘇雲峰, Zhongguo xin jiaoyu de mengya yu chengzhang 中國新教育的萌芽與成長 (Taipei: Wunan tushu chuban youxiangongsi, 2005), 118. 46 This assumption is demonstrated in the writings of Shen Yi 沈頤, one of the founding members of the Commercial Press. When the Ministry of Education declined to use tax money on provincial primary and secondary schools, Shen asserted that the state was responsible for funding as long as it intervened in education legally and institutionally. Interestingly, Shen’s argument implies a logic of exchange between funding and control, but he has never applied the same logic to the relationship between students and modern schools. Shen, “Lun jiaoyu jingfei budang caijian 論教育經費不當裁減,” Jiaoyu zazhi 教育雜誌(Taipei: Commercial Press, 1975), vol.4, 1949. Shen also pointed out that modern schooling had already drained funds by confiscating traditional academies’ and communal investment in keju after the 1905 abolition. Shen, “Lun quanxuesuo bufu mukuan zhi ze 論勸學所不負募款之責,” Jiaoyu zazhi, vol. 4, 2041, 2044. 47 Li Zongwu 李宗吾, a famous satirist of twentieth century China who served as an education inspector (duxue 督學) in 1910s and 20s Sichuan, criticized the late Qing education reform as a “paperwork reform” (biaoce shi de xinzheng 表冊式的新政) that focused on the expansion of the number of schools, students and

26 Justified by the increasing number of students, vast amounts of official and non-official taxation were extracted in the name of education (the jiaoyu juan 教育捐, for instance). In the 1890s and 1900s, the proliferation of education-related taxes caused endemic protests against modern schools. As a model reformer in the period, Zhang Zhidong found ingenuous ways to expand expenditure while preventing local protests and criticism from the central government. On one hand, by abolishing gaohuo and collecting tuition, Zhang promoted his effectiveness in reducing the cost of his reform project; on the other hand, he petitioned, in the name of the students, a withholding of provincial taxation to subsidy tuition.48

Moreover, under the new financial regime, the number of students became the most significant indicator of the achievement of education reform, as there was no other convincing way to prove the social benefit of modern education. Without statistical devices for macro-assessment of social cost and benefits, such as the GDP (though no less problematic), the initiators of reform could only justify the roaring expenditure on education with the abstract ideas of modernization and “strengthening the nation.”

The writings of Fukuzawa Yukichi 福澤諭吉 , the iconic thinker in Japan’s education modernization, were often quoted, but no substantial research on the condition of modern education in Japan could be cited to demonstrate the feasibility of the Japanese model in China. To attract and maintain financial support from the state and the public, education reformers could only boast the quantitative expansions in education—such as the numbers of new schools established, enrollments and graduates—which were not necessarily related to the “national strength” they promised.

Therefore, maintaining students at their schools until graduation was a matter with high stakes for education reformers.49 The incentive approach in traditional academies was insufficient to achieve this

public expenditure regardless of the quality of the new education institutions. “Houhei suibi 厚黑隨筆,” Yuzhoufeng 宇宙風 48 (1937): 13-16. 48 Zhang Zhidong, “Zha xuewuchu juanzhu jifu fu xuesheng xuefei 札學務處捐助畿輔附學生學費”, Zhang Zhidong quanji, 4246; “Zha geshu mian jie peikuan liu ban xuetang 札各屬免解賠款留辦學堂,” ibid, 4247; “Zha xuewuchu jianshou waisheng fuxue xuefei 札學務處減收外省附學學費,” ibid, 4257. 49 Yan Xiu, the Minister of Education in the mid-1900s, had emphasized the importance of timetables in the Japanese model of schooling. Guan Xiaohong, Wanqing xuebu yanjiu 晚清學部研究 (Guangdong: Guangzhou

27 goal. Monetary reward could attract students but not effectively prevent them from dropping out. A new system of monetary punishment was therefore invented around 1896. Students were given subsidies (in some cases also named gaohuo) upon agreement that they would neither enroll in other institutions (or take tests, before the abolition of gaohuo-keshi in the 1902 Charter) nor work outside the school. If they violated these terms or dropped out before graduation, the students had to pay reparation equal to the sum of the subsidies received by that time.50 These conditions were guaranteed by a contract (hetong 合同) countersigned by the student’s father, brother, or qualified sponsor (see fig. 3).51 For the students, this was no mere contractual agreement, but a system of punishment. As the subsidy they received could barely compensate the loss in earnings outside the school (either monetary reward from other schools/traditional academies or income from taking jobs), the reparation was indeed a prohibitive fine.

jiaoyu chubanshe, 2000), 165. 50 Some late nineteenth century academies practicing personal management by diaries had introduced the reduction of gaohuo as a punishment, but none of them asked for reparation of the gaohuo awarded in the past. Moreover, this practice of fining was probably invented by Chinese education reformers in the 1890s, not by foreign-invested/organized schools. For instance, when Liu Kunyi, the governor of Jiangsu and Jiangxi, collaborated with Japanese ambassador Hidemaro Konoye 近衛篤麿 to establish the Nanjing Tongwen Academy for Sino-Japanese cultural exchange (est. 1901, see Tang Hongbo, 201), gaohuo was still practiced without fines on dropouts. Nor were these practices seen in the Deutsch Wilhelm Schule established by the General Evangelical Protestant Missionary Society 德國同善會 (est. 1912, see Tang Hongbo, 780), where tuition was required (with irregular half exemptions depending on the funding of the Society). Although the price of tuition and board was not returned to those who dropped out or were rejected before completion, no indemnity was charged to students who dropped out. 51 In late imperial keju, candidates were asked to declare the family backgrounds (of the last three generations) and names of their mentors in order to prevent false identity. This is different from the requirement of a referee in the contracts of completion in modern schools. The referees were held accountable if the student was not able to pay the indemnity. This provided schools with an additional buffer against the risk of losing the investment in the student.

28

Figure 3. A Template of the Student Contract Used on the Jiangnan Chucai Xuetiang

This contract system gradually became a convention as the reformers cited each other’s practices as antecedents. In 1897, when Zhang Zhidong served as the acting governor of Liangjiang 兩江 (Jiangsu,

Jiangxi and Anhui), he introduced the subsidy reparation to the newly-founded Jiangnan chucai xuetang

江南儲才學堂52 by citing the precedent of the Beiyang Academy (est. 1896). In the same year, Lu

Chuanlin 鹿傳霖, Zhang’s political ally and in-law who served as the governor of Sichuan, adopted

Zhongxi Xuetang (which became Sichuan University).53 The Sichuan model was then later cited in the charter of the famous Hunan Academy of Current Affairs (Hunan Shiwu Xuetang 湖南時務學堂).54

The political landscape of the early 1900s enabled Zhang Zhidong to write this new model of

52 “Jiangnan chucai xuetang zhangcheng 江南储材学堂章程,” Shiwubao 時務報 41 (1897): 7-10. 53 “Chuandu Lu yanjin zhongxi xuetang xuesheng renyi gaotui shi 川督鹿嚴禁中西學堂學生任意告退示,” Shiwubao 時務報 40 (1897): 7. 54 “Hunan kaiban shiwuxuetang dagai zhangcheng 湖南開辦時務學堂大概章程,” Tang Hongbo, 1092. In 1902, Zhang Zhidong applied the precedent of five-year graduation to the Hubei Self Strengthening School. Zhang, “Pi ziqiang xuetang xiang xuesheng zishi gejie 批自強學堂詳學生滋事各節,” Zhang Zhidong Quanji, 4824.

29 finance into the national education system without significant resistance. After the disastrous diplomatic defeat in the 1901 Boxer Treaty, the Manchu ruling elite, led by the Empress Dowager Cixi, resorted to modernization reform to revive the Qing court’s power and authority. A number of officials advocating reforms, including Zhang Zhidong, were summoned to the court to launch the New Policy Reforms. But when the 1902 Charter was drafted, Zhang did not accept the offer of promotion and leadership in the reform—a move that proved to be the key to his success. As a result, Zhang Boxi 張伯熙, who was removed from office because of his sympathy to Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao after the 1898 Coup, was given the job. Lacking actual experience in managing modern education, Zhang Boxi relied heavily on Zhang Zhidong’s advice in constructing the new school system.

As the first comprehensive modern education system, it was not surprising to see resistance from the conservative camp. Yet as most of the controversies were focused on the place of classical education in modern schooling, the abolition of gaohuo, which was included in the Charter in a subtle manner, did not face any challenge in the policy debates. In 1903 Zhang Boxi stepped down from his post under the attack on curriculum reform, and Zhang Zhidong accepted an offer to mediate the revision of the Charter from the Empress Dowager Cixi. As political concessions had already been made to the conservatives,

Zhang Zhidong now had a free hand to put forward a reformist agenda. In the resulting 1904 Charter, not only was the abolition of monetary rewards preserved, Zhang was also able to maintain the reduction of classical education in the curriculum. Backed by Zhang’s political triumph, the new financial model established by the local education reformers was universalized in the empire almost without friction.

II) The Rise and Fall of the Title Incentive System (Jiangli chushen 獎勵出身)

Adopting a developmental model from the post-1895 local education reforms, the New Policy

Reform led to a rapid increase in the supply of modern education. The number of modern schools rose

30 from 769 in 1903 to 4,476 in 1904, 8,277 in 1905, and eventually 23,862 in 1906.55 Such a rapid increase was stimulated by policy rather than by demand from potential students.56 Modern education was not particularly attractive to students—monetary rewards had been abolished, and graduation from modern schools did not guarantee social status or an opportunity at officialdom as the keju titles had. As a result, heavier state intervention framed within a comprehensive reform program was needed to make the policy- driven modern education system sustainable.

In the discussion of education reform around the 1902 Education Charter, the reformist governors, represented by Zhang Zhidong, Tao Mo (Guangdong and Guangxi), Wang Zhichun (Anhui) and Yuan Shikai (Shandong) agreed upon the need to incentivize enrollment in modern schools with keju titles. But their views on the keju were divided. Zhang and Wang tended to argue for preserving the imperial examination system while granting modern school graduates statuses equivalent to the keju title holders. Tao and Yuan instead advocated abolition of the keju, as they saw that it was in direct competition with modern schools. In a 1902 memorial, Tao argued that the keju was the major obstacle to the development of modern schools. Echoed by writers in modern newspapers like the Shenbao and the

Xuanbao, the abolition of keju became a significant rallying cry in the emerging reading public. As a response to the pressure to abolish keju, a title reward system for graduates of modern schools (as seen in the Charter for Title Incentive for Modern Schools 奏定學堂獎勵章程) was implemented in 1903.57 i) Negotiating Local and Foreign Credentials

However, the title incentive program was challenged by a chain of political and diplomatic events, eventually leading to a consensus among state officials and non-official educators to abolish

55 Wang Di 王笛, “Qingmo xinzheng yu jindai xuetang de xingqi 清末新政與近代學堂的興起,” Jindaishi yanjiu 近代史研究 39, no. 3 (1987): 245. 56 Zhang Yaqun 張亞群, Keju xingfei yu jindai zhongguo gaodeng jiaoyu de zhuanxing 科舉興廢與近代中國 高等教育的轉型, 123. The supply/demand explanation obscures the fact that the tuition system was established in post-1895 reforms, before the availability of any concrete market information on modern education. Emphasizing investment in education as public expenditure, this narrative also ignores the distribution of revenue generated from education modernization; reformist provincial officials, school owners, and publishers all benefitted significantly from the emergence of a new education industry. 57 Guan Xiaohong 關曉紅, Keju tingfei yu Zhongguo jindai shehui, 86-93.

31 altogether the keju titles. This challenge came first from foreign pressure for the recognition of foreign credentials.

One of the earliest negotiations over this issue was between Zhang Zhidong and representatives of the Japanese Government, which began in 1901 when Zhang launched a keju title incentive program for Hubei students to study in Japan. Under Zhang’s scheme, students returning from Japan would be awarded keju titles of jinshi and juren after passing a qualifying exam. The aim of this scheme was to borrow from the modernized Japanese education system when modern schooling in China was insufficient to meet the urgent need for modern knowledge that would support reforms. The planners also saw the scheme as a way to reduce state investment in modern education. Targeting self-funded students, the scheme enabled the Qing state to obtain knowledge from Japan without increasing expenditures on education.

The conditions for admitting Chinese students in Japan were negotiated between Zhang and

Uchida Kosai 內田康哉, the Japanese Ambassador in the Qing Empire. Zhang was disinclined to be specific about the kinds of title to be awarded to returning students, one of Uchida’s demands. Japan also refused Zhang’s attempt to keep the number of title awardees under control by recognizing credentials only from imperial educational institutions. Zhang’s demand seemed conservative, but it was not unreasonable to prevent unconditional acceptance of Japan-trained graduates into the Chinese officialdom. With limited information about the schools in Japan, rejecting private schools—which were usually more obscure than the prominent imperial schools—might be the only plausible way to maintain some control over the quality of returning students.

Unfortunately for the Qing, Zhang Zhidong had little leverage to be firm in his position, as he was under political pressure to get the Japanese to admit Qing Chinese students—failure of the program to study in Japan would have undermined his power, which was based on his reputation as an education reformer. Zhang thus eventually submitted to the terms the Japanese proposed and embellished the outcome as a necessary condition leading to the success of gaining Japanese admission. Losing ground in

32 the negotiation, Zhang adopted passive controls when he drafted the Charter of Returned Student

Program: first, a qualification examination on Chinese classical knowledge was used to cope with the explicit ideological alienation of returning students; second, Chinese officials were sent to Japan and other countries of overseas studies to conduct on-site management of the Qing Chinese students.

Japan was not the only power that invested in educating Chinese students in the broadly defined era of neo-colonialism (or scramble for concession). To deepen their influence in China, the Western powers saw the need to cultivate a friendly elite that shared their education and values. After the 1900

Boxer Uprising, foreign powers felt it was crucial to eliminate “xenophobia” by intervening in Chinese education. The Boxer Treaty included a clause in which provinces with anti-foreign records were suspended from imperial examination for five years. In the following years, demands were made to the

Qing court to grant graduates of foreign education (including those studying abroad and in the missionary schools in China) statuses similar to those who passed keju. For the Qing state, complying with these demands meant the acceptance of a new class of elite under the intellectual and political influence of foreign powers.

The pressure to recognize foreign credentials was intensified by the sudden abolition of keju in

1905. Taking the leading position in education reform since 1904, Zhang Zhidong advocated a gradual increase in titles awarded to modern school graduates in replacement of titles awarded by keju. But his plan was disrupted by a twist of events. In 1905, a year before the removal of the examination suspension in the Boxer treaty, a proposal to rebuild the examination hall in Beijing (jingshi gongyuan 京師貢院), which was burned during the Eight Nation expedition in 1901, emerged. The proposal quickly drew support from both the officials based in Beijing ministries, who felt threatened by the empire-wide reform led by provincial governors, and the conservatives who attempted to preserve keju and classical education, who wanted to retaliate against the reformist agenda set in the 1904 Charter. As the imperial finances had already been devastated by the huge indemnity for the Boxer Treaty, the reconstruction of the jinghsi gongyuan, if approved, would drain the funding allocated to modern education planned in the

33 1904 Charter. At this point, Zhang Zhidong had no choice but to join forces with Yuan Shikai to propose an immediate termination of keju. On September 2, 1905, the Qing court approved a memorial for the abolition of keju submitted by Yuan, Zhang, and other four governors—Duan Fang, Zhao Erxun, Chen

Chunxuan and Zhou Fu. The examination system that had persisted for more than thirteen centuries was put to an end.58

As the title incentive program for modern school graduates had replaced keju as the major way to earn official titles and qualify for official employment, it became increasingly difficult for the Qing state to refuse “equal treatment of all modern educated graduates.”59 This was exemplified in the demands made by English missionaries in 1906 and German educators in Jiaozhou in 1909.60 Such requests put the

Qing officials in a difficult situation. On one hand, they did not want to concede the power of personnel and credential-making to foreign powers; on the other hand, refusal of the demands, or other policies restricting the activities of foreign education institutions on Chinese soil, could lead to diplomatic conflicts that usually ended as defeats, which had been demonstrated in the proliferating disputes between missionaries and local communities (known as “missionary cases” jiaoan 教案).

ii) Proposals for the Suspension of Title Incentive and the Number of Excessive Office Seekers

Policymakers in the newly formed Ministry of Education saw the title incentive program as the root of the problem. Zhang Yuanji 張元濟, co-founder of the Commercial Press, arguably the most powerful publisher in modern China, was then a zhushi 主事 in the Ministry of Education who shaped this agenda. In his memorials, Zhang argued that the abolition of keju titles and adoption of modern education credentials would be the fundamental solution to the problem. To prevent the sudden abolition of titles from leading to a freefall in the demand for modern schooling, Zhang proposed a regulative

58 Guan, 116-134. 59 Except for the compensatory examination practices on an ad-hoc basis, which eventually continued until the end of the Qing empire. 60 Zhang Yuanji, Zhang Yuanji shiwen 張元濟詩文 (Beijing: Commercial Press, 1986), 124.

34 policy during the transitional period. By putting graduates of Chinese modern schools on a “fast track” to officialdom, the Qing government could prevent a rapid increase in the portion of foreign-trained graduates in the bureaucracy while complying with the demand for recognition of foreign degrees. This could also maintain the relative value of credentials from local schools by promising better opportunities for advancement than those available to the holders of foreign credentials.61

But Zhang Yuanji’s prescription was impractical, if not completely off the mark. First, the

Ministry of Education had no power to create such a fast track to official advancement. More importantly,

Zhang had mistakenly equated keju titles (mingfen 名份) to actual office-holding in the bureaucracy.

Throughout the Qing dynasty, earning a title did not mean immediate access to official positions, but rather a long waiting process for assignments.62 This conflation of status and office constituted a new discourse connecting titles to “excessive officials” (rongyuan 冗員) employed by advocates for abolition of keju titles. This agenda was presented in an earlier memorial in 1905 by Chen Zengyou, a censor who had previously participated as a local gentleman in Zhang Zhidong’s Hubei education reforms.63 Chen wrote:

When modern schools become popular in the future, in every province there will be several

61 This is shown by the fact that the number of students studying in Japan increased even after the eventual abolition of title incentives in 1911. Liu Hengwen regards this as a path that was a residue of the title incentive program. Liu Hengwen, “The Stigma of ‘Trickery for Official Job’: The Influence of the Abolition of the Traditional Examination System in the late-Qing Dynasty over the Legal Education of Modern China,” Fazhishi yanjiu 法制史研究 18 (2010): 166-168. Such an explanation ignores the fact that with the abolition of titles in 1911, the Chinese state had virtually no administrative tools to control the number of students studying abroad. Without specific indicators of success, seeking foreign credentials that had a relatively stable value became the reasonable choice for those who could afford the journey. The modern Chinese state’s lack of regulatory devices in the market of credentials was also demonstrated in the Nanjing Decade. When the Nanjing Government sought to reduce the number of art and legal university students and to encourage studies in science and technology, the only implementable policy was propaganda launched by Chen Lifu that portrayed art/legal students as parasites of the society. Chen’s proposal to slash art and legal departments in colleges created no actual impact but was a target for educators to attack. It is noteworthy that the Republic of China had not awarded a national doctoral degree before 1959, more than a decade after retreating from the Mainland to Taiwan. 62 In the late nineteenth century, the average waiting period before earning a title and holding actual office was around 10 years. Mao Haijian 茅海建, Cong jiawu dao wuxu: Kang Youwei wo shi jianzhu 甲午到戊戌：康 有為我史鑒注 (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2009), 554. 63 Zhang Zhidong, “Huizou guangshe xuetang choubei jingfei zhe 會奏廣設學堂籌備經費折,” Zhang Zhidong quanji, 1291.

35 thousand graduates. If all of them are given titles directly through the bagong and yougong

systems, the titles will be devalued and eventually become inadequate as an incentive… In ten

years, the world will be flooded with jinshi and juren, and these titles will not be valued

anymore… The worst condition for the nation is that everyone is aspiring to be officials and

forgetting their own place in the society. The result will be a custom of greed and over-

competition.64

Right after its submission, Chen’s memorial was published widely in magazines and newspapers.

However, his assessment of the increase of title holders (several thousand in each province per year) was also far from accurate, as he problematically equates the graduates to title holders eligible for office candidacy. Under the 1904 Charter, this only opened a channel for ad-hoc applications/petitions, rather than automatically awarding titles to every new graduate. Moreover, given the varied schedules and standards, the decisions about awarding titles, as well as the category of title, were open to negotiation.65

As shown in two recent studies, the actual number of modern school graduates with titles was much smaller than Chen suggested. According to Hajikawa Atsushi’s 早川敦 calculation based on petitions recorded in The Gazette of the Ministry of Education (Xuebu guanbao 學部官報), Gazette on

Politics (Zhengzhi guanbao 政治官報), and The Gazette of the Cabinet (Neige guanbao 內閣官報) between 1906 and 1911, the reward system generated 52 jinshi 進士, 1,573 juren 舉人, 4,425 gongsheng

貢生, 4,434 shengyuan生員, and 2,680 actual office holders (including those who held offices before

64 臣按學堂普及而後，每省中學卒業數千人不為多，盡作為拔貢優貢則名器太濫，不足以勸。若主考 考驗之時只取數十人，憑一日分數之多寡，不按平時分數之多寡，則不足以服眾，而人將無志於學 堂…… 行之十年，進士舉人塞滿天下，而人亦不復以為貴……國家最不利之事，在人人皆思作官，則 各忘本分，而僥幸奔競之風作矣。 65 For instance, the 1909 applications from Guangdong were reviewed case by case to assign different ranks of gongming, because the official and public schools did not have standardized years of completion. “Zouzhuo guangdong gaodeng xuetang yuke biyejiangli fenbie zhunbo zhe 奏酌擬廣東高等學堂預科畢業獎勵分別准 駁折,” Xuebuguanbao 學部官報 79 (1909): 1-3. In some cases, the hours of learning had to be counted for decision, and positions in local administration were withheld from the school graduates. Zhang Zhidong, “Qing jiang ge xuetang biyesheng ji guanliyuan jiaoyuan zhe 請獎各學堂畢業生及管理員教員折” Zhang Zhidong quanji, 1812

36 graduation and the school teachers recognized as officials).66 Zhang Yaqun’s investigation of the Gazette on Politics and The Gazette of the Cabinet shows that 56 jinshi and 1,882 juren were awarded.67

Nor was the proliferation of title holders an immediate problem for the Qing bureaucracy. From the eighteenth century onwards, the large population of title holders awaiting assignments to actual offices had been outflowing to alternative career paths, including scholars, advisors, merchants, and irregular state assignments. The high Qing population expansion, post-Taiping Rebellion reconstruction, and rise of modernization ventures after the Opium War all generated enormous demand for irregular services. Office candidates were assigned to a wide range of administrative work—overseeing delivery of taxes, supervising examinations, compiling local gazetteers, treating disasters, conducting special investigations of legal cases including those that involved missionaries (jiaoan 教案), and organizing auxiliary militia. Title holders awaiting assignment also actively participated in westernization enterprises, as the regular office holders refrained from the such irregular with uncertain prospects of promotion.68 Therefore, the knowledge and skills of title holders spilled out to sectors outside the

“orthodox” official career (zhengtu 正途).

Chen’s argument was amplified in writings by non-official educators who produced various assessments of the number of “excessive” officials. In 1910, Jiaoyuzazhi, Commercial Press’s magazine on education, published an article by Gao Mengdan (penname: Chong You 崇有), a former supervisor of

Hubei students studying in Japan and senior member of the Commercial Press’s team of textbook production. Without accurate statistics, Gao employed an astonishing method to estimate the number of graduates and potential office seekers. Given that the proportion of the Japanese and Chinese populations

66 Hayakawa Atsushi 早川敦, “On the Award System for Graduates of Modern Schools in the Late Qing: Between the Civil-Examination and Modern-School Systems in the Period of the Introduction of the Modern School System 淸末の學堂奨勵について近代學制導入期における科擧と學堂のあいだ,” Toyoshi kenkyu 東洋史研究 62, no. 3 (2012): 407-438. 67 Zhang Yaqun, 181-182. 68 For example, in the Hubei Foreign Affairs Bureau in the 1890s, nearly all the middle rank managers were candidates awaiting actual offices. Xiao Zongzhi 肖宗志, Houbu wenguan qunti yu wanqing zhengzhi 候補文 官群體與晚清政治 (Chengdu: Bashu sheshe, 2007).

37 was approximately 1:10 (40 million to 400 million), Gao multiplied the total number of graduates of

Japanese schools by ten to produce a number of Chinese graduates when modern education was fully developed. Comparing this number to the number of state offices available at the time (taken from data in

1904 and 1907), Gao attempted to demonstrate how the title reward system produced excessive office seekers.69 Despite flaws in nearly every step of his analysis, Gao’s article was widely circulated and reproduced, not least because it represented the view of the Commercial Press, a powerful actor in the field of modern education. This argument was also employed by the Jiangsu Education Association in the

1911 National Education Convention, in which the attending non-official educators reached a consensus to abolish the title reward system.

Not all contemporaries shared the reform advocates' perspective of overpopulation in official offices, but their voices were either neglected or misinterpreted. A 1909 article in the Taikungpao 大公報 titled “Another Five Thousand People Joined the Official Career (仕路又增五千人)” is often cited by researchers to prove the crisis of overpopulation in officialdom, and thus, to support the arguments made by Chen and Gao.70 These quotations miss the celebrative tone of the article, which was written in the trope of “awe-inspiring event” (shengshi 盛事) in the biji tradition. More importantly, the numbers listed in the article are nearly all one-time compensatory examinations after the 1905 abolition of keju: overseas graduates 240; jugong examination 320; bagong examination 840; yougong 120; xiaolian fangzheng

2,000; unpicked jugong youba approximately 2,000. Graduates of advanced modern schools were not considered by the writer as a noteworthy issue in the first place. In the 1909 context, there was no urgency to remove the abolition of title rewards for modern school graduates. In fact, the education reformers were not determined to reduce the number of title holders/prospective officials. While narrating the crisis of overpopulation in officialdom, they simultaneously lobbied the policy of granting titles to graduates of normal schools and recognizing teachers as state officials. Thus, the absolute number of title-holding

69 Chong You 崇有 (Gao Mengdan 高夢旦), “Xuetang jiangli zhangcheng yiwen 學堂獎勵章程疑問,” Jiaoyu zazhi 2, no. 1 (1910). 70 Zhang Yaqun, 184; Hu Xiangdong, 54.

38 graduates was more a pretext (for the convenience of the education reformers) than an actual problem in the Qing administration.

iii) Removing the Identity of Confucian Scholars in Modern Schools

Why, then, did the proposal to abolish title rewards become an agreement between officials and non-official educators regardless of flaws which should have been obvious to contemporaries? The major reason was the conflicts between title reward and discipline in modern schooling. In traditional academies, managers liked to see affiliated scholars earning titles as soon as possible, instead of being affiliated for a fixed period of time. They could then become a sponsor bound by moral pressure and guanxi, or in some cases explicitly written clauses in charters. Academies might be in some competition for the sponsorship of individual title holders with multiple affiliations, yet these affiliations were not mutually exclusive per se. The management/financial pattern of modern education had completely changed the game. In order to indicate the achievement of a modern school, schedules were used to maintain the number of students in every grade and to ensure those students became graduates of the school. Transferring meant losing a token of success to competing schools and was also a waste of initial investment in the student.71 In this regard, the title system did little to keep students within the time and space of schools. Multiple registration was commonplace alongside the title incentive program. Students also used transferring to make leaps in grades. As seen in the 1909 Ordinance on Transfers, the Ministry of Education actually recognized such practices and maintained superficial regulation by providing official channels for application to transfer.72

71 During the transition from traditional to modern schooling in the late Qing, the so-called problem of “rank- leaping (liedeng 躐等)” reflected the conflict between the modern grade system and the existing educational practices, which lacked a clearly defined schedule. In a keju oriented education, scholars worked toward passing examinations to earn official degrees/titles, regardless of age. There were study plans, such as the Dushufennian richeng 讀書分年日程 written in the Yuan dynasty, which were adopted occasionally in academies and sishu training. But this kind of schedule was never the mainstream in the Qing. Nor was it the same as the grade system, which imposed on students a somewhat uniform schedule for progress. 72 “Xuebu tongzi gexiang zhongxiao xuetang xuesheng chuji shifan xuetang xuesheng zifeisheng zhuanxuezhangcheng wen 學部通咨各項中小學堂學生初級師範學堂自費生轉學章程文,” Jiaoyu zazhi 教 育雜誌 1, no. 1 (1909): 53-54.

39 Seen in this light, the policy of detaching gongming and office from education was necessary for the creation of the hierarchy between students and teachers, which was indeed a novel concept in the context of the 1900s.73 As mentioned above, the relationship between academies, shanzhang, and scholars was to a large extent fluid. The inflow of modern/western knowledge intensified this tendency, as the teachers in modern schools did not enjoy an insurmountable advantage of information over the students.74

Furthermore, the authority of seniority was tenuous in the first decade of modern teacher-student relationships given the prevalence of “over-age” students produced under the age grade system. Against this background, the existence of title rewards prevented the realization of the modern teacher/student hierarchy. For those students who aimed at the post-keju compensatory examinations (such as the suike 歲

科 and 1908 bagong 拔貢), modern schools were just a temporary space of preparation. And even for those who took the graduation title reward track, once graduated, they would immediately be equals, if not superiors, to the school teachers. This rapid mobility of status generated an egalitarian relationship that contradicted disciplinary order in modern classrooms.

Once again, the Commercial Press (CP) played a decisive role in developing a narrative that justified examination without title rewards. In his 1910 article in the Jiaoyu zazhi, Gu Shi 顧實, the philologist and textbook compiler at CP, created an opposition between status (gui 貴) and quality (youlie

優劣) in testing and education. Following Gao Mengdan’s exaggeration of the number of title-holding individuals, he argued that giving high status to the whole nation was doomed to create internal conflicts that prevented actual national development. And like Zhang Zhidong had done with the tuition system,

Gu cited an “international convention” based mostly on a partial understanding of the Japanese education system. Around the world, Gu argued, there were no honorary statuses given to school graduates;

73 Once again, the sequence of development had been reversed in these narratives. It was not that students could not be fitted into a pre-existing teacher/student relationship, but how to create this relationship and impose it on the scholars nurtured in the “traditional order.” 74 As Sang Bing has pointed out, the first generation of teachers in modern schools did not possess particular advantage over their students in terms of the understanding of western/modern knowledge. Sang Bing 桑兵, Wanqing xuetang xuesheng yu shehui bianqian 晚清學堂學生與社會變遷 (Guilin: Guangxi shifan daxue chubanshe, 2007), 199.

40 credentials such as the yeshi 業士 (modeled after the Japanese credential of 得業士 tokuyoshi) for polytechnic school graduates and xueshi 學士 (bachelor) for university graduates did not mean any sort of nobility. In modern education, examinations were just conducted for assessing quality. Therefore, they could be conducted even without the reward system. Under the new order, he suggested, the drive for taking examinations was no longer rewards to individuals, but the responsibility as a nation to perform well in a global competition over intelligence, which determined national survival. 75

This denouncement of the greed for fame was adopted and elaborated by Zhang Xian 張謇, the champion of the 1894 keju who left the officialdom after 1898 and became an influential leader in business, education modernization, and, in the late 1900s, constitutional movement. In a speech delivered at a Conference on the Research on Education Statutes organized by the Jiaoyu zazhi, Zhang contended,

“Most of the students will engage in business/occupation after graduation. If they were given the title

(such as shengyuan and xiucai )… they would certainly identify themselves as Confucian scholars (ziming weiru 自命為儒) and look down on the practical/profiteering enterprises.”76 It is striking to see these words coming from Zhang, who was the icon of the “Confucian entrepreneur” (rushang 儒商) in the late

Qing and early Republican periods. As a potential employer of modern school graduates, he felt that the pride of Confucian scholars should be removed in order to create educated but docile employees.

Under Zhang’s influence, replacing a “Confucian” arrogance with the responsibility of modern citizen became a major issue in national education (guomin jiaoyu 國民教育). In the Conference of

Provincial Educational Societies (gesheng jiaoyuzonghui lianhe huiyi 各省教育總會聯合會) held in

April and May 1911, a statement calling for the abolition of title rewards was passed. “The essence of national education,” it stated, “is to cultivate a sense of responsibility among the people in the nation. The

75 Gu Shi 顧實, “Lun xuetang jiangli 論學堂獎勵,” Jiaoyu zazhi 3 (Do you have a year for this?): 1661-1674; also published in Guangyi congbao 廣益叢報 246 (1910):1-3. 76 “畢業後出外營業者居多，如奬以生員，則與在庠無異，必至鄙夷實業，蹈學究妄自尊大，自命為儒 之弊.” “Jiaoyu falingsuo yanjiuhui baogao: Yanjiu ge xuetang jiangli zhangcheng 教育法令所研究會報告： 研究各學堂獎勵章程,” Jiaoyuzazhi vol. 3, 1852.

41 lust for fame (developed in title awards) is in exact opposition to the sense of responsibility.”77

This moral language of national education helped to seal the fate of title rewards at the 1911

Central Conference of Education (zhongyang jiaoyu hui 中央教育會).78 During the Conference, some officials from the Ministry of Education attempted to argue for the preservation of rewards, as this had become an important source of income for the Ministry after a licence fee for title holders was introduced in 1908.79 Meanwhile, some of the non-official educators proposed postponing the abolition until 1913, after their family members had graduated from modern schools and received the titles. But these scattered opinions were easily refuted by the consensus for supressing personal reward in the name of national progress. This official view was presented in the account written by Lufei Kui 陸費逵, the prominent publisher who later left the Commercial Press to establish the Chunghua Press (zhonghua shuju 中華書

局), another giant in the modern Chinese publishing business.80 Writing then in the Jiaoyu Zazhi as a representative of the Commercial Press, Lufei attributed the resistance to the abolition of titles to individual greed.

Ironically, after its abolition, the keju title retained its social capital in Republican China. Numerous title holders occupied important positions as councilmen, bureaucrats, entrepreneurs, professionals, and intellectuals. And amid an intellectual atmosphere of anti-traditionalism, keju titles were nevertheless treasured. For instance, Jiang Menglin 蔣夢麟, a Columbia PhD who was seen as one of the representatives of the 1910s New Culture Movement, wrote about his xiucai title with a celebrative and

77 “Ge sheng jiaoyu zonghui lianhehui yijue an 各省教育總會聯合會議決案,” Jiaoyu zazhi vol. 5, 2989. The advantage of turning students from prospective literati-officials to citizens explains the non-official educators’ voluntary initiation of civic and nationalist education. Robert Culp, Articulating Citizenship: Civic Education and Student Politics in Southeastern China, 1912-1940 (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2011). 78 The delay is often attributed to Zhang Zhidong’s influence as the Minister of Education. Yet this explanation should be taken with caution—Zhang’s opposition to the abolition of titles was only mentioned indirectly in newspaper reporting, which mostly took a critical stance toward him. No official documentation has been discovered to support these claims. 79 “Xuebu zouhe ming Xuantong yuannian fen benbu shouzhi gekuan kaobaozhe 學部奏覈明宣統元年分本部 收支各款開報摺,” Jiaoyuzazhi vol. 4, 2347. 80 Lufei Kuei 陸費逵, “Lun zhongyang jiaoyu hui 論中央教育會,” Jiaoyu zazhi 3, no. 8 (1911).

42 nostalgic tone. In The Western Tide—one of the most important works reflecting the mentality of the New

Culture intellectuals—Jiang recounted a conversation he had with Chen Duxiu 陳獨秀, the representative of the radical wing of the New Culture Movement. It was pitiful, Jiang said, that they earned a xiucai via new-style policy questions (introduced briefly between 1902 and 1905), rather than the traditional eight legged essays. In this anecdote, Jiang demonstrated a sense of honour as one of the last generation of keju title holders.81 This was not least because keju titles served as an insurmountable distinction between these title holders and later generations of the elite.

Conclusion: Docile Knowledge Bearers: Citizens and Employees

The reversal of the exchange relationship marked a transition between two logics of governance—incentivizing participation in examinations with status; and testing as an obligation, or necessary condition, for being a decent citizen. Credentials in the modern testing regimes did not perform the same function of exchange as the titles in the traditional social order. Credentials could open access to possibilities for advancement, but the transferability of credential and gain (in both monetary and social/cultural terms) was constantly in flux. Relatively speaking, as an indicator of possession of classical knowledge and literary skill, the value of titles had been stable, as it was embedded in the cultural nexus that generated social, political, as well as financial capital. The title system also implied a flexible relationship between educator/examiner and educated/examinees. The extraordinary examinees would become scholar-officials in charge of future examinations—in the Qinglong Emperor’s words,

“today’s examinee, tomorrow’s examiner” (jinri zhi juzi, mingri zhi kaoguan 今日之舉子, 明日之考官).

A sense of belonging to the intellectual community of classical learning created an ideologically egalitarian status among scholars, as well as social support to scholars based on such assumptions. On the

81 As Wen-Hsin Yeh has pointed out, traditional classical-historical scholarship distinguished between elitist universities in Beijing and the so-called second rate schools (or even worse, “wild chicken” universities in Shanghai). Wen-Hsin Yeh, The Alienated Academy: Culture and Politics in Republican China, 1919-1937 (Cambridge: Harvard Council on East Asian Studies, 1990).

43 contrary, a modern graduate’s advancement from the status of educated/tested to tester/educator was uncertain. The status stability of a credential holder could not even match that of those title holders awaiting office in the Qing, as they were completely exposed to the time and opportunity cost of unemployment.

An ideology of obligated education was essential to sustaining the imbalanced educator-educated relationship in modern schooling. Unlike the traditional education embedded in the holistic cultural order of classical knowledge, modern schools lacked social recognition and depended on enrollment and graduation to prove their value in the first place. In this sense, students should have been repaid for their participation, which contributed to the legitimization of modern schooling. But in an age when education reformers were able to establish/rearrange the rules while being players in the game, policies were shaped to limit the power of the students. In order to maximize their political and economic gain in the newly- formed field of education, the reformers promoted policies that created conditions under which seeking education became essential for a decent life in the society, or an obligation for a qualified citizen. In other words, the late Qing education modernization was a self-fulfilling prophecy—the educators/reformers constructed ideological obligations and institutional disciplines, such as the indemnity system, to keep students in modern schools, used the students’ bodies to indicate the demand for modern education, and eventually pushed education toward being compulsory for every national citizen.

The new discourse of national/citizen (guomin 國民) was also based on a dichotomy of the superfluous fame (xuming 虛名) of the individual and the practical interests (shili 實利) of the “public.”

Office-holders and office-seekers were described as consumers (fenlizhe 分利者) of national wealth, in contrast to the general public—“the people”—who generated this wealth.82 The superiority of office seekers over guomin was meaningless fame that did not deserve respect. Education should be focused on the nurturing of qualified citizens, the argument went, rather than on bureaucrats, as the overproduction of

82 “Shu yanjiu ge xuetang jiangli zhangcheng baogao hou 書研究各學堂獎勵章程報告書後,” Shenbao, July 30, 1910.

44 consumers of wealth would certainly jeopardize the nation.83 This anti-bureaucracy ideology had two long-lasting consequences in modern Chinese history. First is a widespread belief in the efficiency of a small and non-intervening state, especially in the sectors that claimed independence from the state during the process of modernization, such as education. The lack of constructive discussion of the state’s role contributed not only to the extremely laissez-faire policies, as seen in the absence of national management over higher credentials in the Republic of China, but also to the rapid swing to extremes of totalitarian control during crises. Second is an exclusion of bureaucrats as agents of progressive force in politics, because they were automatically seen as self-serving careerists sucking the wealth of the nation. Based on this, Sun Yat-sen constructed the image of ideal party members as “the enlightened people” in contrast to corrupted bureaucrats—exemplified in his 1923 speech titled “Party Members Should not be Concerned with Bureaucratic Careers” (dangyuan buke cunxin zuoguan 黨員不可存心做官).84 The party- bureaucracy relationship not only became an invested issue after the National Party’s success in revolting against the “warlord” regime and establishing the Nanjing Government in 1928, which will be discussed in Chapter 3, but also a core question in modern Chinese politics.

This dichotomy of guan-min also generated the new conceptualization of educated unemployment as a social problem. This is demonstrated in the change of historical account of Hong

Xiuquan, the leader of the Taiping Rebellion. In the post-Taiping reconstruction era, Hong had been depicted as a heretic challenging the Confucian social order. But in the midst of the educational modernization, Hong’s status as a failed examinee was increasingly emphasized, and tied anachronistically to the new concept of the “unemployed” intellectual. Educators also argued that the title reward system produced revolutionaries and anarchists, ignoring the fact that “unemployment” did not

83 Sun Baoxuan 孫寶瑄, Wangshanlu riji 忘山廬日記, cited in Guan Xiaohong, 262, 679. 84 A comparable anti-bureaucrat sentiment in Japan contributed to the ideological development of imperial democracy in the early twentieth century and the eventual imperial fascism in the 1930s. Andrew Gordon, Labor and Imperial Democracy in Prewar Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). The interconnectedness of the official/people division in China and kan-min in Meiji Japan needs further exploration. Carol Gluck, Japan’s Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 60-67.

45 exist in the social order shaped by title statuses. The wide social recognition of learned individuals as prospective title holders provided a considerable support and job market to the classical knowledge bearers, regardless of the actual title they obtained. More importantly, employment became an issue only after the state retreated from the symbolic obligation of “nurturing scholars” (shi) and became no more than a potential employer.

The modern Chinese state could have been accountable for unemployment. But embedded in an ideology against social disturbance and revolution among late Qing reformists, the “social problem” narrative articulated the unemployed condition as a personal deficiency, or the “sickness” of the Chinese people, rather than as a governmental failure.85 The absence of state intervention and failure in policies was exculpated in order to prevent any justification for uprising. To repair their personal deficiencies, this discourse argued, Chinese people should enter modern schools, invest in the establishment of modern education, and enhance the Chinese nation’s performance in a global competition over intelligence. As a powerful device of mobilization, this narrative persisted beyond the 1911 Revolution, and became somewhat conventional in Republican cultural politics—from Lu Feikui’s self-proclaimed mission to cure the “treacherous nature” (daoxing 盜性) in the new era, to the Nationalists’ propaganda of eliminating evil customs.86 The Chinese people now take examinations not only for the uncertain prospect of jobs and income, but also for the self-redemption of education.

85 For the ideological transformation from the imperial state’s responsibility of “nourishing the people” to poverty as a social disease diagnosed by modern social scientific knowledge, see Janet Chen, Guilty of Indigence: The Urban Poor in China, 1900-1953 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 46-49. 86 Lufei Kui, “Chu guomin daoxing lun 除國民盜性論” (1918), in Jiaoyu wencun 教育文存, ed. Lufei Kui (Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1921), 33. For the rhetoric of “curing the inferior nationals” in early twentieth century Chinese political discourse, see John Fitzgerald, Awakening China: Politics, Culture, and Class in the Nationalist Revolution (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 105.

46 CHAPTER 2

Lukewarm Objectivity: The Standardized Test Movement (1920-1937) and the Remaking

of Chinese Examination Discourse

Introduction

The long history of the Chinese imperial examination system is often used to explain the academic competitiveness of Chinese students and the ways they sacrifice creativity and criticality for success.87 Despite the obvious differences between traditional Chinese civil service examinations and diversified modern testing practices—most formed in the exchange of knowledge with “the West”—the obsession with academic competition and obedience to existing rules is usually seen as a Chinese characteristic that has persisted through time.

In fact, with a limited degree of quantifiable assessment, the trustworthiness of keju did not rest on a mechanic, stable and objective standard, but instead on the interaction between specific examiners and examinees.88 In keju, assessments were composed of variable written comments by multiple examiners, and ranks were only given to the extremely small number of candidates who passed and earned official degrees. Because the slight chance of passing and the unevenness of grading were often taken for granted, neither the comments nor the ranks were seen as

87 For recent examples, see Andrew B. Kipnis, Governing Educational Desire: Culture, Politics, and Schooling in China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 90-99; Diane Rativch, “The Myth of Chinese Super Schools,” The New York Review of Books, November 20, 2014, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/nov/20/myth-chinese-super-schools/ ; Yong Zhao, Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon? Why China has the Best (and Worst) Education System in the World (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2014). 88 Shiuon Chu, “Failure Stories: Interpretations of Rejected Papers in the Late Imperial Civil Service Examinations,” T'oung Pao 101, no. 1-3 (2015): 168-207. In contrast to the conventional understanding that keju prevented innovations in thought, scholarship in the last two decades has already demonstrated that classical learning—the content of keju—was indeed a vivid field of contest among actors and conflicting ideas. Benjamin Elman, A Cultural History of Late Imperial Civil Examination (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); Kai-wing Chow, Publishing, Culture, and Power in Early Modern China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004); Hilde de Weerdt, Competition over Content: Negotiating Standards for the Civil Service Examinations in Imperial China (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2007).

47 accurate and commensurable indicators of candidates’ achievement. Without a numerical score as an “objective” indicator to compete for, keju was actually remote from a modern system of academic competition.89 Therefore, the history of keju does not communicate as much about testing in modern China as expected.

Since roughly the 1905 abolition of the keju, the concept of academic competition under objective standards emerged in China in connection with the international trend of quantification. The overlapping developments of psychological and educational measurement, especially in the U.S., echoed trends of social investigations and statistical thinking in late nineteenth century Euro-American nation states.90 Contest, negotiation, and cooperation between knowledge bearers and the state are seen in nearly every area of knowledge production— including mass/compulsory schooling systems, social and land surveys, censuses, and real estate appreciations across the Atlantic. This scholarship on the production of numbers and facts in the modern public life invites us to revisit the quantification of examination in modern China, which is often neglected because of the assumption that an unbroken Chinese examination tradition persisted after the 1905 abolition of keju to present-day Sinophone societies.

The developments in the quantification of education assessment, as shown in the cases of

Euro-American countries, were embedded in broader social-political transformations in local contexts. According to the categorization of science historian Theodore Porter, in nineteenth century Europe and the U.S., two definitions of quantitative objectivity emerged from the tension

89 Based on Michel Foucault’s concept of disciplinary power, Keith Hoskin argued that quantification distinguishes modern examinations from pre-modern exams. Keith Hoskin, “Education and the Genesis of Disciplinarity: The Unexpected Reversal,” in Knowledges: Historical and Critical Studies in Disciplinarity, eds. E. Messer-Davidow, David R. Shumway, and David Sylvan (Charlottesville; London: University Press of Virginia, 1993), 273. 90 James Scott, Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 80-81;Tong Lam, A Passion for Facts: Social Surveys and the Construction of the Chinese Nation-State, 1900-1949 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011).

48 between popular political participation and governance via professionalized knowledge. The first was mechanic objectivity, under which quantification removed personal judgments by specific individuals, including the experts and technocrats. Quantitative representation of public issues increased the accessibility to information and lowered the threshold of popular participation in discussion, and even investigations. The second was a disciplinary objectivity, under which the trustworthiness of numbers was not self-evident but instead rested on consensus among professionalized experts. The authority of experts was also enhanced by the development of sophisticated statistical tools and large scale empirical research, which centralized production of quantitative knowledge in state-sponsored or comparable research institutions. The competition between these two concepts of objectivity shaped the ways numbers were used in Euro-

American public discourse.91

The different trajectories of the standardized test in France and the U.S. were developed from such division. Although the IQ test originated first from French experimental psychology, the emphasis on expert judgment confined it to clinical use between a limited number of professional psychologists and their clients. Standardized tests eventually flourished in the U.S., where a culture of self-learning encouraged openness and the accessibility of quantitative knowledge. IQ and other measurements of personal ability were practiced widely across different social sectors and interwoven into popular discourses of education and social justice.92

Seen in this light, by looking into standardized testing in early twentieth century China, we will not only able to capture the transformation of examination after the end of keju, but also broader questions about the concepts of quantitative objectivity in modern Chinese public

91 Theodore Porter, Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). 92 John Carsons, The Measure of Merit: Talents, Intelligence, and Inequality in the French and American Republics, 1750-1940 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).

49 discourse. To trace the socio-political contexts of the introduction new testing methods, I focus on the Standardized Test Movement (Ceyan yundong 測驗運動, STM hereafter) between 1920 and 1937.93 The movement was initiated by a group of education scholars trained in the U.S. under the paradigm of Edward Thorndike, the Teachers College education psychologist who led the quantitative movement in education research. After returning to China in the early 1920s, these STM scholars advocated a methodological reform of testing. They saw subjective personal judgments as the root of Chinese society’s lack of faith in examination. Once objective methods—that is, standardized testing methods such as multiple choice and true or false questions—replaced subjective essay-type examinations, the “examination question” would automatically be solved. Throughout the 1920s and 30s, the STM scholars failed to maintain a consistent definition of “objective” method, but they did succeed in “naturalizing” the existence of examination. Because examination was assumed to exist regardless of social and political background, all fundamental changes were dismissed as unrealistic.

The Standardized Test Movement had a prolonged influence on the discourse of testing and objectivity in twentieth century China. It shaped a peculiar sense of objectivity that tended to be uncritical regarding the social-political status quo and detached from discussion of actual policies. To counter the student activism that flourished after the 1919 May Fourth Movement, especially that demanding the abolition of examinations, the STM scholars reduced education and testing into a purely technical question about the “right” and “objective” method of assessment. In the same vein, after the Nationalist Nanjing Government came into power in

1927, these scholars further detached themselves from actual policy making in the name of

93 For general outlines of the Standardized Test Movement, see Cao Rizhang 曹日章, “Woguo ceyan yundong de huigu yu zhanwang 我國測驗運動的回顧與展望,” Jiaoyu zazhi 教育雜誌 30, no. 7 (1940): 4-8; and Chen Xuanshan 陳選善, Jiaoyu ceyan jianghua 教育測驗講話 (Unidentified: Shijie shuju, 1947), 25.

50 research in order to circumvent conflicts between the relatively autonomous education sector and the Nationalist state. In terms of the definition of objective testing, the STM scholars became more and more ambiguous and less critical of the conventional examination methods that they initially condemned as subjective and unscientific, including the traditionalist civil examination modeled after the keju by the Nationalists. This “lukewarm objectivity” thus became an ideology that justified existing practices of competition regardless of methodological flaws and social consequences. In comparison to the long history of the traditional keju, this early twentieth century construction of objectivity played a far more important role in making examination a legitimate system of assessment and resource allocation in modern China.

I) The “Examination Question” before the Standardized Test Movement (1905-1919)

The introduction of numerical scores began in the 1870s in the early attempts to westernize and modernize Chinese education. After the comprehensive modernization reform of schools launched in 1902, and the 1905 abolition of keju—the dominant traditional test that provided only written comments and rankings—the use of scores became the new norm.94 Yet quantification did not automatically create a stable and consistent standard of assessment.

Between 1902 and 1922, central governments (the late Qing, and after 1911, the Beiyang

94 The use of scores was expanded by the 1898 Reform, when the reformists implemented it in the new-style academies they established. When Liang Qichao drafted the regulations for the Academy of Current Affairs (shiwuxuetang 時務學堂)—a model academy founded by reformists in Hunan—he stated that scores should be assigned to students according to their journals (zaji 札記 a combination of diary and notes), ledgers of classroom response (daiwenge 待問格) and essay tests. Liang Qichao 梁啓超, “Charter of the Academy of Current Affairs 時務學堂學約,” in Jindai shuyuan xuexiao zhidu biaoqian kao 近代書院學校制度變遷考, Xie Guozhen 謝國楨, (Taipei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1979), 34-7. Despite the abortion of the 1898 Reform, the models of new schools and quantification of assessment were later adopted in the New Policy Reforms, initiated by the Qing court and the powerful local governors to rescue the empire after the 1900 Boxer Rebellion. The 100 scale become conventional in the new schools established under in the 1902 and 1904 Education Charters (Qinding xuetang zhangcheng 欽定學堂章程 and Zouding xuetang zhangcheng 奏定學堂 章程) and standardized by the Ministry of Education (xuebu 學部).

51 government) had not been able to standardize passing scores, and the marking scales varied among schools across provinces and counties. In practical terms, the quantification of assessment remained an alien practice. For instance, an examiner who served in the 1919 Beiyang civil service exam openly claimed to his colleagues that he knew nothing about scores (fenshu wo budong 分數我不懂).95

Furthermore, the problems of numerical scoring led to new reflections on reliability in testing, and eventually to fundamental questions about the existence of examination itself. As early as 1910, critics of modern examination had already suggested that numerical scoring was just another way for examiners/graders to present their biases and personal preferences. Research on grading conducted by Western scholars—such as an 1888 essay on the statistical errors of examiners’ scores written by Irish economist and statistician Francis Ysidro Edgeworth (1845-

1926)—was cited to add intellectual vigor to this argument.96 In a 1920 article published in The

Education Magazine (Jiaoyu zazhi 教育雜誌)97, an author with the penname Tian Yi 天一 presented Edgeworth’s experiments in detail. In one of these experiments, twenty-eight equally competent critics were asked to assign a mark to the same piece of Latin prose. It turned out that the highest mark given (100) was 55 points higher than the lowest (45)—a range the critic found too large for the actual differences between the students. This demonstrated the arbitrariness of assessment in essay-type tests. In another experiment conducted in a London school, the sixteen

95 Li Junqing 李俊清, Xiandai wenguan zhidu zai zhongguo de chuanggou 現代文官制度在中國的創構 (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2007), 66-7. 96 F.Y. Edgeworth, “The statistics of examinations,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 51(1888): 599- 635. 97 Sarah Igo, The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 8. The U.S. Army Alpha Test in 1917 generated a network of intelligence test practitioners who were influential in the industry of education, especially after the establishment of the ETS in 1947. See Nicholas Lemann, The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999), 18-29.

52 teachers’ scores of the same math test were also had staggering difference among each other.

Based on these two examples, Tian Yi argued that it was impossible to have reliable and objective scores, and therefore, all kinds of examinations should be abolished. 98

The discontent with examination reached its height in 1919. Shortly after the May Fourth

Movement, which was sparked by China’s diplomatic defeat at the Paris Peace Conference, university student activists in Beijing started the Abolition of Examination Movement (Feikao yundong 廢考運動). Led by Zhu Qianzhi 朱謙之 (1899-1972) of Peking University, the activists first focused on graduation examination in universities, and eventually attempted to mobilize protests in secondary schools. In hindsight, the Abolition of Examination Movement did not have a great impact on the existing education system. It petered out when Zhu focused more on debating (especially with Liang Shuming (梁漱溟 1893-1988), a famous philosopher who was then teaching in PKU) in published media than mobilizing collective action. Nonetheless, the movement represented a radical implication for the examination question. Zhu contended that social stratification created by examination was meaningless ( you kaoshi suo zucheng de jiexu genben wu yiyi 由考試所組成的階序根本無意義).99 For Zhu, examination was neither a technical question about testing methods, nor an issue confined to schools. Interrogating the meaning of examination also questioned the way status and resources were distributed in a society.

In light of the development of the “examination question,” we see the need to reassess John

Dewey’s place in the Chinese examination discourse. Thanks to the promotion of his prominent protégé Hu Shih (胡適 1891-1962), who became a leading intellectual after returning from his

98 Tian Yi, “Kaoshi zhidu 考試制度,” Jiaoyu zazhi 12, no. 5 (1919): 1-7. 99 Zhu Qianzhi, “Fankang kaoshi de xuanyan 反抗考試的宣言,” Beijing Daxue xuesheng zhoukan 13 (1920): 5-6.

53 doctoral study at Columbia, Dewey’s tour in China between 1919 and 1921 was often depicted as a turning point in modern Chinese education.100 Thereafter, progressive ideas in education—such as Tao Xingzhi’s popular and experimental education projects—were usually attributed to the influence of Dewey. Not surprisingly, Dewey became a central figure in examination discourse.

He was quoted in anti-examination narratives, like the ones by Zhu Qianzhi, and criticized for spreading irresponsible and dangerous thoughts by critics of student activism at the time.101

Dewey’s popularity, however, did not mean his ideas actually shaped the “examination question.” The Deweyian thought disseminated in China—mostly through the translation by Hu

Shi and his circle of scholars—did not address the fundamental questions on the existence of examination and social demarcation. As Chiang Yungchen has pointed out in his recent work on

Hu Shi’s introduction of Deweyian thought in China, Dewey’s critique of social inequality was often downplayed, sometimes even omitted, when Hu translated Dewey's open lectures. As an advocate of the utilitarian notion of “welfare of the majority,” Hu Shi ignored the question of uneven distribution.102 Through Hu’s interpretation, Dewey’s thought was used in China to criticize testing for flattening individuality in education, question the reliability of numerical scores, but not to challenge the existence of examination as an institution of distribution social resources.103

100 For a review of the vast body of literature on Dewey’s tour and his influence in modern Chinese education, see Jessica Ching-Sze Wang, John Dewey in China: To Teach and to Learn (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007), 5-8. 101 Sun Dezhong 孫德忠,“Duiyu kaoshi wenti de yidian pingyong de yijian 對於考試問題的一點平庸的意見 ,” Xin jiaoyu pinglun 新教育評論 1, no. 11 (1926). 102 Chiang Yung-chen 江勇振, She wo qishui-Hu Shih(2): Ri zheng dang zhong 舍我其誰-胡適 (2): 日正當中 (Taipei: Linking Publishing, 2014). 103 Even the critique of memorization had been in place long before the introduction of “Western” ideas of progressive education, which were often attributed to Dewey. We can actually trace the notion—memory was the mean rather than the goal of learning—further back to Zhang Xuezhang’s criticism of the evidential research (on classical learning) in the eighteenth century. Zhang’s general discourse on the classical and historical studies—Wenshi tongyi 文史通義— was included on the booklist for Peking University’s entrance exam.

54 In contrast, the “examination question” that had developed since the late Qing quantification of examination was not confined to improving examination and education.

Although Chinese critics of examination like Tianyi did not advocate immediate termination of examinations—they conceded that the Chinese people were not yet ready for a society without examination—they had a clear vision that the modern examinations embodied injustices that ought to be eliminated in an ideal society. The Abolition of Examination Movement activists also suggested idealistic but detailed plans for the educational and social order after the abolition of exams. The discourse shared by these authors and activists suggests that examination should not be practiced if the assessment methods are unreliable or if it consolidates social inequalities.

II) The Standardized Test Movement: From the Social Question of Examination to the

Technology of Testing

The challenges from the “examination question” were eventually addressed by a group of scholars of quantitative education research who had recently returned from the U.S. in the early

1920s. The most notable members of this group were Chen Heqin (陳鶴琴 1892-1982, MA from the Teachers College), Zhang Yaoxiang (張耀翔 1893-1964, Master of Psychology from

Columbia), Liao Shicheng (廖世承 1892-1970, PhD in Education from Brown), and Ai Wei

(艾偉 1891-1955，MA from the Teachers College, PhD in Education from Washington

University). When they studied in the U.S., pursuit of objective and quantitative measurement— a research agenda represented by Edward Thorndike at the Teachers College—was the mainstream in the field of education research.104 This trend was fostered by the conduction of the

104 In scholarship on modern Chinese education, the Chinese students who studied at Columbia were often automatically regarded as Deweyian. Yet as Liu Weizhi has pointed out in her recent article, most Chinese doctorates from the Teachers College actually worked under the paradigm of Edward Thorndike’s educational

55 Stanford-Binet IQ test on more than a million recruited soldiers in 1917, which marked the beginning of the use of standardized tests on a large group of average examinees; before that, intelligence tests were mostly used to deal with mental diseases and disabilities. Thereafter, IQ and standardized tests became conventional in education and social management. Under these influences, the Chinese education scholars dedicated most of their work to the introduction of standardized testing into China. They established bases of research in the north and the south.

Zhang Yaoxiang founded the first psychological laboratory in China in the Beijing Normal

Institute; Chen Heqin and Liao Shicheng conducted group research projects on standardized testing in Nanjing Normal Institute (which became Southeastern University in 1921). They are now known as the founders of the Standardized Test Movement (ceyan yundong 測驗運動).

The quantitative scholars contended that the key to the examination question was the lack of objective testing methods. Their view was represented by Chen Heqin’s 1921 article “Scientific

Method of Examination” (kexue de kaoshifa 科學的考試法). Chen declared at the very beginning of this article that he was writing in response to the “examination question,” especially the demand for the abolition of examinations. He wrote, “there was no need to abolish examinations, we only have to improve [it]”.105 Chen’s point was echoed in the same year by

Zhang Yaoxiang’s speech on “new method examination,” which was later published in the

Chenbao Fukan 晨報副刊 literary supplement of the Morning Post, an important newspaper in the New Culture Movement in the 1910s and 20s. In the speech, Zhang claimed that

“examination is the foundation of our nation’s education” (jiaoyu zhi benwei 教育之本位). Both

psychology and measurement. Wei-Chih Liou, “An Analysis of Doctoral Dissertations from Chinese Students at Teachers College, Columbia University (1914-1929),” Bulletin of Educational Research 59, no. 2 (2013): 1- 48. 105 Chen Heqin, “Kexue de kaoshi fa,” New Education 3, no. 5 (1921): 555-562.

56 Chen and Zhang omitted the social economic dimension of the discourse about the examination question and regarded the existence of examination as unquestionable. Chen Heqin depicted competition in examination as an instinct that even children would enjoy when seeing their ability being proved. In the language of social Darwinism, Liao Shicheng claimed that competition among individuals and races is natural and has occurred throughout history.106 107 As the abolition of examination was unthinkable, the only meaningful question these scholars raised was about reform in testing techniques.108

At the beginning of the Standardized Test Movement, the quantitative scholars took a mechanic definition of objectivity. They saw subjective personal judgment as the major obstacle to objectiveness in testing. To show the unreliableness of teachers’ judgment, Zhang quoted

American psychologist Daniel Starch’s (1883-1979) experiment on a math test (published in

Educational Measurement [1916]). In the experiment, the same geometric examination paper was given to 116 teachers for grading. The scores given to that paper varied from 28 to 90, and the number of passes and fails was nearly the same. Zhang cited this experiment to display the lack of common ground, not to say a consensus, among the teachers. Starch was not the only scholar who conducted such experiments109, and Chen was not the first to cite similar experiments to highlight the inaccuracy of traditional grading methods. As we have seen above,

106 Liao Shicheng, Xin Zhonghua jiaoyu ceyan yu tongji 新中華教育測驗與統計（Shanghai: Xin guomin tushushe, 1932), 19. 107 When Chen recalled the standardized test movement in his autobiography (written in the 1940s), he imitated the voice of a group of children who “cannot wait to be tested on their intelligence.” Chen Heqin, “Wo de bansheng 我的半生," in Chen Heqin quanji 6 (Nanjing: Jiangsu jiaoyu chubanshe, 2008), 563. 108 Liao Shicheng made a similar point in the introduction to his book on the improvement of entrance exams published in 1925. Liao Shicheng, Test and the Improvement of Entrance Exams (Ce yan yu ru xue kao shi di gai jin 測驗與入學考試的改進) (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1925), 2. 109 Similar research was done by U.S. scholars such as F.J. Kelly, R.E. Carter, and F.W. Johnson. Their works were also introduced into China through citations in textbooks on standardized testing and quantitative education research.

57 abolitionists such as Tianyi quoted Edgeworth’s research to demonstrate the impossibility of objective quantitative assessment.

What distinguished the quantitative scholars from the previous anti-examination narratives was their belief in the standardized test as the solution to the objectivity question. Their definition of standardized tests is somewhat loose and formalistic. According to Chen Heqin,

“standardized tests” meant tests with absolute answers—such as true or false, multiple choice, and fill in the blanks.110 With standard answers and scores to each question, he suggested, personal judgment was made irrelevant in the grading process. The quantitative scholars thought that the standardized test was a method that could be applied to different subjects. Under this research agenda, the researchers affiliated with the Beijing Normal and Southeastern University focused their work on compiling tests on various subjects.111 In 1923, the National Association for the Advancement of Education (Zhonghua jiaoyu gaijinshe 中華教育改進社) invited

William McCall (1891-1982), a professor of educational psychology at Teachers College, to create curriculum training in how to compile, conduct and interpret standardized tests.112

In the meantime, the quantitative scholars envisioned the elimination of conventional essay- type examination as progress toward impersonal and objective assessment. Zhang had conducted experiments on essay-type exams in the Beijing Normal Institute (Beigaoshi 北高師) modeled after the experiments of Starch and Edgeworth. In Zhang’s experiment, a piece of composition written by a primary school student was graded by 115 students at the Beijing Normal. Not surprisingly, the distribution of scores was wide. Zhang concluded that assessments of essay

110 Chen Heqin, “Kexue de kaoshi fa,” 557-560. 111 Zhao Yuren, “Jiaoyu ceyan: Ceyanshi de xueye chengji kaocha fa 教育測驗：測驗式的學業成績考查法,” Magazine of Education 13, no. 8 (1921). 112 His most well-known works are How to Measure in Education and How to Experiment in Education.

58 writing by different examiners could not be translated into objective and comparable scores. To advocate the replacement of essay-type tests, he even dismissed essay writing as a trick of deceiving examiners to obtain undeserved scores.113

However, it remained unclear what exactly were the qualities demonstrated by standardized tests. Chen and Zhang distinguished educational tests as those that examine the performance of learning, while intelligence tests show innate ability. But in practice the boundary between the two kinds of tests was far less clear. When discussing intelligence tests, Chen described the ability being tested in various Chinese terms—xin (心, heart/mind), shenjing (神經 nerve) , nengli (能力 ability), zhihui (智慧 intelligence/wisdom)—that did not exclude learned qualities.114 Such ambiguity is seen in the STM scholars’ treatment of literature on the heredity vs. environment debate. In his 1929 review-article on the debate, Ai Wei admitted that the division between intelligence and learning capacity was indeed blurry.115 “Alfred Pinet's test was said to be an intelligence test,” he wrote, “but it was compiled according to the learning performance of contemporary children.” Therefore, he suggested, after twenty years of evolution, the test would no longer be applicable. 116 As to the division of intelligence, educational performance and environment, Ai could only provide vague answers, such as, “intelligence was natural born, but environment determined its development.” At the end of the article, Ai even claimed that intelligence was insignificant for average people, and only mattered for geniuses and imbeciles. Given the difficulty in wrapping up these vague and inconsistent claims, the only

113 Zhang Yaoxiang, “Xinfa kaoshi 新法考試,” Chenbao fukan 晨報副刊, November 21, 1921. 114 Chen Heqin, “Shenme jiao zhili ceyan 甚麼叫智力測驗,” in Chen Heqin quanji 5 (Nanjing: Jiangsu jiaoyu chubansh, 2008), 283. 115 Ai Wei, “Yichuan yu huanjing zai zhihui shang de yingxiang 遺傳與環境在智慧上的影響,” Jiaoyu zazhi 21, no. 10 (1929). 116 Ibid, 97.

59 conclusion Ai could make was that judgment should not be made before reliable “scientific results” were available. If that was the case, on what ground was the standardized test promoted as a solution to the examination question in the first place?

Before the STM scholars could depict their objective method with clarity and consistency, they were more efficient in using a scientific rhetoric to marginalize the “examination question” and the social implications of testing. Their research agenda had dominated not only the newly formed education and psychology departments in universities, but also the language of examination discourse. Since the STM, knowledge of objective testing has become essential for any convincing argument about examination policies. The significance of the STM, therefore, is the way it shifted the examination question into a technical discussion, rather than the objective methods it prescribed.

Moreover, the STM scholars became more and more hesitant to put objective methods into practice after establishing themselves in the field of education. In 1927, after attending a national meeting of high school principals, Ai Wei wrote in an article about the difficulties of reforming testing from the perspective of school administrators. Thanks to the scientific knowledge of educational psychology, Ai claimed, the cries for abolishing examination had proven impossible.

But meanwhile, the replacement of subjective essay examination with objective standardized tests was still remote. This was not only because of the remaining flaws in the available standardized tests, which made them far from truly “scientific,” but was also limited by

“circumstances” that he did not identify in his writing. At the end of the article, Ai expressed a pessimistic view of the reform of testing. “How can [the problems of] examination be settled eventually?” he asked.117

117 Ai Wei, “Yange kaoshi zhi yiyi 嚴格考試之意義,” Zhangshan daxue jiaoyu xingzheng zhoukan 中山大學 教育行政週刊 23 (1927): 437.

60 A compromise with conventional testing practices was also reflected in Zhang Yaoxiang’s positive assessments of keju, which, according to his earlier views, was a subjective and obsolete test. In his 1925 research on the geographical distribution of “talents” in China, Zhang employed an alternative definition of intelligence testing that included keju, the essay-type exam of the

Qing dynasty.118 For the statistical convenience, he used the holders of the jinshi degree (given to those who passed the metropolitan level of the keju exam) as the unit of talent. To justify this approach, Zhang had to show the validity of the keju. He thus crafted a definition of

“intelligence” (zhihui 智慧 or zhili 智力) based on the outcome of competition. “Intelligence is the ability to compete on equal terms,” Zhang argued, “the larger the number of people one can defeat, the higher the intelligence he possesses; one’s stupidity can be counted by the number of people who defeat him.” Following this logic—those who win, no matter in what manner, deserve their positions—any challenges against the status quo would be meaningless. While effective in defending the existing educational order, especially against the idea of examination abolition, this argument was intellectually self-destructive. It not only contradicted Zhang's earlier claim that essay writing was completely unreliable as an assessment; pushing further, it suggested that there would be no need for the quantitative scholars to refine the technology of testing, because the existing tests were already creating winners and losers through competition.119

To defend his research methodology, Zhang even contended that late imperial keju should

118 This was probably inspired by Liang Qichao’s 梁啟超 article on provincial division in political and cultural achievement, as well as William McCall’s 1923 survey of provincial distribution of intelligence level. In 1930, under the sponsorship of the China Foundation for the Promotion of Education and Culture, Zhu Junyi (朱君 毅 1895-1963), an educational statistician trained by Edward Thorndike, conducted similar research. Their statistical approach to the late imperial keju laid the foundation for the examination and social mobility thesis, represented by Ping-ti Ho’s Ladder of Success. 119 Zhang Yaoxiang, “Zhihui zhi fanwei yu dingyi 智慧之範圍與定義,” Xinli 心理 1, no. 2 (1922): 6-7.

61 be recognized as a form of scientific intelligence test.120 As long as multiple examiners made the same decision to pass a paper, Zhang argued, the assessment could be regarded as objective.121

This indeed undermined the legitimacy of the Standardized Test Movement—if an objective testing method already existed in traditional China, the U.S.-trained scholars would not bother to introduce their professional knowledge into the country.

The diminishing of the STM’s criticality should also be put into the context of the quantitative scholars’ prominence after the 1922 Educational Reform. The Reform, which unified school systems under fragmented political regimes according to the U.S. model, including the year grade system of elementary, middle, high schools and college, marked the triumph of U.S.-trained Chinese intellectuals in the educational sector.122 Since 1918, a circle of such intellectuals had organized pressure groups for educational reform. In 1921, the Association for Practical Surveys in Education, the Association for the Promotion of New Education, and the

New Education Magazine merged and formed the Chinese National Association for the

Advancement of Education (Zhonghua jiaoyu gaijinshe 中華教育改進社). The Association was

120 Zhang Yaoxiang’s argument was challenged by Ouyang Lan 歐陽蘭 in two articles published on the Chenbao fukan. The first was “Yu Zhang Yaoxiang xiansheng taolun rencai chansheng di 與張耀翔先生討論 人才產生地,” Chengbao fukan, December 9, 1926. Ouyang Lan was known as a New Culture activist working on theatrical reform. He pointed out that winning in keju involved many factors—education resources, luck, and chance in the examination—that had nothing to do with individual intellectual capacity. Zhang’s response is seen in Zhang Yaoxiang, “Lun keju wei zhiliceyan 論科舉為智力測驗,” Chenbao fukan 晨報副刊, February 16, 1926. 121 Zhang had ignored the multi-stage grading process in Qing keju. A successful candidate would first be chosen by a ward examiner from a pool and then passed to the chief examiners, who would select from the smaller pool. Therefore, most of the failing decisions were made by individual examiners, rather than by the consensus of multiple examiners. More importantly, without numerical scores, the “consensus” for passing decisions was based on negotiation among examiners, rather than the intersections of respective assessments, as Zhang implied. Chu, “Failure Stories—Interpretations of Rejected Papers in the Late Imperial Civil Service Examinations,” 178-180. Moreover, although Zhang admitted that there were smart people who failed in exams, he argued that the number of all passed candidates was large enough to make these individual cases insignificant. Further, he suggested, as examinees could try until they passed the exam, the possibility for overlooking talented people should have been minimized. Zhang completely ignores the social economic factors of repeated participation in keju. 122 Zhou Yutong 周予同, Zhongguo xuexiao zhidu 中國學校制度 (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1931), 142.

62 led by alumni of the Teachers College, especially Guo Bingwen 郭秉文(1879-1969), the president of Southeastern University, and Tao Xingzhi 陶行知 (1891-1946), the leading advocate of popular education at the time. Though John Dewey was elected as an honorary director, his idea of progressive education did not play a significant role in the Association’s endeavors, which were shaped mainly by Edward Thorndike’s paradigm of quantitative research.

The Association’s power showed in its role in the making of the new national school system. In the 7th and 8th non-governmental National Educational Conferences in 1921 initiated by the Association, a draft of the new school system was produced. The draft entered the 1922

Educational System Conference organized by the Beijing Government’s Ministry of Education and became the foundation of the eventual bill of reform.123 In the education sector, the

Association’s enormous cross-regional network of educators generated higher national authority than the Beijing Government and the various warlord regimes.

The STM was linked to this network by Guo Bingwen and Tao Xingzhi. Guo was the president of Nanjing Normal and major sponsor of research on standardized testing in the south.

As a graduate of the Columbia Teachers College, Guo actively recruited his alumni to Nanjing

Normal’s Department of Education.124 More importantly, he served as a board member of the

China Foundation for the Promotion of Education and Culture (Zhonghua jiaoyu wenhua jijinhui

中華教育文化基金會, CFPEC hereafter), a powerful international foundation independent from

123 Tao Xingzhi and Zhang Boling occupied seats in this Conference. See “Jiaoyubu xuezhi huiyi yilu,” in Beiyang zhengfu dangan-Jiaoyubu 北洋政府檔案-教育部, vol. 90 (Beijing: Zhongguo ren dangan chubanshe, 2010), 356. 124 Guo's case also demonstrates that the Nationalist Party was far from a coherent whole. The Nationalists’ condemnation of Guo was initiated by Yang Quan (Yang Xinfo, vice-president to Cai Yuanpei in the short- lived University Council, who became the Secretary General of the Academia Sinica) because of their personal feud developed in the competition for power in the education sector. After leaving Southeastern, Guo was invited in 1931 by Kong Xiangxi, the powerful Minister of Finance whose wife was Chiang Kai-shek’s sister- in-law, to be Minister of International Commerce.

63 the Chinese government(s) founded in 1924 to manage a voluminous fund from the U.S. to support education reform in China.125 Therefore, he was able to channel U.S. funding into

Nanjing Normal’s research projects on standardized tests. Tao Xingzhi, who later was famous for his works of experimental and popular education, was a faculty member in the Department of

Education at Southeastern. As an important member of both the CFPEC and the Chinese

National Association for the Advancement of Education, he raised funds for the research projects at Southeastern, as well as William McCall’s projects in China—a multi-province survey of intelligence and educational level of school children, and training programs for quantitative researchers in education.126 With these connections, the STM became a part of the establishment in the education sector.

Fear of student activism had pushed the STM scholars further to the conservative side in the spectrum of cultural politics. Southeastern University, the most important base of the STM in the south, was under siege from Nationalist mobilized student movements in 1925.127 In response,

Chen Heqin suggested that objective examination was the solution to the problem of student protests.128 Later in 1932, when Ai Wei conducted a survey of English proficiency in high school and university students in Hebe, Shanxi, Shandong, and Henan, he found it difficult to regulate the students’ behavior. Their lack of discipline, according to his report, made many of the test

125 This fund came from the huge indemnity paid by the Qing Government to the U.S. for the casualties and damages during the anti-foreign Boxer Rebellion in 1901. Since the late 1900s, the U.S. initiated a return of indemnity—in the form of educational support—to the Qing and the subsequent new Chinese republic after 1911. This project significantly enhanced the influence of U.S. non-governmental organizations in China, and exerted prolonged influences on modern Chinese education. For the history of the CFPEC, see Tsui-hua Yang 楊翠華, Zhongjihui dui kexue de zanzhu 中基會對科學的贊助 (Taipei: Institute of Modern History at Academia Sinica, 1991). 126 William McCall, “Scientific Measurement and Related Studies in Chinese Education,” The Journal of Education Research 11, no. 2 (1925): 93. 127 Barry Keenan, The Dewey Experiment in China (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 1977), 94, 111-115. 128 Chen Heqin, “Psychological Test (Xinli ceyan 心理測驗),” in Chen Heqin quanji 陳鶴琴全集 5 (Nanjing: Jiangsu jiaoyu chubanshe, 2008), 412.

64 results unusable in his research. During the surveys, he also had to carefully avoid arousing the discontent of the students, given the fact that examination was a typical cause of student riots.129

For the STM scholars, student movements were either a problem to be solved or a threat to their authority in the education sector. In the aftermath of the 1919 May Fourth Movement, new intellectual elites had to choose between “youthful” radicalism or reaffirming their positions by demarcating themselves from the students. As the STM moved along the latter direction, the quantitative scholars refrained from instability in the education sector, and thus ceased to challenge conventional practices that contradicted the mechanical objectivity they advocated.

III) The Society of Test and Measurement and Lukewarm Objectivity during the Nanjing

Decade (1927-1937)

In 1927, the nominal unification of China under the Nanjing Nationalist Government opened a new page of Chinese knowledge production. For the Standardized Test Movement, the founding of the Society of Test and Measurement indicated a shift from professional autonomy to adherence to the party state. The new Society not only conformed to the Nanjing

Government’s new regulations of cultural organizations, it also resided in the Department of

Training of the Nationalist Party Headquarters in Nanjing.130 Ai Wei, who was a long-time follower of the Nationalists, was selected over Zhang Yaoxiang as the president.131 The

129 Ai Wei, “Ji lu yu jin sisheng gaozhong yishang xuexiao yingyu chengji kaocha ji 冀鲁豫晋四省高中以上 學校英語成績考察記,” Ceyan 2 (1932): 1-11. Ai’s fear of the students was not totally ungrounded. Li Zongwu 李宗吾, the famous satirist, had a worse experience when he served as an education inspector in Sichuan in the mid 1920s. One time when he oversaw an examination of high school students, he was badly beaten in the school. Li believed the students did that because of their discontent with the examinations. 130 “Nanjing shi jiaoyu gailan 南京市教育概覽” (1933), in Minguo tongji ziliao huibian 民國統計資料彙編 (Beijing: Guojia tushuguan chubanshe, 2010), 322. 131 Ai Wei had been a member of the Tongmenghui (a revolutionary group led by Sun Yat-sen before the formation of the Nationalist Party) and was said to have participated in the 1911 Revolution. Zhang Yaoxiang refused to join the Nationalist Party throughout the Nanjing Decade and eventually ran into conflict with the

65 membership of the Society, as seen in an official list published in the Association’s journal,

Ceyan (測驗 Test), included veteran STM scholars form Beijing and Southern Normal-

Southeastern Circle (such as Chen, Zhang, Ai, and Liao), while many junior members were affiliated with party state institutions, such as the Nationalist Party Headquarters, the

Examination Yuan, and the Ministry of Education. The Society was more or less a government organized nongovernmental organization in the Nanjing Decade.

Despite the often-told stories about the intellectuals who strived for autonomy under the

Nationalist Party dictatorship, the relationship between the party state and the STM scholars was not as confrontational as imagined. The original STM scholars maintained their prominence in the education sector even after their sponsors Guo Bingwen and Tao Xingzhi were condemned by the Nationalist Party as reactionaries in the education sector (what the Nationalist ideologues called “academic warlord,” xuefa 學閥). In 1925 Guo was demoted from the presidency of

Southeastern University because of student protests ignited by the May Thirtieth incident, in which Shanghai protestors against labor condition in Japanese owned factories were shot by police. In the late 1920s, Guo also resigned from the board of directors of the CFPEC under pressure from the Nationalists. Tao was accused of being a communist by the Nationalists in

1930 because of his radical experiment of popular education in Xiaozhuang (曉莊) and was briefly exiled to Japan. After this incident, Chen Heqin even continued a collaborative relationship with Tao throughout the 1930s.132

Party in the late 1930s. 132 In 1942, he adopted Tao’s idea of progressive education and promoted “living education” (huo jiaoyu). This was the first time that Chen identified himself as a Deweyian educator, instead of a scholar of quantitative research in education—the “mainstream” in the Teachers College. Chen’s position was not questioned by the Nationalist Government until 1947. Moreover, serious political threat came only after the Communists came into power and launched the anti-right movement, in which Chen was ironically seen as the representative of Deweyian educational thought.

66 In fact, the new regime’s ambitious projects of investigations towards social and education policies created great demand for quantitative research on education. Some of these positions were filled by those with closer affiliation to the Nationalist Party, such as Tai Shuangqiu 邰爽秋 and Zhuang Zexuan 莊澤宣, who supervised the 1930 survey in Guangdong.133 But the established STM scholars also had a share in the expanding market of educational statistics and testing. In 1927, Chen Heqin was appointed to manage the Nanjing educational survey, the first of a series of research projects on major cities and provinces under Nationalist control. The model set up by Chen was adopted later in Shanghai special city and Jiangxi.

On the other hand, foreign support did not cease in the standardized test movement that was now overseen by the Nationalist Party, despite the Party ideologues’ claim to resist foreign intervention in Chinese education. Of course, there were conflicts between the nationalistic rhetoric of reclaiming the power (shouhui jiaoyu quan 收回教育權) of education and the enormous foreign presence in the educational sector. But these agendas were far from irreconcilable, as seen in the situation of the CFPEC. Except for the reassignment of Guo

Bingwen, its members consisted mostly of those from the circle of U.S.-returned educators which had been autonomous from political regimes. After 1927, the CFPEC was able to maintain its independence and influence by negotiating with the Nationalist regime.134 Foreign funding

133 Tai Shuangqiu, Jiaoyu diaocha 教育調查 (Beijing: Guotu shudian, 1931), 4. 134 After 1927, the Nationalist Party attempted to impose its influence on the Foundation. Although unable to overturn its management structure (as the U.S. insisted on an administration independent of the Chinese state), what the Nanjing Government could do was to seize the power to appoint board members. As nationalistic sentiment created high expectations of the Nationalist Party regime, Cai Yuanpei, a leader of the educational sector and the head of the short-lived University Council (established and abolished in 1927), echoed the government’s agenda. Cai crafted a new clause that “board members [were] to be elected by the Daxueyuan, based on public discussion in the educational sector, and appointed by the Nationalist Government.” On the 1925 board, Guo Bingwen was under the greatest pressure to be replaced. In 1929, the government produced a list of state-appointed board members, but the only change was to replace Guo Bingwen with Wang Jingwei (probably a result of Yang Quan’s attack on Guo). The government’s goal was (merely) a nominal supervision of the board— it did not have the power to eliminate eminent educators like Cai Yuanpei and Hu Shi. On the

67 continued to support the STM. For instance, Ai Wei’s research on testing English proficiency was funded by the CFPEC.135

While benefitting from state sponsorship of research, the STM community was prevented involvement in actual education policies. This is exemplified in the STM scholars’ absence in the controversy surrounding the centralized graduation examination (huikao 會考) launched in 1932.

Under the huikao system, primary and high school students had to pass an examination conducted or overseen by a Ministry of Education official to qualify for graduation. As it centralized the power of credential creation and thus undermined the authority of school assessment and the autonomy of school management, the system faced strong opposition from the education sector. Due to the noncooperation of the schools and limited administrative capacity, the primary school huikao was soon abolished in 1933. But the tension between the

Nationalist state and the education sector did not diminish; rather, it intensified when some

Nationalist ideologues suggested shutting down schools that performed poorly in the huikao. In

1934, as a leader of the education sector and “education warlord” condemned by the Nationalists,

Tao Xingzhi retaliated by publishing an article called “The Huikao that Kills and the

Constructive Assessment” (Sharen de huikao yu chuangzao de kaocheng 殺人的會考與創造的

考成). In this widely-circulated article, Tao not only aroused sympathy for the students burdened by the exam, which was a conventional strategy in examination critique, but also posted a difficult methodological question on the system. As seen in the first year of secondary school

other hand, following Hu Shi’s proposal, the board also found a way to stress its independence. Hu Shi resigned, to be replaced by Wang, and then was reelected after the end of Guo’s term. This move prevented conflict between the Nationalist Party’s agenda and the board’s independence. 135 The Third Report of the China Foundation for the Promotion of Education and Culture (Zhonghua jiaoyu wenhua jijinhui dongshihui disanci baobao 中華教育文化基金會董事會第三次報告), Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archive stored in Academia Historica, Taipei (0209906000301); Ai Wei, “Wunianlai yingyu kaoshi zhi jingguo 五年來英語考試之經過,” in Zhongguo kaoshishi wenxian jicheng 中國考試史文獻集成, Vol 7, ed. Yang Xuewei (Beijing: Gaodeng jiaoyu chubanshe, 2003), 276.

68 huikao, the unreasonably high disparity of passing rates among provinces indicated fatal flaws in the system. Since the Nationalist government had failed to standardize passing criteria and score computation methods, a centralized graduation examination was indeed unjustifiable.136

This was an opportunity for the Society of Test and Measurement to weigh in and demonstrate its importance by cooperating with the Nationalist Government to improve the computation of huikao scores. Yet taking such a position in the huikao controversy was not easy for the STM scholars, not least because they were tightly connected to the establishment in the educational sector after the 1922 educational reform. It was also unlikely for senior scholars like

Chen Heqin to oppose Tao Xingzhi, the longtime patron of his research since the Nanjing

Normal years. Throughout the Nanjing Decade, the Nationalist state was unable to completely overpower the education sector, which had an established national network and independent financial resources from international non-governmental organizations like the CFPEC. In this context, taking sides in the huikao controversy was an unlikely option for the STM community as a whole.

As a result, the STM community was virtually absent in the controversy. Amidst the flood of huikao discussions in the media, there was only one article in the Test dealing with the issue.

The lifespan of the Test was short—it was published twice a year between 1932 and 1936—but these were exactly the years when the debate was at its climax. The sole article was written by Yi

Kexun 易克櫄(?), a member of the Society who was serving in the Nationalist Party

Headquarters. Yi emphasized the necessity of a centralized graduation examination system and the STM scholars’ role in it.137 After listing the common critiques of the system, he argued that it

136 Tao Xingzhi, “Sharen de huikao yu chuangzao de kaocheng 殺人的會考與創造的考成,” in Tao Xingzhi quanji 陶行知全集 (Chengdu: Sichuan jiaoyu chubanshe, 1991), 159. 137 Yi Kexun 易克櫄, “Zhongxiaoxue xuesheng biye huikao wenti 中小學學生畢業會考問題,” Ceyan 4

69 had been on the right path and only technical solutions were needed for improvement. Experts, like the members of the Society, could participate by reviewing the standardized test questions drafted by school teachers and officials of the Ministry of Education. In the afterword, Yi mentioned the launching of a joint research project on high school graduation examinations by the Society and the Ministry of Education.

Yet we cannot find evidence for the execution of that joint research. Moreover, the Society of Test and Measurement in general showed no enthusiasm for the huikao controversies. No follow-up articles appeared in the following issues of the Test. Among the 163 registered members of the Society, only 14 had written articles discussing the graduation exam. Seven of them were explicitly against the system138; the rest included Yi Kexun, two education ministry officials who co-authored an article to promote centralization, Liu Naijing 劉乃敬(1893-1969), a

Nationalist Party member who wrote a reportage article without personal comments, Shen

Youqian 沈有乾(1899-?), Lu Jizeng 魯繼曾 (1892-1977), and Zhou Xuezhang 周學章 (?).

Shen, Lu and Zhou’s articles deserve particular attention. Despite different understandings of the degree of centralization, none of them provided immediate technical support for the

Ministry to tackle the commensurability problem. Shen prioritized standardized test formats over statistical methods. Thus, except for wider usage of new types of questions, what Shen suggested was only to improve efficiency by bettering the discipline inside the examination venues.139 Lu also focused on the production of questions. He pointed out that most of the educational tests compiled in the 1920s were already out of date. He suggested that before sufficient new

(1933): 122-128. 138 According to a search in the “Minguo shiqi qikan quanwen shujuku 民國時期期刊全文數據庫” developed by the Shanghai Library. 139 Written when he was overseeing an exam. Shen Youqian 沈有乾, “Jianshi ganyan 監試感言,” Huanian 華 年 3, no. 33 (1934): 5-6.

70 questions in standardized format were available, drastic changes to the huikao should be prevented. Zhou was the only one who responded to the question of cross-school and cross- provincial comparison raised by Tao Xingzhi. Yet instead of supporting a centralization by the

Ministry of Education, Zhou advocated a common-standards developed inter-school organization.140 None of them were interested in fixing the statistical flaws for the Nationalist government.

Among the seven scholars who explicitly opposed the huikao, Liao Shicheng was the most senior in the STM community. In 1933, he published his view in the Zhonghua jiaoyujie 中華教

育界, the education journal of the Chunghua Press, which was equally as prominent as the

Commercial Press’s Magazine of Education.141 In contrast to his response to the “examination question” in the 1920s, Liao did not propose any technical solution for the huikao controversy, but rather addressed the power dynamic between the Ministry of Education and the schools. Liao questioned the feasibility of centralized examination, as it encouraged school administrators to manipulate the system by boosting scores from in-school examinations, which constituted part of the average score in the huikao. Liao even ignored the fact that the standardized format had already been introduced in the huikao and argued that a centralized graduation examination was meaningless without objective testing methods. By deliberately underestimating the development in standardized testing methods, Liao detached the STM community from the government’s centralization agenda.

140 Zhou Xuezhang, “Zhongdeng xuexiao huikao fangfa zhi jiantao 中等學校會考方法之檢討,” Jiaoyu zazhi 26, no. 4 (1936): 122-127; “Zhongdeng xuexiao huikao fangfa shang zhi shangque 中等學校會考方法上之商 榷,” Jiaoyu xuebao (Beipng) 1 (1936): 1-6. His research project was commissioned by the Chinese Association of Education (Beiping and Tianjin Branch). 141 Liao Shicheng, “Biye huikao jiu you shenme jiazhi 畢業會考究有什麼價值,” Zhonghua jiaoyu jie 中華教 育界 21, no. 5 (1933). This choice of journal might have been a way to avoid direct confrontation with Yi Kexun and the Ministry of Education.

71 The STM scholars’ inaction in the huikao controversy provides a new explanation for the

Standardized Test Movement’s decline, which was usually attributed to the destruction caused by

Japanese military aggression in the 1930s. According to conventional accounts, social disturbances and financial difficulties suspended large-scale research projects, such as the

McCall experiment and the surveys in the early years of the Nanjing Decade. This lack of empirical research, it was believed, led to the stagnation of testing technology. Meanwhile, statistical devices of standardized tests, such as conversion tables, were already becoming less accessible to school teachers since the 1930s, partly because the Commercial Press Shanghai branch was bombed in 1932.142 Therefore, new testing knowledge was produced (even under the threat of Japanese aggression) but not able to reach teachers and students.143

This explanation assumes the STM as a collective enterprise aiming at putting objective method into practice. Yet as seen in the findings above, the intellectual stalemate and inaction in examination policymaking was actually a development within the STM community. As shown in the previous section, since the 1922 Educational Reform, Zhang, Chen, Liao and Ai had already been retreating from attacking conventional testing practices. Testing methods initially condemned as subjective and unscientific were later legitimized by a relaxed definition of objectivity, as exemplified in Zhang Yaoxiang’s recognition of keju as an “intelligence test.”

After the establishment of the Nanjing Government in 1927, the boundary of objective testing was further erased by the STM community’s compromise with the Nationalist traditionalist concepts of examination. In institutional terms, in the Society of Test and Measurement, both the established and newly joined practitioners of testing welcomed their status as state sponsored

142 Zhou Xuezhang, T.B.C.F. zhi de jiantao (Nanjing : Zhongguo ce yan xue hui，1934), 1; Ai Wei, “Ji lu yu jin sisheng gaozhong yishang xuexiao yingyu chengji kaocha ji,” 1. 143 Chen Xuanshan, Jiaoyu ceyan jianghua, 26.

72 researchers. Yet on the other hand, amidst the conflicts between the education sector establishment and the Nationalist state, the STM scholars tended to stay in the comfort zone of

“research” rather than taking sides in policy debates. In other words, the decrease in intellectual rigor and detachment from practice resulted from political decisions made by the STM scholars throughout the 20s and 30s, rather than marking a sudden “decline” caused by external changes.

The “aborted by the Sino-Japanese War” narrative also fails to capture the real significance of the Standardized Test Movement. Despite its inconsistency in ideas and retreat from actual reform, the movement had generated a powerful scientific language which shifted attention away from the social consequences of examination to methods and formats of testing. In the early

1920s, it rejected the possibility of abolishing examination by promising to solve the examination question with objective methods. Thereafter, the basic assumption that “examination could not be abolished, therefore only the methods of examination were open to discussion and research” persisted in modern Chinese examination discourse. During the 1930s huikao controversy, the debates among educators were confined to the systemic configuration of the examination. Even when Tao Xingzhi protested against the “huikao that kills,” what he suggested was replacing it with “constructive assessment.” The fundamental challenges against the existence of examination, once prevalent in the examination question discourse, had never been brought back. Thus, the STM has played an enormous role in the preservation of examination after the 1905 abolition of keju.

Conclusion

The history of the standardized test movement demonstrates the power of lukewarm objectivity in three ways. First, we see how the separation of testing methods from social context effectively kept the radical possibilities of education and society marginalized from the

73 mainstream. With a scientific language, the STM scholars set an agenda for reforming examination with testing technologies, in which ideas about fundamental change were automatically deemed unrealistic and unthinkable. Although discontent with the modern testing regime continued to ferment in schools in the 20s and 30s, this discontent was increasingly presented as disconnected from informed public discussion of policies. Challenges to examination as a whole could easily be dismissed as youthful sentiment. Then the ambiguous and inconsistent definition of testing objectivity enabled the STM scholars to sidestep confrontation with the conventional testing methods they once proclaimed to reform. This separated research from actual policy and helped to stabilize the STM scholars’ position as members of the establishment in the education sector after the 1922 Reform. And finally, such separation provided a buffer zone in which conflicts between the autonomous education sector and the Nationalist state could be prevented.

This de-politicization of testing technology is not completely unjustifiable. Of course, a safe distance between research and policymaking is needed to prevent large scale social experiments on undeveloped ideas, in which citizens bear the cost via fluctuations in their everyday lives. But the lukewarm objectivity was by no means neutral—it was indeed a discreetly powerful way to limit and shape the possibilities open to the public. In modern Chinese examination discourse, lukewarm objectivity had naturalized interpersonal competition and marginalized the options of thorough reform in education and the division of labor, regardless of the STM scholars’ eventual failure to provide a consistent definition of objective test. Seen in this light, the rhetoric of

“further research is needed” can be manipulated to stabilize the status quo without being held accountable for making explicit decisions.

These features of lukewarm objectivity are not exceptional to China. The usefulness of

74 ambiguity can also be seen in the development of the Scholarly Aptitude Test in the U.S. When

Carl Brigham promoted his standardized test for college admission in the 1920s and 30s, he faced the same problem with the definition of ability—if the test was designed to indicate innate intelligence (like the IQ test), he had to confront a tradition celebrating success without formal education and emphasizing personal “quality” over intelligence and academic excellence; if he moved toward nurtured achievement, he might undermine the concept of "natural aristocracy," a prevailing Jeffersonian ideal to create a new U.S. elite defined not by lineage (and the culture of the dominating class) but by "raw" intelligence and talent. As a result, Brigham employed novel categories such as “analytical ability” to underplay genetically inherited qualities, which was the emphasis of his initial research.144 Later when Henry Chauncey, the testing industry tycoon, founded the Educational Testing Service (ETS) in 1947, he also instructed researchers to stop referring to the SAT as an IQ test, asking them to adhere to the vague concept of "scholastic aptitude."145

In modern China, lukewarm objectivity was indispensable in the narratives that celebrate keju as a “great Chinese invention.” Only after the definition of testing objectivity was loosened, as seen in Zhang Yaoxiang’s reassessment of keju and Shi Meixuan’s concept of “new method examination,” could keju be presented as an objective system of fairness and openness to different classes, despite the traditional test format and curriculum of classical learning. It was thus not coincidence that the new genre of “history of the Chinese examination system” emerged in the late 1920s and 30s. Published in 1929, the Zhongguo kaoshi zhidu yanjiu 中國考試制度研

究, written by Deng Dingren 鄧定人, an official who served in the Nationalist Government’s

144 Ellen Lagemann, An Elusive Science: The Troubling History of Education Research (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2000), 152-155. 145 Lemann, The Big Test, 75, 83.

75 Judicial Yuan, might be the first of this modern genre of historical writing. This was followed by

Deng Siyu’s 鄧嗣禹 Zhongguo kaoshi zhidu shi 中國考試制度史, published by the Examination

Yuan in 1936, which became a widely-cited work by an historian.146 In contrast to the traditional genres of anecdote (zhanggu 掌故) and code-collection (dianzhang 典章), which holistically depicted the keju in connection with the curriculum of classical knowledge, these new institutional histories focused on the examination system that was detached from the subject of testing. For these modern historians, despite the obsolete classical knowledge, the Chinese examination system had been developed in the long history of keju was rational and applicable to the modern society.

Zhang Yaoxiang’s idea of “keju as an intelligence test” also paved the way for two important lines of argument in the contemporary discourse of Chinese examination. The first is the “keju and high social mobility” thesis. Before entering the debate over the qualification of keju as a reliable test, Zhang’s initial research was to identify the provincial distribution of talents by the number of jinshi degrees. This data, which was compiled by Zhang and his students at the

Beijing Normal, was probably the first systematic treatment of the backgrounds of keju degree holders in the Qing dynasty in modern Chinese historiography, long before Ping-ti Ho’s field- defining book on keju and late imperial Chinese social mobility.147 Toward the end of the twentieth century, the mobility thesis was challenged, especially by scholarship in the

Anglophone field of Chinese history, but it remained prominent in both R.O.C. and PRC discourses of education. This is especially true in post-Mao PRC, as the aspiration of upward mobility with education had filled the ideological vacuum left by the disillusion of a communist

146 Both of these works followed Sun Yat-sen’s idea that examination was the strength of the Chinese political tradition and needed to be restored to counterbalance the weaknesses of Western democratic politics. 147 Ping-ti Ho, The Ladder of Success in Imperial China: Aspects of Social Mobility, 1308-1911 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962).

76 social order.

The second line of narrative evolved directly from Zhang’s “keju as an intelligence test” thesis. In his initial argument, the content of classical knowledge was detached from the effectiveness of keju as a mechanism of competition. But in his thesis, Zhang remained ambiguous in regard to the essay writing skills tested—instead, he shifted the focus to the reliability of the agreement among multiple graders in order to avoid direct refutation of his earlier claim that essay writing was a skill of cheating. Without the same intellectual burden of anti-essay-writing, scholars inspired by Zhang could push the argument further and search for the abilities—articulated in a scientific language—that were trained and tested by the keju examination essays. Even the rigid eight-section organizational structure required in late imperial keju (known as the “eight-legged essay”), which had been blamed for limiting critical thinking and creativity, could now be interpreted as a effective training of structured analytical skills.

Scattered praise for the eight-legged essay accumulated in prose and literary criticism and eventually crystalized in the 1990s, when three renowned scholars of Chinese humanities—Qi

Gong 啟功, Zhang Zhongxing 張中行, and Jin Kemu 金克木—published a collection of their writings appreciating eight-legged-essays.148 From then on, the argument that “keju essay writing enhanced analytic and literary skills that can be detached from useless classical knowledge” has been included in the repertoire of both pro-keju and pro-examination arguments.

These two narratives created a sense of comparability between keju and modern examinations in China—one as a bundle of specific examiners’ judgments on specific examinees, another as an assessment system based on an assumedly impersonal set of rules. They were both

148 Qi Gong 啟功, Zhang Zhongxing 張中行, and Jin Kemu 金克木, Shuo bagu 說八股 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1994).

77 products of modern Chinese cultural politics and a transnational production of testing knowledge in the early twentieth century. Therefore, even if we see the trust in examination as a “Chinese characteristic,” its history is indeed modern and transnational, rather than a natural outcome of a perennial Chinese tradition of keju.

78 CHAPTER 3

Creating Legitimate but Defective Examinees: Examination Orthodoxy and the Politics of

Bureaucratic Reform under the Nationalist Regime (1928-1947)

We Chinese have a traditional method—examination. In China, anyone who advanced through examination is regarded as “orthodox” (zhengtu 正途), those who do not pass examination are not seen as orthodox.

--Sun Yat-sen, 1921149

Despite the differences in examination’s method and content, examination has been the orthodox way of state recruitment (in China). Anyone who is willing to work hard can be employed by the state, regardless of social background and wealth.

--Website of the Republic of China Examination Yuan, 2016150

Introduction

One and a half decades after the 1905 abolition, nostalgia for keju had not ceased in political discourse. These ideas crystalized amidst the political chaos after Yuan Shikai’s failed restoration of the monarchy in 1916, which is conventionally attributed to the power struggle among “warlords.” The civil service examination, as a traditional Chinese system that was adopted by modern governance, was

149 “我們中國有個古法, 那個古法就是考試. 在中國, 從前凡經過考試出身底人算是正途, 不是考試出身 的不算正途.” Sun Yat-sen, “Wuquan xianfa—zai guangdongsheng jiaoyuhui de yanshuo 五權憲法－－在廣 東省教育會的演說 (1921),” in Sun wen xuanji 孫文選集, ed. Huang Yan (Guangzhou: Guangdong renmin chubanshe, 2006). An alternative translation can be found in Leonard Hsu, ed., Sun Yat-sen, His Political and Social Ideals: A Source Book (Los Angeles: University of South California Press, 1933), 94. “We Chinese have an ancient institution, known as the civil service examination, which is a very good way to get qualified people for government positions. In ancient China, the only regular channel into government offices was examination. Anyone who came to office by other ways than examination was considered dishonest. The ancient system was extensively used in the feudal period.” 150 “雖然歷代之考試方法未盡一致, 內容亦時有更迭, 然國家用人, 概以考試為正途, 不論貴賤貧富，只 要肯努力就有機會為國所用,” accessed April 5, 2016, http://history.exam.gov.tw/cp.asp?xItem=9056&ctNode=728&mp=10.

79 imagined as a way out of China’s political predicament. This line of thought was not confined to the

Nationalist Party’s propaganda, but is best articulated in Sun Yat-sen’s 1921 speech cited above, which eventually became a canonical text on examination as one of the fundamental functions of government. In response to the popular disillusion with Western representative politics, Sun provided a simplified diagnosis and a traditionalist antidote. The core of political problems, he argued, was the quality of government officials, who were mostly corrupted and incapable because they had obtained office through favouritism. In contrast, officials recruited by the centralized civil service examination, an impersonal and fair method practiced in imperial China, could be autonomous from the existing networks in the bureaucracy and thus were more able to resist corruption. Examination also standardized the knowledge and intelligence of officials. Sun compared the integral and able officials in his ideal to the graduates from late imperial keju, regarding both as “advancing through the orthodox way” (zhengtu chushen 正途出身).

According to existing scholarship, in its two-decade rule (1927-1949) in mainland China, the

Nationalist Government attempted but failed to reform bureaucracy based on Sun’s ideal. In 1930, an independent Examination Yuan (kaoshiyuan 考試院) was established to conduct recruitment examination and registration of civil servants. But “orthodox” officials who had passed through regular exams—the

Advanced Level (gaokao 高考) and General Level (pukao 普考) Examinations—remained marginal in the government. They were outnumbered by those advanced by non-examination methods, or exams that were not open and competitive like the Advanced and General exams, which were designed on an ad-hoc basis as “special examination.” These “orthodox” examination passers were also suppressed by the Party and the executive branch in the government—the Party filled positions in the bureaucracy with its members by non-examination means, and the Executive Yuan declined to assign positions to the examination passers. Scholars interpret this failure as either an outcome of the Party overpowering the state, or of the expansion of arbitrary and unrestricted executive power.151

151 Li Junqing, Xiandai wenguan zhidu zai Zhongguo de chuanggou 現代文官制度在中國的創構 (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2007); Hu Xiangdong, Minguo shiqi zhongguo kaoshi zhidu de zhuanxing yu zhonggou民國

80 However, the “failure of an ideal” narrative cannot explain the tension between the Yuan and the candidates it passed. In the official narrative of the Yuan, passers of regular examination were often criticized for being inexperienced and physically weak. More astonishingly, in almost every regular examination, representatives of the Yuan routinely highlighted candidates’ poor performance in reports to the Party, the Nationalist Government, and the public. These defects of passed examinees were used to justify various post-examination training programs, which were conducted mostly by the Nationalist

Party. If the Yuan’s authority had truly been built on the reputation and prospect of the orthodox officials it produced, these policies would have been self-destructive because they recognized that the standard of the civil service examination could not guarantee capability in civil service.

The ideal/practice division also assumes the Yuan as the legitimate agent of examination orthodoxy, obscuring the ideological instability in its position. Since the legislation of the 1930

Examination Law, the civil service examinations of the Yuan had not been designed to guarantee, but merely to qualify for, official placements. And unlike in the Qing imperial examination, passers of the

Nationalist civil service exam were not given official titles that could be stably translated into social capital supporting an individual’s career in society. Despite the traditionalist aura surrounding the ceremonies performed by the Yuan, the Nationalist regime did not restore the reward/exchange mechanism in keju. Without clear prospects in the exams, the qualification of passing did not possess any natural advantage over other credentials circulating in Chinese society. Providing no reward to attract participation, a lack of examinees had been a problem in regular gaokao and pukao since their

時期中國考試制度的轉型與重構 (Wuhan: Hubei renmin chubanshe, 2008); Qin Haoyang, Minguo wenguan kaoshi zhidu yanjiu民國文官考試制度研究 (Beijing: Guojia xingzheng xueyuan, 2009). Julia Strauss has provided a more nuanced account of the functions of the Yuan’s two major departments, but her analysis still assumes moving “orthodox” officials into mainstream bureaucracy as the Examination Yuan’s ideal. While the examination committee performed regular exams in a high profile (and ceremonial) manner, the Ministry of Personnel, which had a larger share of staff and resources, dealt with practical issues such as the registration of existing officials, who were supposed to be illegitimate before passing regular exams. Strauss thus describes the work of the Ministry as a compromise to circumstances. Julia C. Strauss, Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: State Building in Republican China, 1927-1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 28-57.

81 introduction in 1931 and persisted at the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Therefore, during this period, the Yuan had to demonstrate social recognition of its exams by means other than rewarding participation.

This chapter discusses the conflicting arguments the Examination Yuan administration made with information about examinees between 1931 and 1947. First, before the 1947 Constitution clearly defined examination as open and competitive, officials not recruited by regular civil service exams—Party members who applied for offices, bureaucrats recruited by previous political regimes, and the passers of ad-hoc/irregular examinations—had equal legal status with the “orthodox” examination passers under the

Law on Civil Service Appointments and Examination Law. The Yuan administration, which had been involved since the law-making process, had to explain the conflicts between the idea of examination orthodoxy and the inclusion of non-examination recruits. Second, as the examiners and administrators of the Yuan had not passed the “orthodox” examination, their qualification in their positions remained questionable. How could unorthodox examiners test orthodox candidates?152

The defects of orthodox candidates were constructed to counter these challenges. The legal equality between orthodox and unorthodox officials was explained away by the former’s weakness in administrative experience (in comparison to former bureaucrats), political/revolutionary participation

(possessed by the Party members), and specialized knowledge (possessed by passers of special examinations). By emphasizing personal “quality” over procedural legitimacy, these deficiencies were also used to reduce the pressure on unorthodox examiners testing candidates for orthodox officials.

The negative image of orthodox examinees created the third question for the Yuan, regarding the high-profile regular examinations that generated legitimate but defective examinees. This was tackled by an emphasis on the pre-examination qualification of the candidates, which was used as an indicator of trust in regular exams and the Yuan’s success. According to the Yuan’s official narrative, these

152 Such criticism was made by Luo Longji, a representative figure of the Third Party Movement who then taught politics and law at Guanghua University in Shanghai. Luo Longji, “The Rule of Experts (zhuanjia zhengzhi 專家政治),” in Renquan lunji 人權論集 (Shanghai: Xinyue shudian, 1930), 180.

82 candidates regarded the Yuan’s assessment as more—or at least, no less—prestigious than their prior credentials.

In this chapter, I will first trace how an idealized vision of bureaucratic reform through examination was built upon Sun’s idea and the history of Merit Reform in the nineteenth century U.S.

This reform agenda, which was advocated mainly by scholars outside the circle of the ruling elite, was not a legitimizing force but rather a problem for the Examination Yuan, which was shaped in the late 1920s by Dai Jitao to promote inclusive policies toward non-examined and irregular officials. I then discuss the

Yuan’s use of information extracted from/generated by regular examinees: bio-data (credential and work experience) were employed to boast the initial quality of the candidates; reports on physical assessment became proof of physical weakness and moral defects; and examination results were represented to criticize the examinees who passed, and thus to justify the lack of job security, the need for re-education, and subordination to the examination agency that was, by Sun’s definition, unorthodox and illegitimate.

These conflicting ideas and policies of orthodoxy reveal a broader transformation in modern

Chinese examination, in which information-based narratives of “quality” replaced guarantee of reward

(such as titles and offices) as the foundation of trust.

I) Bureaucratic Reform through Examination: Sun Yat-senism and U.S. Merit Reform

In the fall of 1928, the Nationalist Government announced that an Examination Yuan would be established in 1930, but there may have been no one, including the members of the ruling elite, who knew its actual function. According to The Outline of Nation Building (Jianguo dagang 建國大綱), written by

Sun Yat-sen in 1924 and republished in March 1925 immediately after his death as a canonical text on

Sun’s ideal of government organization—all government employment should be based on centralized examination and assignment (quanxu 銓敘).153 Seeing examination as a Chinese invention adopted in modern governments (such as Britain and the U.S.), Sun argued that an Examination Yuan should be

153 Guominzhengfu jianguo dagang (Unspecified publisher, 1927).

83 established as one of the five branches of the modern Chinese state. The Examination Yuan would be parallel to the Legislative Yuan, Judicial Yuan, and Executive Yuan—modeled after the conventional three basic branches in Western governments—and the Control Yuan, another of Sun’s innovations that encapsulated the function of the censor (yushi) in traditional Chinese politics. The five-Yuan structure was not adopted in the 1925 Government Organization Law the Nationalists erected during their revolutionary wars (known as the Northern Expedition) against the various political regimes (which the

Nationalists dismissed as “warlords”) loosely affiliated with the Beijing Government. Only after the termination of the united front with the Communists and Chiang Kai-Shek’s victory in the power struggle with leftists within the Party did Sun’s five-Yuan plan return to the Nationalists’ political agenda. By emphasizing Sun’s ideas of Chinese political tradition, Chiang attempted to wipe out the history of

Leninism in the Nationalist Party, which was also a legacy of Sun.

In regard to the actual organization of the Examination Yuan, the Jianguo dagang—as an extremely big-picture document of propaganda—generated confusion rather than concrete instructions. It remained unclear whether the Examination Yuan would focus on the administration of civil exams, as its name suggested, or if it would also assess the performance of civil servants, as an entry in the dagang put

“centralized examination” and “assessment” together. On a more practical level, how would the

Examination Yuan deal with the large number of officials transferred from previous political regimes to the Nationalist Government, who were not recruited via examination in the first place?154

The potential conflicts between Jianguo dagang and Sun’s other writings further complicated the situation. In the “Lecture on the Five Power Constitution,” which was first delivered in 1921 and thereafter regarded as Sun’s blueprint of constitutional polity, the function of examination was not limited to bureaucratic employees. According to Sun’s plan, examination would be used to screen inept

154 Wang Qisheng, Dangyuan, dangquan yu dangzheng—1924-1949 nian zhongguo guomindang de zuzhi xingtai 黨員、黨權與黨爭－1924-1949 年中國國民黨的組織型態 (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian chubanshe, 2010), 206; Chen Huifen, “Chen Lifu yu 1930 niandai de xunzheng zhengyi 陳立夫與 1930 年代的訓政爭 議,” Bulletin of Historical Research (National Normal University Taiwan, Dec. 2009): 247.

84 candidates from democratic elections, and thus prevent the problem of Western democracy: an individual with poor personal qualities could win with popular support. Examination, a Chinese innovation, could be the antidote to this crisis. By introducing a qualifying exam for electoral candidacy, a basic standard of elected officials could be maintained regardless of the outcome of an election. Such examination would naturally be performed by the Yuan. But this connection to democratic election would make it difficult to fit the Yuan into the Nationalists’ three-stage state building plan—military rule (junzheng 軍政), tutelage

(xunzheng 訓政), and eventually constitution politics (xianzheng 憲政)—which existed in both the

Lecture and the Dagang. In 1928, when the tutelage period had just begun, Chinese nationals were not supposed to be enfranchised before being educated by the Party to be qualified for political participation.

If the Examination Yuan incorporated the function of pre-electoral examination, it would imply an immediate conclusion of the tutelage period and entrance into the constitution-making process. Concerns about the Yuan’s impact on tutelage and Party leadership in politics were expressed among senior padres.155 Involving both conflicts in Party ideology and policies toward the bureaucrats retained from previous regimes, the definition of the Examination Yuan’s function and jurisdiction had a high political stake.

This pressure was placed upon Dai Jitao (1891-1949), who had just been appointed president of the Yuan in the September Party Meeting. As a veteran revolutionary who had aided Sun Yat-sen since the days before the 1911 Revolution, and Chiang Kai-Shek’s trusted political ally in the anti-Communist power struggle, Dai was arguably the best person to handle such a sensitive issue. During the Northern

Expedition, Dai had already been working to resolve the ideological conflicts caused by the ideas Sun produced in different contexts. His synthesis of Party ideology was crystalized into two books published in 1925—Philosophical Foundations of Sun Yat-senism and On the Nationalism and Kuomintang in

155 Zhu Leizhang 朱雷章, “Yi 1931 nian woguo diyijie gaodeng kaoshi 憶 1931 年我國第一屆高等考試,” in Zhongguo renmin zhengzhi xieshang huiyi Jiangsu sheng weiyuanhui wenshi ziliao weiyuanhui 中國人民政治 協商會議江蘇省委員會文史資料委員會, Guomindang de wenguan zhidu yu wenguan kaoshi 國民黨的文官 制度與文官考試 (Nanjing: Jiangsu wenshi ziliao bianjibu, 1988), 45.

85 China—which became the ideological foundation of Chiang’s purge of leftists/communists and leadership in the Party.156

Since his appointment as president, Dai had skillfully employed a concept of bureaucratic reform to frame the role of the Examination Yuan. In an interview published in Shenbao on October 10, 1928

(the first 1911 Revolution Commemoration Day after the Nanjing Government came to power), Dai announced that the immediate task of the Yuan would be conducting research on bureaucratic systems around the world, particularly the U.S. experience of civil service reform in the 1880s. Based on this research, the Yuan would embark on a mission of “clarifying bureaucratic rule” (chengqing lizhi 澄清吏

治). The choice of the word lizhi created useful ambiguities and allowed Dai to circumvent the conflicts regarding the Yuan’s position in Party ideology. Li could be interpreted either narrowly as bureaucrats and administrative officials, or more broadly to include county heads and judges, which were already occasionally selected via examinations in previous political regimes. With a strong implication of focusing on administration, the li category helped to divert attention from Sun’s proposal of qualifying exams for electoral candidates and challenges against the tutelage. Meanwhile, it did not refute the

Lecture by precluding such examination in the future constitutional period—in the end, the term lizhi could be further expanded to incorporate “politics” in a general sense.

By mentioning the U.S. Civil Service Reform, Dai depicted a noble mission of the Yuan without commitment to actual reform policies. The U.S. system, Dai claimed, was “flawless” (wubi 無弊) because

“all government officials are selected by examination.” Dai’s description was certainly inaccurate—under the 1883 Act of Civil Service Reform, only around 10% of civilian positions in the federal government were filled via open and competitive exams. This exaggerated claim nevertheless performed an important rhetorical function in the interview. The reader could interpret it as a sign of replacing existing bureaucrats, who advanced through personal connection and were often corrupt, with integral and capable

156 Chiang Kai-shek recalled how he was deeply touched by Philosophical Foundations of Sun Yat-senism and had read it more than ten times.

86 officials recruited in impersonalized examinations. But on the other hand, as the Civil Service Reform was only a foreign history to be researched by the Examination Yuan, Dai was not committed to specific policies and schedules to deal with the existing, non-examination recruited officials.

In fact, Dai was not unaware of the tendency to compromise with existing officials in the institutional configuration of the Yuan. Under the Organizational Law of the Examination Yuan that went into effect on October 13, only three days after the interview, the Ministry of Personnel was established to parallel the Commission on Examination. With jurisdiction of both examination and assessment, the Yuan was released from institutional pressure for vigorous reform against the non-examination recruited officials. If the Yuan was not assigned to assess current officials, the only indicator of its achievement would be the expansion of orthodox examination-recruitment in the government. The Yuan’s institutional interest would be tied tightly to those who passed the civil exam and became at odds with the so-called illegitimate officials (or heiguan 黑官, to borrow a term that became popular in postwar ROC-Taiwan) who obtained office via personal or Party connections.

Dai’s reformist language had a great appeal to intellectuals outside the Nationalist Party. In the late 1920s, there was in general an optimistic mood toward the Nationalists among non-partisan intellectuals in Beijing, Shanghai, and Nanjing. The Leninist organization and fierce left-right power struggle created certain skepticism, but intellectuals generally preferred the Nationalists to the status quo under the Beijing Government, which had already failed to establish constitutional politics, fight against the unequal treaties foreign powers imposed on China, and end the battles between the “warlord” regimes.

Some Chinese scholars studying overseas, like professor of politics and law Luo Longji 羅隆基 and urban planner Zhang Rui 張銳, had even higher expectations of the Nationalists’ state building project.

For them, the coming of the Examination Yuan signaled an expansion of state power and a retreat of

Party dominance.

In the 1920s, Luo studied political science at Wisconsin and Columbia, and obtained his PhD from the London School of Law and Political Science. Before becoming an outspoken critic of the

87 Nationalist Party in the 1930s, and eventually an important figure of democratic discourse in the early

PRC, Luo established fame via his editorial work for the New Moon, one of the leading magazines in New

Literature. He significantly changed the pure literary direction by including writing on politics and international affairs, much written by himself. Zhang Rui’s political writings received much less attention than Luo’s. As a comparatively obscure figure, Zhang is mostly known for the Proposal for the

Reconstruction of the Tianjin Special City he co-authored with Liang Sicheng, arguably the most famous

Chinese architect of the twentieth century. In response to Dai’s October 10 interview, both Zhang and

Luo had published articles on civil service reform in widely-read magazines like New Moon and The

Eastern Miscellany 東方雜誌.157

Luo and Zhang saw bureaucratic reform following the U.S. model as the antidote to the distorted

Party-State relationship under the Nationalist regime. In their understanding, the Nationalist Party’s intervention in government administration at the time was similar to mid-nineteenth century U.S. politics under the so-called “spoil system,” by which the political parties that won elections dominated the nomination of positions in the federal civil service. Under this winner-take-all system, connections within political parties outweighed personal ability and led to a deterioration of bureaucratic efficiency.

Corruption was also intensified because civil servants had to return favors and bribes to maintain their party connections. The situation changed only after open and competitive civil examination was introduced under the 1883 Pendleton Act, and a non-partisan Federal Civil Service Commission was set up to handle bureaucratic recruitment and appointment. Luo and Zhang’s expectation was that the

Examination Yuan, the China counterpart to the Federal Civil Service Commission, would introduce equally open and competitive exams and eventually undercut the Nationalists’ dominance in the bureaucracy. By comparing it to the U.S. Civil Service Commission, they envisioned the Yuan as an

157 Luo Longji, “Meiguo weixing kaoshi zhi yiqian de lizhi (1-3) 美國未行考試制以前的吏治 (1-3),” Xinyue 新月 1, no. 8 (1928): 1-16; 1, no. 9 (1928): 1-13; 1, no. 10 (1928):1-10; Zhang Rui, “Zhongguo kaoshiyuan yu meiguo lianbang lizhiyuan 中國考試院與美國聯邦吏治院,” The Eastern Miscellany 東方雜誌 26, no. 1 (1929): 25-34.

88 agent of state power against Party influence, although it was headed by a senior Nationalist Party cadre like Dai Jitao and had been established according to (Dai’s version of) Sun Yat-sen-ism.

Taking Dai’s rhetorical claim (“all U.S. civil servants had passed examinations”) seriously, Luo and Zhang suggested policies for a gradual replacement of current un-examined bureaucrats with orthodox civil servants. Merely introducing open and competitive examination, they argued, was not enough. To make orthodox officials the mainstream in the bureaucracy, the Examination Yuan should assure a stable allocation of positions to passed examinees. Positions were to be opened by firing current officials who failed assessments. In practical terms, given the enormous administrative workload, the

Yuan did not have to conduct assessment directly. It could instead entrust respective bureaucratic departments to conduct internal assessment, and in return reduce the opposition against the removal of failed officials, which was more important to the reform than the assessments. Zhang also proposed a reduction and specification of the types of officials under the Yuan’s jurisdiction. The current scope, he argued, was unrealistically broad and vague, as it could include all government personnel outside the military system. With these practical issues addressed, they were optimistic about the prospect of reform.

Zhang thought the Yuan was in a better position than the Federal Civil Service Commission, as it was more empowered under the current structure of the Nanjing National Government.

Luo and Zhang’s major concern was the quality of the first cohort of examiners and officials to be employed by the Yuan. This led to fundamental questions in the theory of orthodoxy. Could someone who had advanced by other than orthodox means conduct examinations that created orthodoxy? If one strictly followed Sun Yat-sen’s formulation that “only those who passed examinations could be regarded as legitimate officials,” an ironic conclusion would likely be reached—at the beginning of any examination system, the orthodox candidates would necessarily be selected by illegitimate examiners who had never passed the same examination. Then, in practice, how would the examiners establish their authority?

For Luo and Zhang, experts who were qualified by external credentials—implying those who, like themselves, received degrees from prestigious overseas universities—were the answer to these

89 questions. With their knowledge and reputation, experts provided the authority required to launch the coming civil service examination and bureaucratic reform. Following this logic, under specific conditions, such as the inauguration of an examination system, the doctrine of “legitimacy for examination passers only” could be suspended and replaced by the reputation of experts, which was created outside the examination system (as well as Chinese society). By criticizing the lack of officials with sufficient qualifications and knowledge (zige xueshi 資格學識), they advocated the introduction of experts

(zhuanjia zhengzhi 專家政治), and thus, signaled the Yuan administration (probably Dai himself) to recruit them.

The response from the Yuan was disappointing, especially for Luo. In the year after Dai’s interview, coverage of Shenbao showed that Dai recruited through a network of intellectuals closely related to the Nationalist Party. These appointments were made mostly through personal introduction

(jieshao 介紹) and recommendation (tuijian 推薦), which the Shenbao writers viewed as antithetical to the doctrine of examination orthodoxy.158 As a result, capable and well qualified men like Luo and Zhang were left outside the Yuan and the reform.

But the exchange between Luo and Dai via Hu Shih, the most renowned non-Nationalist intellectual of the time, tells a more complicated story. Around December 1928, Luo had received a message from Hu that Dai would offer him a post to conduct research on political systems in the

Examination Yuan. Luo, who was in Singapore (probably a stop on his way from Britain to China) at the time, was interested in the job. He immediately wrote back to Hu, inquiring about the actual position and terms. We do not have further materials showing the outcome of this negotiation. What we know is that in

1929, Luo took a teaching post in Guanghua University in Shanghai, and had never served in the

Examination Yuan. Entering 1930, the year of the Yuan’s inauguration, Luo’s critique of the Nationalists became increasingly fierce. This transition is exemplified by the revisions he had made in the 1930 reprinted version of the 1929 essay “The Rule of Experts.” In the new version, which was included in

158 Shenbao 申報, November 29, 1929.

90 Collected Essays on Human Rights published by the New Moon Society, Luo inserted a block quote from the Shenbao article on the favouritism in Examination Yuan employment mentioned above, and then wrote a paragraph lamenting the Yuan’s contradiction with examination orthodoxy:

Those Mandarins who served as examiners got their positions through introduction, rather than

examination. As an organization based on recommendation, introduction, networking and

collusion, how can the Examination Yuan manage the assessment and examination of state

officials?159

In 1930 Luo was arrested and detained briefly by police. The incident marked the beginning of his career as an activist for democracy and end of Nationalist Party dominance. Zhang was not as bitter toward the Nationalists, despite his critique of the Yuan personnel in his follow-up writings, and was thus less involved in actual politics. In 1930, while teaching at Nankai University, he worked alongside Liang

Sicheng under the sponsorship of the Tianjin Bureau of Urban Planning on a project that etched his name in the history of modern Chinese urban planning. As seen in an article he wrote in 1933, Zhang still looked forward to civil examination and bureaucratic reform in buffering Party intervention in civil service personnel.

Luo and Zhang’s case is important in two aspects. First, it demonstrates how non-Nationalist intellectuals followed the political agenda set by Nationalist ideologues. In response to Dai’s narrative of chengqing lizhi, Luo and Zhang had actually accepted a separation of administrative methods from fundamental political questions, such as polity and constitution, which were indeed the source of legitimacy of any reforms in bureaucracy. They saw this separation as an effective way to change the political contour without becoming entangled in ideological debates on polity, which they believed was a

“dumb” approach used by the Nationalists, who lacked knowledge of modern governance. In both the

1929 and 1930 versions of “Rule of Experts,” Luo began by quoting Alexander Pope: “For forms of

159 “考試旁人的老爺們，自己的出身，就是「介紹」來的。考試院本身的組織，就是靠推薦，援引， 夤緣，苟且為依據，配談什麼國家官吏的銓敘及考試？” Luo Longji, “The Rule of Experts (zhuanjia zhengzhi 專家政治),” in Renquan lunji 人權論集 (Shanghai: Xinyue shudian, 1930), 180.

91 government; lest fools contest; Whatever is best administered, is best.” As part of a broader intellectual trend to focus on specific issues (wenti 問題) rather than ideology (“-isms,” zhuyi 主義),160 this detachment from politics on the constitutional level nevertheless fit well with the Nationalists’ three-stage state building model—constitutional questions could be, and should be, suspended in the phases of military rule (junzheng) and tutelage (xunzheng). This explains why in “Rule of Experts” Luo admitted that there was a need for tutelage, despite his bitterness toward the Examination Yuan in 1930. The tendency to bracket questions about the source of authority is also reflected in Luo’s depiction of experts, who were exempt from the doctrine of examination orthodoxy, as shown above.

Second, the reformist language and the U.S. model distort our understanding of the Yuan’s political function. Through comparison to the U.S. merit reform, Luo and Zhang had created a Chinese state versus Nationalist Party framework in which the Examination Yuan was categorized as a state institution that would reduce Party intervention if it functioned properly. Open and competitive examination would create orthodox officials, lead to bureaucratization, and strengthen the power of the state; recruitment through personal connection and favouritism would generate corrupted officials, emphasize affiliation to the Nationalist Party, and consolidate Party authoritarianism. This dichotomy is often seen in scholarship on Republican civil service and the Examination Yuan, including that without direct influence from Luo and Zhang. Historians assess the achievement of the Yuan by the portion of officials recruited by open and competitive examinations, and conclude that the reform was a failure, or in

Julia Strauss’s more sophisticated analysis, a combination of symbolic function in examination and practical compromise with the non-examination officials and the Party network. Basing their reading on assumptions of bureaucratic reform and orthodoxy equal to open and competitive examination, they neglect the fact that Dai Jitao, the architect and long-time (1929-1948) president of the Examination

160 The division of issue and ideology is exemplified in a debate sparked by Hu Shih’s article “Duo tan dian wenti; shao tan dian zhuyi (Let’s Talk More About Issues, Less About Ideology) 多談點問題少談點主義.” For the context of this debate, see Li Lin 李林, “Huan wenti yu zhuyi zhizheng de benlai mianmu 還問題與主 義之爭的本來面目,” Ershiyi shiji 二十一世紀 8 (1991): 21-6.

92 Yuan, had never committed to a bureaucratic reform against Party influence, nor an orthodoxy based on open and competitive examination. Dai’s main objective in 1929 was to shift attention from possibilities of immediate entrance into the constitutional period. Once he had settled the dangerous interpretations of

Sun’s ideology by diverting to administrative questions, Dai went on to redefine zhengtu-orthodoxy and examination and to establish a legal regime of legitimization. As we will see below, under his leadership, the Examination Yuan exercised power with an expanding and inclusive definition of orthodoxy and examination. The Yuan’s policies followed a logic that fundamentally contradicted the “U.S. model” Luo and Zhang envisioned. And in the end, as those who passed the regular examination produced more threat than power to the Yuan, institutional and symbolic suppression of these orthodox examinees became a crucial task of Dai and the Yuan administration.

II) The Examination Yuan’s Inclusive Approach to Orthodoxy i) Party Members as Orthodox Officials

In contrast to the assumed party/state rivalry, the Yuan had been promoting policies bridging party members and official positions since its inauguration. Just like Dai’s focus on the administrative level, these policies were shaped by the need to resolve conflicts in both Party ideology and the political landscape at the time. On ideological terms, emphases on maintaining the present tutelage and progressing toward constitutional politics generated conflicting approaches toward Party presence in the bureaucracy. The former produced the principle of “party leading politics” and the aggressive policy requiring all civil service posts to be occupied by Party members. The latter found justification in Sun’s idea that a good party member should not be office-seeking (dangyuan buke cunxin zuoguan 黨員不可存

心作官) and should retire after the three stages of revolution. As seen in the way he circumvented the issue of electoral examinations, it would be unlikely for Dai to foster the process toward the constitutional period. But on the other hand, it was equally undesirable for him to endorse the policy toward an all-Party member bureaucracy, because the number of Party members was not even close to enough for such

93 occupation. By December 1928, the proportion of Party members to the Chinese population was around

1:2,321. The Party institution also lacked the capacity of total control—by 1933, only 17% of counties had local Party organizations. Moreover, as a large portion of the Party members were military-trained, their limited administrative skills put them at risk of being outcompeted by the experienced bureaucrats from previous regimes and those recruited by the new civil service examinations, who were usually superior in academic credentials.161

Against this background, Dai’s mission was to put Party members on equal footing with other civil servants. The first step was the legislation of the 1930 Civil Service Employment Law (gongwuyuan renyong tiaoli 公務員任用條例).162 As the members of the Legislative Yuan were appointed by the central authority of the Party, Dai, who was entrusted by Chiang Kai-shek with the examination policies, faced no significant challenge in shaping the content of the Civil Service Law. Under these new laws,

“contribution to the Party-state and revolution experience” (dui dangguo you teshu xunlao, huo zhili geming 對黨國有特殊勳勞，或致力革命), which was a euphemism for years of Party membership, qualified a person to hold office in the civil service. Ten, seven, and five years of experience would be matched by respective offices on the jianren 簡任, jianren薦任 and weiren 委任 levels. Under this legal framework, Party experience became equivalent to experience in the civil service and passing the regular civil service examinations (the Advanced Level and General Level Examinations).

Refining procedures was a way to make Party experience institutionally comparable to other qualifications, and eventually to enhance its authority. To maintain the reputation of Party experience, fraud in this qualification was the last thing Dai wanted to see. In a proposal submitted during a 1936

Party political convention, Dai and Shi Ying 石瑛 (1879-1943), the newly appointed head of the Ministry of Evaluation, pointed out the influx of applicants claiming Party experience into civil service

161 Wang Qisheng, 205-6; Chen Huifen, 247. 162 Yang Xuewei, ed., Zhongguo kaoshi shi wenxian jicheng (Minguo) (Beijing: Gaodeng jiaoyu chubanshe, 2006), 334.

94 departments. In some departments, these applicants counted for more than 70% of the total number of candidates. Many did not bring proper Party licences (dangzheng, 黨證), some were unregistered in Party records, and some had joined the Party in recent years—obviously solely for advancement in bureaucracy—and made false claims about their years of experience. In one particularly ridiculous case, a young man in his twenties reported ten years of experience and qualified for a jianren position; this meant he would have been a revolutionary around the age of ten. These frauds often went unchecked, as Yuan officials tended to refrain from confrontation with Party members and involvement in Party procedures of verification. To make Party experience more reliable, Dai and Shi proposed the participation of Yuan officials in the Party’s Committee on Revolution Experience Assessment (geming xunji shencha weiyuanhui 革命勳績審查委員會). The proposal was approved by the Party Central Committee on

General Affairs (zhongyang changwu weiyuanhui 中央常務委員會).163 These intertwined practices can hardly be captured in a party versus state perspective.

Supported by the institutionalization of Party experience, Dai was able to include Party members in his new definition of bureaucratic orthodoxy. In a 1942 plan for the work of the Examination Yuan, he listed the following events as steps in the construction of zhengtu in the Nationalist Party-state: the establishment of the Huangpu Military Academy (1924) and the Central Political Academy (1927), sending students overseas (1928), and eventually the establishment of the Examination Yuan and civil service exam.164

Another strategy was to include Party members in examinations, accompanied by official

163 “Gongwuyuan renyong zige zhong zhili geming zige liubi shen duo qing gongjue 公務員任⽤ 資格中致⼒ 革命資格流弊甚多請公決,” (February 18, 1936), Guomindang Party Archives (Records of Party Affairs Meetings 5.3/6.15). A watered-down version of this proposal was published in the Gazette of the Examination Yuan. “Gongwuyuan renyong zige zhili geming tiaokuan zhi jiu ji banfa an 公務員任用資格致力革命條款之 救濟辦法案,” Kaoshiyuan gongbao 考試院公報 2 (1936): 126-7. 164 Dai Jitao, “Duiyu benyuan jinhou shishe yaoduan zhi zhishi 對於本院今後施設要端之指示 (1942),” in Dai Jitao xiansheng yu kaoquan zhidu 戴季陶先生與考銓制度, ed. Deng Qifeng (Taipei: Zhengzhong shuju, 1984), 461.

95 narratives boasting their performances. In the 1933 Report on the Second Advanced Level Examination, the Yuan writer claimed that Party members had higher passing rates than non-Party candidates in the first two Advanced Level Examinations, though this claim was based on an uncertain sample size and counting method: “This fact shows that Party members were superior in terms of knowledge and intelligence; and on the other hand, more and more outstanding individuals in the society joined the Party as disciples of the ‘Three Peoples Principle’ (the ideology of Sun Yat-sen).” 165 The statistical evidence for such claims was thin, if it ever existed. And it certainly omitted the advantage of Party members over other candidates, such as familiarity with the ideological and intellectual positions of pro-Nationalist scholars who served as examiners. But as we will see below, the official aura of narratives like this was powerful in shaping examinees’ image for the public. Party members’ institutional advantage was even more explicit in examinations tailor-made for them. Entering the latter half of the 1930s, wartime emergency enabled the Yuan to create special examinations allowing Party members to participate in politics (congzheng 從政), which meant entrance to the bureaucracy. In 1935, for instance, when local

Party members in Northeastern provinces were displaced during Japanese military advancement, a special examination was given to relocate them into government positions.166

ii) Registration and Review of Current Officials: Legalizing Un-Examined Civil Servants

The current civil servants—most not recruited by examination under the previous “warlord” regimes—had no place in the reform narrative. Being theoretically illegitimate according to Sun’s idea of orthodoxy, they were to be replaced by legitimate officials who had passed examination in the future.

This was also true from a Party-oriented perspective. In the revolution against the Beijing government/warlord regimes, Party members, who were agents of revolution, were slated to replace the

165 “顯示黨員之學識一般較非黨員爲優；另一方面，亦足窺見社會優秀份子已多加入本黨而爲三民主 義之信徒也.” 166 “Ni juxing shengshi dangbu gongzuo renyuan congzheng kaoshi an 擬舉行省市黨部工作人員從政考試案 (June 1935),” GMDPA (RPA 4.3/198.26).

96 existing bureaucrats, who were seen as part of the failure and corruption in the status quo. The practical limit of this replacement was not unnoticed by these advocates of state-bureaucratization and party- revolution—though accurate numbers were not available at the time, it was obvious that throughout the

1930s the “warlord” regime officials outnumbered both the examined officials the Yuan could produce in the coming decade and the Party members. Nevertheless, this assumption of replacement persisted in contemporary public discourse and was eventually taken up by historians. For instance, Julia Strauss describes the Nationalist Government’s incorporation of unexamined officials from the “warlord” regime as a “compromise” of the Yuan’s ideal.

But the assumption of replacement was at best an expectation from the outside—it had never been the rationale of the Yuan administration. Dai, as shown above, had avoided a commitment to overall replacement with either examination-passers or Party members. Since its inauguration, the Yuan had been consistent in a policy launched in 1930 with the Examination Law—the Registration Law—to grant lawful status to current civil servants. With a paperwork review of credentials and experiences, they legally became counterparts of the examination recruits, and thus, orthodox officials. This legal definition of orthodoxy did not contain formal procedures for (written) examination—which embodies openness and competitiveness in the reformist narrative—but the Yuan administration saw no necessity for that. In

1934, certain officials in the Yuan proposed a random sampling examination of existing civil servants

(chou kao xianyou gongwuyuan 抽考現有公務員) as a formalistic way to make the registered officials as orthodox as those who entered by regular examinations. As the scope of the random examination was unspecified, this policy enabled large room for flexibility—the sample size could be adjusted according to affordable administrative costs. But the Yuan administration had shown no interest in such a proposal.

Under the Yuan’s policy, any person who was approved legally by the Yuan should be seen as orthodox, regardless of whether or not formal written examinations were taken.

The limited results of registration were often emphasized in official reports from the Yuan. Based on the bureaucratic reform narrative, it is tempting for historians—especially those interested in the

97 administrative capacity of the Nationalist state—to cite these self-criticisms as the proof of failure in bureaucratization. Such assessment not only conflates two definitions of bureaucratization at the time— replacement with those who passed formal (written) examination, as the reformists envisioned; and legitimization of officials within a legal framework that did not necessarily involve formal examination, which the Yuan actually practiced. It also uncritically accepts the standards used in official reports and policy debates, which were constructed based on two ungrounded assumptions: 1) there was already a calculable number and a finite scope of Chinese civil servants to be passed from the Qing to the Beijing

Government, and then to the Nationalist Government; 2) as the legitimate ruler of China, the Nationalist

Government should exert full control over this body of civil servants, or else it would be a failure to them.

The weaknesses of the registration system were sharply criticized in the policy debates. In numerical terms, the ratio of registered to total officials was small. By 1936, around 60,000 civil servants were reviewed and registered.167 This was compared to a much larger total number of officials, usually around 7,000,000, which was generated by approximation without a comprehensive survey and solid evidence.168 The system also was not promulgated synchronically in the provinces under Nationalist control. Guangdong, for instance, had not joined the review system until 1937. On the other hand, the presence of state-funded jobs outside the legal framework was also emphasized. According to the 1930 guidelines, the review included most of the administrative appointments (roughly equal to the categories of jianren, jianren and weiren). But on top of xuanren 選任 and teren 特任, which were vaguely regarded as political appointments, a large number of temporary/ad-hoc administrative officers were not subject to the scheme. Being employed widely in education, military, party affairs, local self-governance and national enterprises, such officers constituted a large shadow population within the government.169 After

167 Chen Tianxi, ed., Kaoshiyuan shizheng biannianlu 考試院施政編年錄(Kaoshiyuan, 1945), 171; “Kaoshiyuan gongzuo baogao 考試院工作報告 (November 1935),” GMDPA (RPAM 4.2/60.5.3), 33. 168 For example, Tao Baichuan 陶百川, “Kaoshi banfa chuyi 考試辦法芻議,” Zhongyang zhoukan 中央周刊 4, no. 25 (1942): 8. 169 Kaoshiyuan shizheng biannianlu, 36.

98 the outbreak of the Second Sino Japanese War, the wartime emergency (feichang shiqi 非常時期) laws further loosened the registration procedures to the point that virtually no one in the bureaucracy would be failed.170 All these complaints were made in comparison to an imagined Nationalist state which had sufficient capacity and legitimacy to put all Chinese bureaucrats and territories under complete control.

There was good reason for the Nationalists to take up such an assumption. These “self- criticisms”—for lacking behind in the establishment of state power—were in fact a statement for legitimate rule of China as a whole. Even if that did not happen in the moment, it would be realized in the near future. But for historians, the assumption obscures the broader historical contexts of state-building and government employment in the early twentieth century. Since the New Policy Reform in the late

Qing, irregular government employment—which performed state functions and consumed public funding but without systemic and centralized management—proliferated in the reform projects unevenly distributed among provinces. And after the abolition of the keju and gongming systems, decentralized political regimes used offices created by public funding to buy loyalty and service. Most of these irregular hires were made without central authorization and were thus invisible in the state administration. This situation persisted from the Qing to the so-called warlord regimes, and was not systematically investigated in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Therefore, the 1930 Registration Law was indeed the first attempt to survey the actual population of government employees. In other words, in the

1930s, there was no pre-existing standard Chinese state for the Nationalists to catch up with. Most of the moves by the Nanjing Government were new steps in the making of a modern Chinese state.

iii) Special Examination: Decentralization and Flexibility

Under the 1930 Examination Law, “special examination” was introduced as a category alongside the advanced and general level examinations. While the latter two were to be conducted regularly (once a

170 “Feichang shiqi gongwuyuan zili zhengjian buchong banfa 非常時期公務員資歷證件補充辦法,” in Kaoshiyuan shizheng biannianlu, 361.

99 year) with specific subjects, nothing about the special examination was stated clearly in the Law. When the bill went into the Legislative Yuan, councillors questioned Dai Jitao about the actual content and purpose of the special examination. He replied that such ambiguity was “necessary for reasons that could not be clearly announced.”171 Due to the Legislative Yuan’s lack of actual gatekeeping power and Chiang

Kai-shek’s trust in Dai, the ambiguity survived in the law that passed. In this sense, the Examination

Yuan was given a blank cheque to create any examination on an ad-hoc basis in the future. Based on the reformist assumption of open and competitive examination (like Luo and Zhang envisioned), it is tempting to see the special examination as a loophole in the system.172 Under the legalized “special” category, examinations could be created to target particular groups of candidates, or in some extreme cases, tailor-made for specific individuals. As a result, the favoritism and corruption under the “warlord” regimes would be resurrected in the formalistic examinations.

However, even if the special examination was an institutional loophole, it was not directly used by the Yuan administration to manipulate bureaucratic recruitment. In fact, the Yuan had many other legal devices to qualify entrance into the bureaucracy, such as Party experience and registration. And as seen above, the Yuan administration did not see the necessity of legitimizing via formal examination. In this context, the category of special examination was actually used to legalize exam standards created outside the Yuan. In other words, it was not a device used to seize power, but rather a policy for decentralization.

This is seen in the examinations included in this “special” category throughout the 1930s and 40s.

All were related to spheres relatively autonomous in the central administration or shaped by professional knowledge. Here I group them into five types: 1) local self-governance: county head, self-governance cadres (difang zizhi ganbu renyuan 地方自治幹部人員) and social work officers; 2) judge

171 Dai Jitao xiansheng yu kaoquan zhidu, 10. 172 Kaoshiyuan kaoquan congshu zhidao weiyuanhui 考試院考銓叢書指導委員會, Zhonghua minguo tezhong kaoshi zhidu 中華民國特種考試制度 (Taipei: Zhengzhong shuju 正中書局, 1984).

100 examinations173; 3) government sectors which had strong institutional autonomy: postal office and custom service; 4) bureaucratic positions involving professionalized knowledge: statistics, accounting, finance, banking, and taxation; 5) positions dealing with the powerful education sector: education administration, inspectors of county and municipal education.174 By creating specialized examinations for candidates with professional and occupational backgrounds, the Yuan recognized the pre-examination credentials and experiences generated in these spheres. In contrast to systems that emphasized general knowledge, specialized examination was inherently decentralizing.

The power of examination was furthered decentralized during wartime emergency under the

Additional Regulation of Civil Service Employment in the Emergency Period (feichang shiqi gongwuyuan renyong buchong banfa 非常時期公務員任用補充辦法) decree in 1942.175 This regulation stated that in cases where it was not possible for the Yuan to conduct an examination, administrative heads could design recruitment methods according to the quality needed for the post. These methods would become as legal as examination employments after being approved by both the Executive and the

Examination Yuan.

This decentralization was at odds with the reformist agenda. In both the jianguo dagang and proposals derived from the U.S. merit reform model, there was a common motif of centralization. To reform the status quo—departments and subdivisions in the bureaucracy recruited according to their personal connections—a special agency independent from other departments should be established to conduct recruitment in a centralized manner. This centralization was stated explicitly in the jianguo

173 It is noteworthy that both the county head and judge examinations predated the Examination Law. When the Law went into effect in 1930, the jurisdiction of these examinations was still uncertain and under negotiation. The special category allowed their incorporation into the Examination Yuan without further revision of the Law. 174 Zhongguo kaoshi shi wenxian jicheng (Minguo), 458-9. 175 “Fechang shiqi gongwuyuan renyong buchong banfa 非常時期公務員任用補充辦法 (September 1942),” GMDPA (National Supreme Defence Commission Archive 003/2093);” “Xiuzheng feichangshiqi gongwuyuan renyong tiaoli wen 修正非常時期公務員任用條例文 (December 1943),” NSDCA (003/2746).

101 dagang (“all government employments should be based on centralized examination and assessment”).

And for those advocating the U.S. model, like Luo and Zhang, the Federal Committee on Civil Service had the independence and centrality that the Examination Yuan should follow. In addition, following this logic of centralization, the examination should also be open and competitive in order to eliminate favouritism and promote merit-based recruitment. If the bureaucratic departments and professions were allowed to conduct their own examinations, barriers would be established—in the form of highly professionalized examination curricula and pre-exam credential requirements—to keep outsiders from entering the competition.

But decentralization did not necessarily generate inefficiency and corruption. The fact that

“special examination,” which was supposed to be conducted on an ad-hoc basis, generated more officials than regular (high and general level) examination is often cited to prove the failure of bureaucratization.

Such an assertion cannot explain why the flexibility of special examination had been envisioned since the drafting of the Examination Law. We may not agree with the Yuan official history that boasts this as

Dai’s vision, but at the very least, the function performed by special examination was far from merely a passive compromise with reality. More importantly, the “special” category itself did not lead to inflation in the number of officials. Throughout 1930-1945, the proportion of special to regular examinees remained stable. An explosion of special examination passers did not appear until the end of the war, as a direct outcome of the examination for demobilized soldiers introduced in 1946, which added more than one million “examination recruited” into the pool of special exam graduates (51,540 before 1946; 100,942 in the three years of implementation), making more than half of the total (164,157) exam passers before

1949.176 The examination politics surrounding the 1947 Constitution will be discussed in Chapter 6. What

176 Under the 1947 Constitution, all civil servants, except specified political appointments, were to be employed by open and competitive examination administered by an independent Examination Yuan (Council). The legal ambiguity surrounding civil service examination, which was often manipulated to justify irregular hires during the war, was thus significantly reduced. However, this development toward normalization of the Chinese state was at odds with the Nationalists’ use of examinations in post-war politics across the Taiwan strait. As a large portion of these post-war examinations violated the principle of open and competitive examination, the civil servants they recruited became illegitimate under the 1947 Constitution.

102 is clear is that, in the period between 1930 and 1945, the special examination framework functioned stably according to a logic that the reform narrative cannot capture.

iv) Detachment of Qualification from Assignment and the Lack of Examinees in Regular

Examinations

Following the logic of examination orthodoxy, one would expect regular exam passers to have priority in office assignments. Yet this was indeed unlikely under the framework of the 1930 Examination

Law, as the Yuan had no power to create offices for candidates it passed. Assignments would be made only after respective government departments—under the jurisdiction of the Executive Yuan—opened vacancies and requested qualified candidates from the Examination Yuan’s Ministry of Assignment. This detachment of qualification from job placement became a particular problem for passers of regular civil service exams, in comparison to Party members, existing officials and special examinees who had better connections to the institutions providing openings. This failure to promote regular examinees is often viewed as a compromise of examination power to the executive branch and the Party.177 However, such an examination/executive and Party division did not exist in the law-making process of the Law on Civil

Service Appointments and the Examination Law. As those in the Legislative Yuan were appointed by the central authority of the Party, Dai Jitao faced no significant challenge to shaping the content of both laws.178 Thus, a more reasonable explanation would be: the institutional framework of the Examination

Yuan was designed to avoid committing office assignments to those who passed exams.

The uncertainty of an assignment no doubt discouraged participation in regular examinations.

Low application numbers had been a persistent issue in the regular civil service examinations in the 1930s and 40s. Since the 1931 inaugural Advanced Level Examination, the small application number had often been the focus of policy debates. Given the shortage of applicants, the funds spent on examination

177 Strauss, 34-5. Xu Youshou 徐有守, Kaoshiquan de weiji—Kaoquan zhidu de fuxi yu gaijin 考試權的危機 ──考銓制度的腐蝕與改進 (Taipei: Taiwan Commercial Press, 1999), 18. 178 Dai Jitao xiansheng yu kaoquan zhidu, 9-14.

103 logistics were criticized as wasteful.179 By 1948, the total number of Advanced Level examinees had reached just 38,682.180 Some may attribute this to the social disturbance caused by the Second Sino

Japanese War. Yet the number had been steadily low before 1945 (in average around 2,000 per examination), and the outbreak of the war only created a sudden, one-time drop in candidates between

1936 and 1937 (from 1,479 to 174 in the Advanced Level). In policy debates, these numbers were often compared to the metropolitan examination in the Qing dynasty keju system, indicating that the current exam system had not gained social recognition and faith. As Gu Jiegang—a leading historian of the time—had pointed out in 1936, examination could gain social recognition only by effective methods of incentive (guli zhi shu 鼓勵之術).181

The Yuan administration was not unaware of the problem created by the lack of rewards, but it had a contrasting view on the issue. A 1932 internal report stated, “In the past (Qing dynasty imperial examination), the success of recruitment was uncertain even with generous rewards, not to say forcing them to be examined in the present day.”182 The Yuan writer saw the difficulty in forcing participation without generous rewards in contemporary examination. Yet the conclusion to which he arrived was not to make up the inadequacy. He simply blamed a tradition of Chinese intellectuals for glorifying pretentious hesitations and refusals of official appointment. “Buying” participation with rewards was seen as an immoral practice in the imperial past, and thus was unthinkable as a solution to the present problem.

This attitude against incentivizing with official assignments is further demonstrated by a 1933 debate between a legislator and two Examination Yuan researchers. Concerned with the public

179 This was the background of Hu Shih’s 1934 proposal for an open recommendation system to replace the formalistic examination. Hu Shih, “Gongkai jianju yi—cong gudai jianju zhidu xiangdao jinri guanxie de jiuzheng 公開薦舉議—從古代薦舉制度想到今日官邪的救正,” Guowen zhoubao 國聞週報 11, no. 10 (1934): 1-2. 180 Liang Zhishuo 梁之碩, “Zhongguo xianxing gongwuyuan kaoshi zhidu zhi jiantao ji gaijin 中國現行公務 員考試制度之檢討及改正 (1948),” in Zhongguo kaoshi shi wenxian jicheng (Minguo), 505. 181 Gu Jiegang 顧頡剛, “Preface,” in Zhongguo kaoshi zhidu shi 中國考試制度史, Deng Siyu 鄧嗣禹 (Nanjing: Kaoshiyuan kaoxuan weiyuanhui, 1936), 3. 182 “昔日厚禮徵召, 尚難期其必起; 今欲強其應考, 豈能冀其必來.” Kaoshiyuan shizheng biannianlu, 36.

104 expenditure created by civil service examination, legislator Wei Tingsheng 衛挺生 (1890-1977), who taught economics at Southeastern University before taking public office, published an article in the Shidai gonglun 時代公論, a journal organized by pro-Nationalist scholars in Nanjing. The current civil service examination, Wei argued, was a financial burden not only because of the public expenditure it required, but because it produced examination passers, who often lacked administrative experience, that the

Nationalist government was obligated to employ (dui jingyan dixia zhi ren, wei fu bixu renyong zhi yiwu

對經驗低下之人, 為負必需任用之義務). He therefore suggested the Yuan replace the current civil service examination with a centralized exam for college graduates—similar to the centralized exam for secondary school graduates (huikao 會考) launched in 1931—in which the passers would be qualified for, but not guaranteed, official assignment.183

Wei’s proposal was undermined by his misunderstanding of the Examination Law—the Yuan, and the Nationalist Government as a whole, was never legally obligated to assign positions to examination passers. This was exactly the point raised by Shi Meixuan 史美煊 (1902-?) and Huang

Shinong 黃世農 –two researchers affiliated with the Yuan—in their responding articles.184

But despite Shi and Huang’s criticism of Wei’s misunderstanding, all three in fact shared the assumption that the examination, as a device of assessment, should be detached from job security. This is significant in two aspects. On one hand, this was the antithesis of the examination orthodoxy narrative, in which examination passers should be given priority in official appointment in order to replace un- examined bureaucrats. In a broader historical context, this detachment shows that the Nationalist civil examination was a further deviation from, rather than a restoration of, the Qing keju system. Like the

183 Wei Tingsheng 衛挺生, “Gaige kaoshi zhidu guanjian 改革考試制度管見,” Shidai gonglun 時代公論 47 (1933): 17-22. 184 Shi Meixuan 史美煊, “Zai lun gaige kaoshi zhidu pingyi 再論改革考試制度評議,” Shidai gonglun 時代公 論 50 (1933): 15-21; Huang Shinong 黃世農, “Kaoshi zhidu lunzhan zhi pingyi 考試制度論戰之評議,” Shidai gonglun 時代公論 51 (1933): 9-10. Wei’s response is also published in vol. 51. Wei, “Guanyu gaige kaoshi zhidu zhi taolun 關於改革考試制度之討論,” Shidai gonglun 時代公論 51 (1933):11-13.

105 Qing imperial examination, Nationalist civil exams were conducted regularly regardless of the number of vacant offices in the bureaucracy. Thus, both systems created a pool of passed examinees to be assigned to offices. Yet for the late imperial examination passers, the various titles (gongming 功名) from exams provided social capital that supported their livelihoods. Without such status, examination passers under the Nationalist regime were exposed to the risk of unemployment without any specific support from the state. Various training programs were available before actual assignment to office, but they neither provided stable income nor increased the chance of official appointment.

In the 1930s and 40s, critics continued to complain about the accumulation of unemployed examination passers, known as qualified unemployed personnel (jige shiye renyuan 及格失業人員).

Public opinion put pressure on the government to take care of the livelihoods of the passed candidates.

But the Yuan administration only returned vague proposals of relief policies—such as fostering the efficiency of office assignment, which was not under its jurisdiction, and increasing training programs, which, as seen below, did not improve the livelihood of the exam passers. More substantial proposals for the connection of examination to assignment in fact came from discussions within the Party.185

The lack of security for examination passers did not change until post-war reconstruction. In

February 1946, the Nationalist Government announced that examination graduates would be given preference in demobilization and relocation programs.186 Earlier, in 1945, an administrative order issued by the Committee of Highest Command to secure the supply of food rations to every new post had created stability for those who passed examination. Since the outbreak of the Second Sino Japanese War, a lack

185 “Kuozhan zongli kaoshi zhidu yu pinku xuesheng yi fazhan tiancai zhi jihui an 擴展總理考試制度予貧苦 學生以發展天才之機會案 (November 16, 1935),” GMDPA (RPAM 5.1/4.17); “Qing zhengfu chedi caitai rongyuan luyong kaoshi jige rencai 請政府澈底裁汰冗員錄用考試合格人才 (November 16, 1935),” GMDPA (RPAM 5.1/6.66); “Xiuzheng jiuji kaoshi jige shiye renyuan banfa 修正救濟考試及格失業人員辦 法(November 1939),” GMDPA (NSDCA 003/0445). These petitions were made mostly by Party members based on Sun Yat-sen’s idea that regular examination opened opportunities for students from humble backgrounds. They also show that the Nationalist Party was not a separate political entity fighting for power with the Examination Yuan (as an institution of the State). 186 “Kaoshi renyuan fuyuan banfa 考試人員復員辦法 (Feburary 1946),” GMDPA (NSDCA 003/4012).

106 of quota for food supplies had been a regular pretext used by government departments to refuse opening new positions to examination passers.187 These seemingly modest reforms were indeed significant: not since the abolition of the gongming title in the last years of the Qing had the Chinese state been engaged in the livelihood of examination passers as a status group, rather than as mere employees connected to the state only when they were assigned to actual offices.188 The enhanced welfare of passed examinees may have contributed to the sharp increase in applicants for the Advanced Level Examination in 1946.

The post-war reform, however, did not change the fact that, for more than fifteen years, the

Examination Yuan had refused to secure official assignments for passed examinees. The question which still remains is: if those who passed (regular) exams did not have priority over un-examined officials in the legal and institutional framework of examination, how would the Yuan administration situate them in the official discourse? While advocating a loose legal definition of orthodoxy, how would the Yuan handle these “more orthodox” examinees?

III)Information about the Regular Examinees and the Yuan’s Authority

As seen above, regular (advanced and general level) examinees were marginalized in terms of the number and chances of assignment. Yet in the Yuan’s official narratives—such as various reports submitted to the Nationalist government and the Party, publications and speeches made to the public, and the voluminous official chronical—the “more orthodox” examinees received disproportionate attention.

The examinees’ information, including their pre-examination credentials and experiences, results of physical exams, and written examination results, was circulated and elaborately discussed through the

Yuan’s propaganda devices.

187 To fully mobilize the human resources generated in schools, the quota of food supplies was gradually extended to teachers and students. As a result, the concept of military-civil service-education was forged as a status group in post-war China and Taiwan. 188 The civil servants thereafter became a status group tightly bound to the Nationalist Party-state. This development began in post-war settlement in the Mainland and reached its height after the Nationalist Government fled to Taiwan.

107 Historians tend to see the role of regular examinees as “symbolic.” The thickness of narrative on these more orthodox examinees has functioned similarly to the elaborate traditionalist examination ceremonies (modeled after late imperial keju). Highlighting the orthodox examinees was a way to divert attention away from failed bureaucratic reform.

But this cannot explain the complicated narrative based on information about regular examinees.

If their only function was to maintain the facade of examination orthodoxy, the Yuan should have presented them as role models to display the success of reform. On the contrary, while the Yuan official narrative boasted the high pre-examination qualification (in terms of credentials and experience) of candidates, it also routinely complained about the poor performance of those who passed, as well as about their lack of practical administrative experience. The overall message is ironic: the academically outstanding and experienced candidates were turned into inefficient (intellectually and practically) but legitimate officials after the regular examinations.

These contradictions reveal the multiple strategic needs in the Yuan’s official account. On one hand, the participation of experienced and credentialed candidates was used as evidence of social recognition/faith in the civil examination system. But on the other hand, the Yuan had to maintain the balance between these “more orthodox” examinees and the other officials it legitimized by law, who were, by a strict definition of examination orthodoxy, inferior and needed to be replaced in the future.

Therefore, the defects of the regular examination passers were brought forth, or constructed, in order to leave room for arguments about the un-examined officials’ comparative advantage. These fault-finding criticisms of the regular examinees also helped to secure the Yuan’s authority. Even after the regular examinees came to possess a legitimacy that the Yuan officials/examiners lacked, they were still presented as inferior in terms of both intellectual capacity and practical experience; therefore, it was implied, they needed to be further educated by the Yuan and other un-examined officials in the

Nationalist state at large.

Below I will show how bio-data collected before examination—about work experience and academic credentials, in particular—and information about examination results were collected,

108 represented and fit into different arguments in the official narrative.

i) Demonstrating Social Recognition via Candidates’ Experience and Credentials

Since the 1931 inaugural civil service examination, examinees had been required to provide a large amount of bio-data on their application forms, including credentials, work experience, and results of a physical examination. The information collected far exceeded the need for verification of identity and prevention of cheating.189

Requirements for experience and credentials deserve further attention, as they constituted an assessment mechanism that might contradict examination. While examination created new credentials through its own assessment, qualification reviews counted on existing credentials as indicators of performance. The Examination Yuan’s emphasis on the latter shows how the Nationalist regime absorbed and negotiated within existing systems of legitimation, rather than establishing its own standard of assessment in more fundamental terms.

Applicants’ work experience was used to demonstrate their recognition of the Yuan’s examination standard. For example, in the 1941 report on the Advanced Level Examination submitted to the Nationalist Government, the prior work experience of the 2,100 applicants—ranging from college graduates to current weiren and jianren civil servants—was used to make the argument that the Yuan was already widely recognized as an institution of assessment. Interestingly, the report also underscored that the quota and category of offices assigned to passers was not specified before the examination. This suggested that the candidates were genuine in proving themselves by examination “as a proof of learning

189 A comparison with late imperial keju resumes illustrates the excess of information collected in the Nationalist examinations. In the Qing dynasty, a candidate of keju had to provide, along with the examination paper, the names of ancestors in five generations, mentors and affiliated academies. This information provided a context for the candidate’s identity and implied accountably of his family in case of cheating. Some accounts also showed that a description of the candidate’s physical features was stated in the reference letter provided by provincial officials who endorsed the candidate. In application forms for the Nationalist civil service examinations, the names of ancestors in three generations, endorsement of two referees, and a photograph of the candidate already performed the function of an identity check.

109 and work experience, not only for advancement (yiwei you xueshi jingyan zhi zhengming, buzhi tu yi jinshen 以為有學識經驗之證明，不止圖一進身).”190 In the following years, this narrative was repeatedly used by the Yuan administration to demonstrate progress in social recognition.

The requirement of academic credential was more controversial at the time. According to the

1930 Examination Law, candidates should have graduated from public or private secondary schools and colleges registered by the government; if not, they had to take a qualifying examination (jianding kaoshi

檢定考試) to prove equivalent academic ability (tongdeng xueli 同等學力) before seating for the actual exam. Data generated in the qualifying examination created competition between the Examination Yuan and academic institutions. For instance, in the official report of the 1933 Advanced Level Examination, the passing rate of examinees who entered by qualifying exam (which exceeded that of college degree holders) was celebrated as a triumph of individual effort over institutionalized education.191 This argument also could be used to justify the Nationalist state’s interventions in education, such as the centralized graduation examination for secondary school students (huikao 會考) it introduced in 1931.

Some in the public and the Nationalist Party expected the Yuan to further nationalize academic credentials to ensure open competition. Complaining about the class preference of institutionalized education, petitioners looked forward to the Yuan and Sun’s ideal of independent and centralized examination as a weapon against the status quo in the education field, which was dominated by wealth and social capital. These advocates of intervention in education opposed credential requirements for civil service examinations, as they screened candidates who were talented but could not afford formal education. In theory, the Yuan could use these voices as leverage to seize credential-making power from the education sector. 192

190 Kaoshiyuan shizhengbiannian lu, 238. 191 Ershier nian (1933) gaodeng kaoshi zongbaogao 二十二年 (1933) 高等考試總報告, 394. 192 Proposals for abolishing credential requirements were made by actors with various backgrounds, including a writer from the Beijing Chaoyang Law School, the Fujian Provincial Government, and several Nationalist Party members. Ping Wu 平午, “Zancheng feizhi zige kaoshi shixing putong kaoshi an: shi gejierenshi dedao ziyou dushu yi fuwu guojia zhi jihui 贊成廢止資格考試：使各界人士得到自由讀書以服務國家之機會,”

110 Yet the Yuan administration showed no intention of turning these proposals into actual policies.

Dai repeatedly proclaimed the nationalization of academic qualification as a mission of the Yuan, but it was never put into practice before 1949.193 The coexistence of credentials and qualifying examinations remained untouched in the 1935 revision of the Examination Law. And despite the frequent ideological attacks against the education sector (in which hardliner ideologues such as Chen Lifu played an important role), the Examination Yuan developed a symbiotic relationship with universities and schools.

In practice, the Yuan tended to borrow authority from formal education, rather than replacing existing credentials with its own assessment. Thus, in contrast to the wish of the petitioners, credentials and prior-qualification became even more important under the Yuan’s policies. In both the 1934 National

Convention of Examination and Assessment 全國考銓會議 and the 1940 Central Personnel Management

Conference 中央人事行政會議, the Examination Yuan delegates declined to take charge of graduate examinations in all tertiary institutions. The delegates explained that, as the Ministry of Education had not yet unified the tertiary syllabus, it would be impractical for the Yuan to conduct centralized graduation examinations for colleges.

Instead, the Yuan actively drafted policies of “mutual recognition” with education institutions, such as the Review on University Graduates as Qualified Candidates of Government Office (Jianhe daxuesheng biye chengji quanding renyong zige banfa 檢覈大學生畢業成績銓定任用資格辦法) proposed in July 1942.194 In the proposal, Dai pointed out that the state had already proven its trust in school education by recognizing academic credentials as entrance requirements for civil examinations

Faling zhoukan 法令周刊 21(1930): 1-2; Fujian Provincial Government, “Kaoshi zhidu ni quxiaozige xianzhi an 考試制度擬取消資格限制案 (1934),” Zhongguo kaoshi shi wenxian jicheng (Minguo), 445; “Kuozhan zongli kaoshi zhidu yu pinku xuesheng yi fazhan tiancai zhi jihui an 擴展總理考試制度予貧苦學生以發展天 材之機會案1935/11/16 Kuozhan zongli kaoshi zhidu yu pinku xuesheng yi fazhan tiancai zhi jihui an 擴展總 理考試制度予貧苦學生以發展天才之機會案 (November 16, 1935),” GMDPA (RPAM 5.1/4.17). 193 Dai Jitao, “Ling kaoxuan weiyuanhui wen 令考選委員會文(1941),” in Dai Jitao xiansheng yu kaoquan zhidu, 407. 194 “Jianhe daxuesheng biye chengji quanding renyong zige banfa 檢覈大學生畢業成績銓定任用資格辦法 (1942),” GMDPA (NSDCA 003/2069).

111 (xian wei xinren xuexiao jiaoyu, qie qu lianxi zhi yi zheng 顯為信任學校教育, 切取聯繫之一證).

Therefore, it was perfectly reasonable to qualify college graduates for civil service, as they had already been exposed to numerous high-stake examinations in schools. He then supported his argument by praising the performance of school graduates in past civil service examinations. Interestingly, the same statistic—which was often cited to criticize the quality of regular education in comparison to self- education and prior experience—was now used to draw a contrasting argument to emphasize the credibility of academic credentials.195

With the consent of the Ministry of Education (then presided over by Chen Lifu 陳立夫1900-

2001), the proposal was put into practice. The Ministry would compile a list of graduates who obtained average scores over 80 and ranked in the top five in their respective departments (the number should not exceed 20% of the students in the department). A selection committee formed by the Yuan would then select students from the list as qualified candidates for government positions. In the process no written examination was required—only random reviews of in-school examination papers and interviews were used to rectify the assessments in schools.

The Yuan continued to incorporate academic credential in its post-war reconstruction plan. In

August 1945, the Examination Yuan suggested expanding the number of credentialed examination candidates via a qualifying exam for all graduates of tertiary institutions.196 The policymakers of the Yuan acknowledged the absence of written examination in the previous College Graduate Review. Therefore, part of a written exam by the Yuan was included in the proposed review requirements along with school assessment.197 However, officials in the Ministry of Education insisted on playing a larger part in formal examination. They contended that, given the uneven graduation standards among post-secondary schools,

195 “本院統計以往各屆高等考試及格人員, 其由大學或專科學校畢業者, 其畢業成績以居前列者為多, 尤 可證實.” 196 “Zhuanke yishang xuexiao biyesheng quanding zige kaoshi tiaoli caoan 專科以上學校畢業生銓定資格考 試條例草案 (August 1945),” GMDPA (NSDCA 003/3259). 197 “Diliujie dierci zhongyang zhixing weiyuanhui quanti huiyi kaoshiyuan gongzuo baogaoshu 第六屆第二次 中央執行委員會全體會議考試院工作報告書 (1946),” GMDPA (General Archives 574/1), 19.

112 a review of in-school performance could hardly be defined as open and competitive examination.198 The proposal was eventually suspended, but the Yuan’s reliance on prior academic credentials had already been demonstrated.

It is tempting to explain these policies as the Yuan’s compromise to the autonomous education sector. But from its beginning, the Yuan was not designed to monopolize examinations. As early as 1929,

Dai had already envisioned a proliferation of exams in social sectors, to be borrowed and monitored by the Yuan. Ensuring openness and competitiveness via state-conducted exams was not his major concern.199 As stated in the 1934 General Report, “on one hand the state performed assessment [for the need of social sectors]; on the other the state needed to let the society or academic institutions freely assess [for themselves].” A wide variety of tests were recognized as legitimate examinations—including competitions in professions (tonghang bisai 同行比賽) or practices similar to periodic tests in Qing academies (yuekao 月考, suike 歲課, guanfeng 觀風). According to the author of the Report, these practices “do not have the name of examination, but are in essence examinations (wu kaoshi zhi ming; you kaoshi zhi shi 無考試之名; 有考試之實).”200

ii) Examination Passers Who Lacked Experience

As the government institution in charge of examination, the Yuan was thought of as the natural patron of regular examinees. The authority of the Yuan, it was supposed, rested on the prestige of those who passed the exams it convened. Those who held this view were supported by the appointment of

Champions (bangshou 榜首) of the Advanced Level Examination Control Yuan Commissioner (jiancha weiyuan 監察委員), a prestigious post representing official recognition of examinees who had passed.

198 “教育部議覆：各校畢業成績標準不同，如以審查畢業成績為銓定資格考試方法之一種，似尚有考 慮之餘地; 教育部議覆意見.” 199 Dai Jitao, “Kaoshiyuan de choubei chengli he wuyuanzhi de yunyong jiangci 考試院的籌備成立和五院制 的運用講詞,” in Dai Jitao xiansheng yu kaoquan zhidu, 251-2. 200 Kaoshiyuan zong baogaoshu, 111.

113 However, merely appointing the few champions did not offset the Yuan administration’s indifference to the placement of the rest of those who passed, as shown in the previous section. Moreover, looking closer at a debate over the appointment of jiancha weiyuan, we will find that the Yuan administration showed no intention of defending the examinees, especially from challenges about their lack of practical experience.

In the 1941 Central Political Conference, twelve Party members proposed increasing the qualifying requirements for control commissioner appointments. These requirements included age (over

35), college degree (or equivalent qualification), and experience—10 years of “revolution experience,” which meant actively participating in Party affairs, or “political experience,” which meant serving in jianren 簡任 positions for more than three years or jianren 薦任 for more than five years. At the end of the proposal, the petitioners specified that the advanced level exam champion of that year could not meet these criteria. They concluded with an analogy to the Qing imperial examination: the graduates of keju, no matter how high-ranking, had to go through a period of “practice” (lianxi 練習). They started with the seventh (out of nine) rank and would by no means get a high position like the control commissioner, which was comparable to second-rank offices in the Qing. As the quality of contemporary college graduates was inferior to the late imperial keju degree holders, “we should not make such exceptional promotions based on one-time performance in examination, which can be just a fluke.”201

This was a challenge to which the Examination Yuan should have retaliated. But on the contrary, in the policy debate over the deficiencies of examination passers, the Yuan administration did virtually nothing to defend its examinees. Instead, echoing the critiques against the exam graduates, the Yuan further promoted post-examination requirements in the name of “learning” (xuexi 學習) and “training”

(xunlian 訓練), such as the programs in the Nationalist Party’s Central Cadet of Politics. Experience defined as years of service in the Party and the government could hardly be compensated by these re- education programs. Therefore, such requirements only consolidated the disadvantage of orthodox

201 “Gaokao diyiming jianren wei jiancha weiyuan yi quxiao an 高考第一名簡任為監察委員宜取銷案 (December 1941),” GMDPA (RPAM 5.2/96.27).

114 examinees. Contemporaries had also noticed other flaws in the “lack of experience” narrative. First,

“practical experience” was at odds with the original appeal of examination orthodoxy—instilling a fresh and well-educated force into the existing bureaucracy. In this sense, administrative experiences should not be prioritized. Second, the criteria of experience created barriers for the youth to serve the country in times of crisis.202

Dai Jitao once eluded to this question by manipulating the ambiguity of the Chinese character for examination—kao (考). In 1944, as the Yuan’s representative, he wrote a ceremonial essay dedicated to the newly established Society for Examination Policies (kaozheng xuehui 考政學會), organized by successful candidates from advanced and general level examinations. Instead of celebrating the prevailing examination orthodoxy, Dai pointed out the need for continued education by referring to an ancient and ideal form of examination that existed before keju. In traditional philology, kao was interchangeable with lao (老), which meant maturing and seasoning. The real meaning of examination was therefore, according to Dai, enrichment with experiences.203 That was why, he argued, ancient examinations were conducted to observe practical performances, rather than mere written answers. To justify the post-examination requirements for “training,” Dai was ready to discard written examination, which was widely regarded as necessary for examination orthodoxy.

iii) Negative Interpretations of Examination Results

Another recurrent narrative in the Yuan’s official account was poor overall performance in examinations. Dai Jitao’s comment on the inaugural 1931 Advanced and General Examinations had established this tone. In a condescending manner, he announced that examiners had given additional

202 One of these criticisms came from Bai Chongxi, the powerful military man. “Bai Chongxi deng tiqing lingding feichang shiqi quanxu banfa an 白崇禧等提請另定非常時期銓敘辦法案 (1939),” GMDPA (RPAM 5.2 42.2.3). 203 “考老互訓, 考其才者, 正所以老其才也. 故古代之考試, 舉行於任用之後, 以事功之成績為考試之目, 與後代之科舉迥殊.” Dai Jitao, “Xu kaozheng xuehui zhu tongzhi 勗考政學會諸同志 (1944),” in Dai Jitao xiansheng yu kaoquan zhidu, 478.

115 scores to pass those who did not match the initial passing standard. For Dai, the low overall quality created a shortage of passers, which forced him to make this concession. Following Dai’s argument, the

1934 General Report claimed that the distribution of scores in the first two Advanced Level Examinations was extremely uneven (fenbu zhuangtai ji qian zhengqi 分佈狀態極欠整齊), and the unevenly-shaped score curve demonstrated this poor overall performance. Adding to scores and openly critiquing overall performance became routine in subsequent examinations.204

The Yuan’s argument was problematic in terms of testing method. Distribution of scores does not indicate overall performance measured by an absolute standard. Unless an absolute standard was established and announced beforehand, the Advanced Level exam was a tournament assessment that only showed relative performances among the candidates. The score addition and comments on overall performance were therefore arbitrary and groundless. These flaws were noticed by the public right after the 1931 inaugural Advanced Level Civil Service Examination.205 Critics also speculated that the Yuan examiners attempted to fail as many candidates as possible in order to manifest the Yuan’s authority over formal education.206 The Nationalist state’s limited administrative resources might not have allowed for systemic research on examination standards, but the fact that the Yuan had not provided a specific curriculum for civil examinations before 1949 is still astonishing. How could the Yuan openly criticize

204 Kaoshiyuan zong baogao shu, 156-7. “第一屆考的成績都很差, 總分加 5 分, 才有 100 名合格, 第二屆一 律加 10 分, 同第二試平均以後, 差不多仍是加 5 分, 如此才錄取了 100 名. 以後各屆考試, 也時有加分的 情形, 但是情形逐漸往好處走....但人才的缺乏，也可以見到一斑.” Dai Jitao, “Kaoshi yu quanxu jiangci 考試與銓敘講詞 (1941),” in Dai Jitao xiansheng yu kaoquan zhidu, 437. 205 Xiajun 霞君, “you kaishi fagui tandao benjie gaodeng kaoshi 有考試法規談到本屆高等考試,” Falu pinglun 法律評論 8, no. 46 (1931): 1-4. Falu Pinglun was edited by the faculty of the Chaoyang Legal College (est. 1912), the most prominent private institution of legal training in Beijing at the time.205 While Chaoyang graduates enjoyed a certain degree of success in the Nationalist civil service examinations, it was widely believed that the Yuan administration manipulated the grading process against candidates from Chaoyang in order to promote graduates from Central University in the field of legal and political education. Despite this rivalry, Xiajun’s critique of the Yuan’s assessment methodology was mostly substantial and fair. 206 “Diyijie gaodeng kaoshi jiexiao 第一屆高等考試揭曉,” Guowen zhoubao 8, no. 32 (1931): 2-3; “Ge Youming Cong gaodeng kaoshi kan ge daxue de chengdu 從高等考試看各大學的程度,” Shehui yu jiaoyu 社 會與教育 2, no. 16 (1931): 11-12.

116 overall examination performance based on an absolute “standard” completely unknown to the public?

Dai handled public suspicion by admitting a minor error in the process of score addition. Under an anonymous system modeled after the late imperial keju, the examinees’ identities should have remained unknown to the examiners when their answers were graded. Candidates’ registration numbers on the papers were sealed to prevent exposing identity. In the 1931 exam, however, the Yuan examiners added scores after the seals were broken. It was thus possible that the additional scores were given to specific candidates whose identities were known to the examiners. In the General Report for this exam submitted to the Nationalist Government, Dai acknowledged that there were “misunderstandings” among the public on this practice. But he contended that the registration numbers did not expose the candidates’ identities to the examiners and that extra scores were given to all examinees who initially failed by less than five average points, rather than to particular candidates. He concluded by a somewhat trivial self-criticism, requesting an administrative penalty for himself if one of the candidates within the range was not given extra points. Adding to scores then became a legitimate practice, and failure to do so would be penalized.207

The actual question of curriculum was brought up in the 1934 National Conference of

Examination and Assessment (quanguo kaoquan huiyi 全國考銓會議). During the conference, delegates from the educational sector, represented by Hu Shih, as well as officials from the National Audit Office

(shenjibu 審計部), proposed to announce the scope of examinations and an official list of reference books. In his speeches at the conference, Hu highlighted the large number of Central University graduates who passed the examination, hinting that the lack of specific scope created a considerable advantage for them, as they were taught by professors who were eventually recruited for the examination committee to design the questions. Hu’s comment ignited antagonisms in cultural politics—such as Beijing versus

207 “主考官援用從前江浙兩省縣長考試及司法官初試之先例，拆去試卷彌封之後，加減分數…外間頗 多誤會, 其實試卷彌封, 僅列號數, 未列姓名...普遍的自若干分起加若干分，或減若干分，並非對某一人 任意加減.” Kaoshiyuan zong baogaoshu, 159.

117 Nanjing, Peking University versus Central, and liberal versus pro-Nationalist. As a result, the proposals for curriculum were indefinitely postponed on the pretext that further research was needed.

An anti-curriculum camp was formed among Nanjing-based and pro-Nationalist scholars. The group included Luo Jialun 羅嘉倫 (1897-1969), president of Central University, legislator Wei

Tingsheng 衛挺生, and Ruan Yicheng 阮毅成 (1905-1988), a professor of law at Central.208 In an article published in Shidai gonglun, the major magazine of Nanjing pro-KMT intellectuals, Ruan summarized arguments from both the Conference and follow-up discussions among the anti-curriculum scholars. In the article, he conflated the pre-examination announcement of scope—a fundamental question of methodology and fairness—with logistical issues such as the number of reference books. After bombarding his readers with issues he claimed to be irresolvable, Ruan leaped to the conclusion that the scope and standard of examinations should not be revealed. “If all the candidates are informed of the scope of examination,” Ruan claimed, “within the same perimeter, it will be difficult to differentiate their respective performances, and thus, render the examination meaningless.”

Without substantial research, this opinion was adopted as the Examination Yuan’s official response to the curriculum question. Following Ruan’s argument, the 1934 General dismissed the demands for examination curriculum as a sign of decadence in scholarship (xuefeng buzhen 學風不振

).209

Despite the problems demonstrated above, score addition became a conventional regulative device in civil examinations. It was used to provide an advantage to candidates from under-developed provinces (bianqu 邊區) in a policy introduced in 1941. The additional scores given to these borderland candidates were also accompanied by a label of inferiority. It was not until the establishment of constitutions in 1947 that a separate quota system replaced extra scores as the means of adjusting the

208 “Gaokao yu cankao shu: piping Hu Shi lun zhongda yu beida 高考與參考書: 批評胡適論中大與北大,” Shidai gonglun 137 (1934): 3-4; Ruan Yicheng, “Kaoshi zhiding cankaoshu wenti 考試指定參考書問題,” Shidai gonglun 155 (1935): 8-14. 209 Kaoshiyuan zong baogaoshu, 159.

118 provincial distribution of candidates. Yet for minority groups—Aboriginal Taiwanese, Mongols and

Tibetans—and overseas Chinese (qiao 僑), score addition has still been used by the Nationalist government to include (while labeling) them over an extremely long timespan, from the 1930s, when the

Nationalist Government was still fighting its War of Resistance, to the present day, more than six decades after the Republic of China migrated to Taiwan.

Conclusion

The Nationalist civil service examination is usually compared to the late imperial keju, mostly because of the traditionalist ceremonies introduced by Dai Jitao, which occupied a central space in commemorative writings by successful candidates.210 But this comparison obscures the new authority- making mechanism that emerged in the politics surrounding the idea of “examination orthodoxy” under the Nationalist regime. In the late imperial period, keju was trusted because it guaranteed specific rewards to its participants. As shown in Chapter 1, this assumption of an exchange relationship in testing was undermined by ideas constructed during late Qing modernization reforms—particularly the stigmatization of office seeking and monetary rewards. This ideological development was not reversed under the

Nationalist regime. While using the examination to demonstrate the Nationalist state’s openness and fairness, Dai and the Examination Yuan administration never committed to giving those who passed examinations priority in official assignments. This was not the result of a limited actual power of the

Yuan (in comparison to the Party and the executive branch), but indeed was intentional on the part of the

Nationalist ruling elite. Unlike the keju, the civil service examinations in the 1930s and 40s provided only abstract qualifications, rather than specific rewards.

How could the Yuan generate authority in assessment without rewarding its examinees? The authority of the Yuan was not automatically supported by the ideology of “examination orthodoxy.” The

210 For example, the three commemorative articles included in the 1988 collection of civil service-related historical sources (wenshi ziliao 文史資料). Guomindang de wenguan zhidu yu wenguan kaoshi, 1-47.

119 concept coined by Sun Yat-sen was indeed a cluster of ideas to improve politics, rather than feasible ways to shape examination into an institutional solution. First, following the logic of examination orthodoxy, one would assume that individualization of government officials prevents corruption and thus guarantee integrity in bureaucracy. But this assumption was not only unrealistic given the Nationalist government’s reliance on bureaucrats recruited in previous regimes, it was also at odds with the networks formed within the Party. Second, the concept of examination orthodoxy did not respond to the professionalization and diversification of knowledge, which by definition diminished openness and competitiveness. Only those trained in particular professions were qualified for the expanding technocratic government positions, such as accounting and engineering. This was also true for the positions requiring specific prior experience, such as county heads. In the discourse of examination orthodoxy, the connection between fairness in keju and the relatively stable body of common classical knowledge was often evaded. Third, “examination orthodoxy” encapsulated an imagined detachment of administrative efficiency/procedural fairness from constitutional politics. But as seen in Dai’s effort to evade the question of the tutelage-constitution transition, such detachment was indeed artificial and delicate.

These expectations were contradictory and unrealistic, but nonetheless powerful. They not only occupied an important position in KMT party ideology, but also gained currency among non-KMT intellectuals, such as Luo Longji and Zhang Rui. Under the pressure of “examination orthodoxy,” the

Examination Yuan administration was forced toward two strategic goals that were in tension with one another.

The first goal was to justify regular examinations which did not guarantee rewards, and therefore, lacked appeal to applicants. Credentials and applicant experience were used to demonstrate recognition of the Yuan’s examination standard. Here we see another crucial deviation from the late imperial keju: while keju created new credentials through its own assessment, the Nationalist civil service examination borrowed from existing credentials. Keju was also trusted because it guaranteed transferable social capital to its participants. In contrast, Dai Jitao and the Examination Yuan administration never committed to assign actual offices to the examinees they passed. The value of examination rested on its

120 assessment standard. The trustworthiness of the Yuan’s standard was based on a “social recognition” indicated by the participants’ prior quality. More well-educated and experienced examinees made the examination more valued. But on the other hand, the Nationalist civil service examination had no

“intrinsic value” because passing was detached from actual rewards, including official assignments and welfare as civil servants.

The second goal of the Yuan was to explain the marginal position of the regular examinees, who were supposed to be the mainstream of the civil service under the ideology of examination orthodoxy.

Before the 1947 Constitution clearly defined examination as open and competitive, officials not recruited by regular civil service exams—Party members who applied for offices, bureaucrats recruited by previous political regimes, and the passers of ad-hoc/irregular examinations—had equal legal status with the

“orthodox” exam passers. Moreover, as most of the examiners and administrators of the Yuan had not passed the “orthodox” examination, their qualifications for the position remained questionable. How could unorthodox examiners test orthodox candidates? That was why the performance of orthodox examinees was routinely criticized. The deficiencies of zhengtu examinees were probably the only explanation for their continued subordination to the theoretically illegitimate officials who occupied higher positions in the government.

An extremely imbalanced relationship between examinees and the state as examiner was thus created. On one hand, the examinees contributed their pre-examination quality to the authority of an examination that did not guarantee specific rewards. On the other hand, the examiners tended to consolidate their authority by supressing rather than promoting the examinees they passed. The situation was paradoxical: the most legitimate (in terms of procedural fairness in selection) examinees were the most vulnerable in the politics of examination.

This distorted relationship persisted despite two notable changes after the Sino-Japanese War.

The first was the improvement of welfare for those who passed exams. As discussed, reforms in 1945 provided regular examinees with a certain extent of security in rations and resettlement. These became important incentives for taking a regular civil service examination, and were reflected in the number of

121 applicants in 1946. The second change was the 1947 Constitution, which is still in effect in Taiwan.

Under the new Constitution, examination is clearly defined as open and competitive. The Examination

Yuan was now legally tied to the regular examinees. However, the principle of “open and competitive” was at odds with the examinations introduced for demobilization and remobilization after 1945. For example, the Nationalist Government used examinations specially designed to settle demobilized military officials into the civil service. These demobilization examinations created more than 100,000 civil servants between 1946 and 1948. This is indeed an enormous number in comparison to the 10,807 recruitments by regular examinations from 1931 to 1949. After migrating to Taiwan, the Examination

Yuan also created numerous special examinations in the name of national security and revival, including the notorious First Class Special Examination, tailor-made to pass particular members of the Nationalist ruling elite.

In Chapter 5, I will show that the marginalization of orthodox examinees persisted in post-war

Taiwan and explain how the paradoxes in examination orthodoxy were normalized in spite of the 1947

Constitution. The Second Sino-Japanese War, the Civil War, and the Cold War had all prolonged the life of an imbalanced modern Chinese examination system.

122 CHAPTER 4

Huikao (Centralized Graduation Examination 1932-1957): State-School Cooperation and the

Separation of Assessment and Resource Allocation

“I see students being sacrificed, but none of those inferior schools were eliminated!”

吾見學生被犧牲矣，而未見惡校被淘汰！

--Editorial, Taikungpao, February 1, 1935

Prologue

On June 13, 1942, a petition letter from a college student transferred from the Fujian Education

Bureau arrived at the Nationalist Government’s Ministry of Education, relocated in Chongqing after the outbreak of the War of Resistance. The letter, now stored at the Second Historical Archives in Nanjing, had been seriously discussed by the Ministry officials, as seen in the density of the remarks—some were squeezed in the space of the paper; some were written on the numerous stickers attached.211 The petitioner, Xu Tianyu 徐天語, was originally a student of the Xiamen University High School. In 1933 he had to take the inaugural Centralized Graduation Examination (huikao 會考) in the Fujian Province, which was implemented under the Nationalist Government’s administrative order that all high school students should pass the state-run huikao to have their graduations legally recognized. Xu had never taken the huikao in Fujian—he attributed that to local disturbances and his family’s financial difficulties. Yet he had passed an admissions exam and enrolled in Nankai University in Tianjin, and after the outburst of student activism in 1934, transferred to Sichuan University. In Sichuan, he took the high school huikao several times and failed repeatedly in the subject of mathematics—despite the fact that he was an accounting major in college. Around 1940, he finished the coursework of Sichuan University and started working at the state-sponsored Cooperative Bank. When the Cooperative Bank was put under the control

211 Ministry of Education, Zhongxue biye huikao fujiansheng laiwang wenshu 中學畢業會考福建省來往文書, Second Historical Archives, 5-7047, 53-60.

123 of the state’s Farmer’s Bank in 1942, the new administration requested an official certificate (with the

Ministry’s stamp) which Xu was unable to provide—without passing the high school huikao, he could not apply for an official college graduation certificate from the Ministry. In legal terms, completion of study in secondary and tertiary institutions did not automatically make Xu a high school and college graduate.

In his petition, Xu pleaded with the Ministry officials to grant him an official credential based on the coursework he had finished in high school and college.

Unwilling to intervene in the hiring at another state institution, the Ministry of Education officials leaned toward granting Xu the qualification. But recognizing high school and college degrees only by completion of coursework might undermine the huikao. In the end, the solution suggested by the Ministry was to request Sichuan University to conduct a special qualification examination assessing Xu’s academic ability as a high school graduate.212

Why did the Ministry painstakingly prevent itself from directly qualifying Xu? As seen in their comments, the bureaucrats thought that such a move would eliminate the only administrative means of forcing students to take the centralized exam, because the huikao had never been connected to advancement in education from its implementation in 1932 to its termination in 1949, when the

Nationalist Government fled from China proper. The college admissions exams—though partially conglomerated as a “joint admission system” (lian zhao 聯招) with the aid of the state during the War— remained autonomous and separate from the state-directed huikao. Nor did the secondary school huikao determine placements in high schools, which were under the arbitration of each school’s administration.

That was why a large number of students like Xu could gain admission to higher education and obtain a state-approved credential without passing the huikao. In other words, the huikao system was maintained by the state’s power to legalize graduation from education institutions, not the power to distribute opportunities and resources.213

212 “中等司認為可以通融，似以令肆業大學予以補試為宜.” 213 This negative power of illegalization was indeed limited under the Nationalist regime. If a student completed coursework and did not need an officially-recognized credential, which might be the case if he/she did not work in a state institution/enterprise like Xu, there would be no need to take the huikao at all.

124 It is tempting to see this striking disconnection between huikao and college admission as the

Nationalist state’s limit, if not failure, to centralize power from the relatively autonomous education institutions developed under the loose control of the Beijing Government.214 Such a perspective, however, obscures fundamental questions about the manifestation and sustaining of state power in modern examination, which emerged in the contradictions of the huikao. As an examination without specific rewards, the huikao was by design a way to indicate the weaknesses of students and schools caused by the assumed failures of modern education since the late Qing New Policy Reform. In the original policy discussion leading to the 1932 Regulation, the huikao was justified by the need to eliminate inefficient schools that produced graduates who failed to meet the standard established by the state. The underlying logic was circular—the huikao was a test that demonstrated the weakness of education, which then justified the existence of the test itself. It was therefore not surprising to see harsh grading and negative interpretations of huikao results throughout its implementation under Nationalist rule. This structure of self-fulfilling prophecy, as Pierre Bourdieu has pointed out, is commonly found in the “genesis” of state power.215 But the huikao was by no means dictated by the state ideologues. As an institution of testing relying on participation and cooperation, the sustainment of huikao in the 1930s and 40s needs historical explanations: Why did students and schools participate in a game that was designed to discover their weaknesses without providing incentives? Did the Nationalist state force participation by means of coercion, ranging from laws and punishment by violence to threats of cutting government funding to schools? Did the wartime emergency expand the state’s coercive power and weaken the autonomy of the schools and students?

The core of the huikao system, as I argue in this chapter, was in fact a cooperation, rather than a contest, between the state and the schools. Right after the implementation of the huikao in 1932, the state-

214 Mei-jung Kuan, “From Separation to Joint: Development of the Joint College Entrance Examination 1938- 1940,” Guoshiguan xueshu jikan 國史館學術集刊 16 (2008): 97-101. 215 Pierre Bourdieu, On the State: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1989-1992, trans. David Fernbach, ed. Patrick Champagne, Remi Lenoir, Franck Poupeau and Marie-Christine Rivière (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014), 89.

125 school tension had been diminishing as the responsibility for the assumed failure of education shifted to the students. In ideological terms, the discourse of education failure originally tended to blame the administrators of secondary and primary schools for seeking profit by expanding the number of placements and graduates without quality control. This was not least because of the active role played by professors of elite universities in the construction of this narrative. Yet, as shown in the first section of this chapter, there was also a strong implication in the failure narrative that the unqualified school graduates were not only indicators of an educational problem, but a threat to social stability. This created room for school administrators to excuse themselves by re-interpreting the results of huikao as the individual failures (and moral defects) of students. In institutional terms, the huikao thus empowered rather than overrode discipline in schools. As students were required to register via schools to sit for the examination, they could not use the exam to replace the credential from the schools. Nor did the state affect admissions decisions via the huikao, as shown in Xu Tianyu’s experience. Such recognition of the schools’ authority was embedded in the fact that the Nationalist state relied heavily on the schools for the logistics of the huikao, including venues, student registration records, committee members and administrative staff. This not only enabled manipulation of the schools in the examination process, but also made it virtually impossible for the state to take actual action against the schools with inferior performance on the huikao. On the other hand, the costs for these institutional agreements between the state and the schools were shifted to the students as the burden for taking the huikao—an extra exam that brings only negative consequences.

As shown in the third section of this chapter, the Nationalist Government’s cooperation with the schools persisted during the War of Resistance. The huikao became more important as an institutional barrier between the state’s authority of assessment and the actual negotiation with students, especially those who became refugees during the war, over distribution of resources. This strategy was at least partially successful: it did not hold schools accountable for academic performance, but instead directed the pressure from students for resettlement to the school administration. This was why huikao were held whenever it was logistically possible even during the disturbance of the war until the last months of

126 Nationalist rule of mainland China. Moreover, when the Ministry of Education was under pressure to respond to petitions from students like Xu Tianyu, the officials had to fabricate solutions through the school system to maintain the state-school division, no matter how artificial and awkward those solutions were.

I) Visions of Centralized Examination and the Narrative of Education Failure

The first comprehensive plan for centralized graduate examination as a national policy was presented in 1930 at the Second National Education Conference. It was among the few proposals for education reform submitted by representatives of the education sector to the Conference committee presided over by Chiang Kai-Shek, who was then filling the vacant office of Education Minister.216 The plan’s author, Wu Yourong 吳有容, was an advocate of Sun Yat-senism who was marginal in the

Nationalist Party and circles of mainstream Chinese intellectuals at the time. After attending the prestigious Waseda University in Japan as a student from colonial Taiwan, Wu became the head of the

Liancheng 連城 County in Fujian around 1928 by passing one of the earliest county head examinations under Nationalist rule. During his brief period in office, Wu investigated the schools in his jurisdiction and complained about their poor performance. As the schools tended to conceal problems and to issue credentials without proper assessment, Wu saw centralized graduate examination as the only way to improve conditions. Justifying his actions with Sun Yat-sen’s idea of reform by examination, Wu organized a huikao for primary schools in Liancheng in which about 200 students participated. He used the experiment to produce a pamphlet in 1929 and the proposal for national huikao presented at the 1930

National Conference, which Wu attended as the representative of the “overseas Chinese” in Taiwan.217

216 Dierci quanguo jiaoyuhuiyi shimo ji 第二次全國教育會議始末記, vol. 5 (Taipei: Zhuanji wenxue, 1971), 17-20. For the concentration on a few proposals, which was an approach that sharply differed from the first National Conference in 1928, see Lee Chiu-chun, “Liberalism and Nationalism at a Crossroads: The Guomindang’s Educational Policies, 1927–1930,” in The Politics of Historical Production in Late Qing and Republican China, ed. Tze-ki Hon and Robert J. Culp (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 304-6. 217 Wu Yourong, “Liancheng xian diyijie xiaoxue biye huikao fakanci 連城縣第一屆小學畢業會考彙刊發刊 詞,” Fujian jiaoyu zhoukan 福建教育周刊 19 (1929): 48-9.

127 The Liancheng project was not the only experiment in centralized graduate examination in the late 1920s, but it was Wu who bridged local experiment and national reform and who shaped the ideological implications of huikao.218 For Wu, the huikao was not merely a standardization of assessment, but a means to expose the failures of education and punish those who were responsible. The effectiveness of centralized exams was thus indicated by the increase in failures in comparison to school exams.

Among the 200 students who took the Liancheng primary school huikao, Wu highlighted in the preface to the 1929 huikan, only sixteen passed all subjects. Unlike the scholars in the Standardized Test Movement

(discussed in Chapter 2), Wu did not bother to defend his plan with objective testing methods. Nor did he bring the curriculum into consideration. What he promoted was an assumption that would evolve into a circular logic of justification—strict examination, regardless of the content and method, was needed to discover unqualified graduates; the failed examinees produced by strict examination show that such examination is indeed necessary. To borrow the words of an education official who participated in the

Liancheng project, the huikao was a “diagnosis for defects” (zhenduan quexian 診斷缺陷) in which the existence of defects in education was presumed before the diagnosis was actually conducted.219

As a former local official and a Taiwan-born intellectual who was eager to show his loyalty to the

Nationalist state ideology, Wu could not represent the Chinese education profession, which had established its autonomy from the late Qing and Beijing governments, negatively. But his assumption of the failure of education and proposal for rigorous centralized examination were in fact echoed by the education sector, especially the former New Culture Movement activists and U.S.-trained education scholars who successfully advocated a standardization in the school system following the U.S. model in

1922. After gaining a foothold in the profession, these scholars became part of the establishment they had once protested against, and were increasingly hostile to the new generation of students who could threaten

218 Ding Chongxuan 丁重宣, “Huikao shi shenme 會考是什麼,” Jiaoyu zhoukan 教育周刊 54 (1931): 37. Chen Banzao 陳泮藻, “Cheng daxueyuan shizhengfu benxueqi biye huikao jingguo qingxing you 呈大學院、 市政府本學期畢業會考經過情形由,” Nanjing tebie shi jiaoyu yuekan 南京特别市教育月刊 1, no. 12 (1928): 27-8. 219 Ding, “Huikao shi shenme,” 36-41.

128 the status quo with activism, like they had done a few years before. Critiques of the academic inferiority of the youth, and demands for “strict examination,” which consolidated the distinction between educators and students, thus gained currency among scholars with diverse intellectual backgrounds. For instance, both Ai Wei 艾偉, a U.S.-trained education professor (see Chapter 2) and Lu Simian呂思勉, a locally educated historian, who were teaching at a second-rate university, wrote in 1927 and 1928 on the necessity for strict examination (yange kaoshi 嚴格考試).220

Their opinion was amplified by the 1931 League of Nations report on the condition of Chinese education. Based on an investigation assisted mostly by the network of university-based educators, the report articulated the education problem from a university-oriented, and somewhat elitist, perspective: the lack of students prepared for tertiary education indicated the failure of primary and secondary education.

Though the weaknesses of universities, including the lack of qualified professors and resources, were mentioned, they were used to support an argument for an increase in public investment in universities, while the secondary schools were portrayed as responsible for overexpansion and the production of excessive and unqualified graduates. In response to this disconnection of secondary and tertiary education, the report suggested a centralized college entrance exam to raise the standard of college admission.221 Interestingly, this proposal for a state-organized centralized entrance exam, which in theory would undermine the autonomy of universities, did not meet significant protests from the leaders of the education sector. This was not only because the educators paid attention to the parts of the report that substantiated their accusation of education failure. In fact, in the early 1930s, the university and education profession saw themselves as possessing the authority and function of the state in education, while the legal regime merely made official, rather than defined, their power.

220 Ai Wei, “Yange kaoshi zhi yiyi 嚴格考試之意義,” Zhangshan daxue jiaoyu xingzheng zhoukan 中山大學 教育行政週刊 23 (1927): 437; Lu Simian 呂思勉, “Kaoshi lun 考試論 (1928),” in Lu Simian lunxue conggao 呂思勉論學叢稿 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2006), 306-8. 221 Mission of Educational Experts of the League of Nations, The Reorganization of Education in China (Paris: League of Nations' Institute of Intellectual Co-operation, 1932). Suzanne Pepper, Radicalism and Education Reform in 20th Century China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 42-5.

129 In response to the education crisis diagnosed by the Western experts from the League of Nations, a university-oriented vision of reform was articulated by none other than Hu Shih 胡適, the most influential intellectual and education leader of the time. In an opinion article published in the Taikungpao

大公報 in 1934, Hu argued that the underperforming secondary schools, particularly those that proliferated after six-year secondary education became the standard under the 1922 School System, should be slashed (tongcai 痛裁) and replaced by high schools established by universities, which ensured consistency between academic standards for high school graduation and college entrance.222 To free talented students from the already-corrupted secondary school system, Hu also proposed an opening of college examination to independent examinees who had not graduated from, or even attended, regular secondary education. Under the education laws issued by the Nationalist Government, this independent application, conventionally called “equivalent learning capacity” (tongdeng xueli 同等學力), was allowed only in admission to secondary schools and was limited to a quota of less than 20% of total admissions.

The full opening of tongdeng xueli in college admission, if implemented, would lead to a “bracketing” of order in secondary education—students who aimed at tertiary education would not need to follow the year-grade system in secondary schools and could leave whenever they passed a college entrance exam.

Hu shared with Wu Yourong a distrust in secondary and primary education, as well as the use of external examination—conducted either by the government or universities—as the means of sanctioning the present education failure. Their narrative of “overproduction” in education met sharp criticism from a camp of left-leaning writers and educators advocating education popularization, including Tao Xingzhi and Lu Xun. “In (Chinese) society with more than 80% of the population illiterate,” Lu Xun (using his pen-name of Yu Ming) wrote in the Shenpao in 1933, the “excess of knowledge” was just an “objective fact” fabricated by the intellectual elite to obstruct the popularization of education.223 But such opposition

222 Hu Shih, “Shui jiao qingnian xuesheng zao jia wenping de 誰教青年學生造假文憑的?,” Taikungpao, December 2, 1934. Hu’s proposal for leadership of universities in education policy can be seen as a resurrection of the short-lived Daxueyuan 大學院 system implemented in 1928. 223 Yu Ming (Lu Xun), “Zhishi guosheng 知識過剩,” Shenpao 申報, July 16, 1933.

130 did not come in defense of the existing primary and secondary schools. For the advocates of popular education, the tendency of profit-seeking among school administrators made education affordable only for the rich and powerful few. While paying more attention to corruption than inefficiency, they held a no less negative view of the present condition of education. Moreover, some in the popularization camp, such as Zou Taofen 鄒韜奮, also agreed to use examination of “equivalent learning capacity” to free students from the discipline, formality and exploitation of the schools.224

Despite the strong voice for punishing existing institutions, it remained unclear what the resulting policy would look like. First of all, a complete takeover of power was impractical for the reformists, not only because neither the Nationalist Government nor the universities had the capacity to unilaterally impose sanctions on the schools. Centralizing the power of assessment and admission would be accompanied by the discontent of aspiring students originally divided among the school internal exams, the state (centralized examination) and the universities (admission examination and review). This was not a desirable development for the education leaders based in universities. In the early 1930s, the selection process of elite universities had been increasingly exposed to social scrutiny, as demonstrated in the controversies surrounding Chinese language (guowen) questions on the Tsinghua entrance examination written by Chen Yinke (陳寅恪), often regarded as the most erudite historian and philologist of the time.

The 1932 exam included a section in which examinees were required to write a couplet parallel to the three characters/words in the name of the fictional character Monkey King—Sun Xing Zhe (孫行者).

This question surprised the examinees not only because of its deviation from conventional question format, but also because of its seeming irrelevance to any high school curriculum of the time. After the completion of the examination, Chen was depicted in the published media, especially in the magazines targeted at students, as an arrogant elitist scholar who unfairly imposed his personal tastes as standards.

The composition topic Chen picked—“A Tour of the Tsinghua Garden in a Dream” (Mengyou Qinghua

224 Zou Taofen 鄒韜奮, “Zhuzhong tongdeng xueli de kaoshi guicheng 注重同等學力的考試規程,” Shenghuo 生活 6, no. 5 (1931): 1-2.

131 Yuan 夢遊清華園)—had also infuriated the critics, who interpreted it as condescending to examinees who had no access to the former royal garden. Critics started to employ a language of class conflict to articulate their discontent with Chen and the Tsinghua administration. In the end, the episode did not evolve into a large-scale social movement, but it had given the university-based educators a glimpse of the social pressure the admissions exam could bring.225

This pressure was reflected in Hu Shih’s hesitation with the idea of “equivalent learning capacity.” If independent registration for a college admissions exam was fully opened, the universities would be held solely accountable to an even larger pool of candidates. Given the enormous gap between the number of high school students and placements available in the colleges, a large population of aspiring students would be denied tertiary education.226 To prevent such a scenario, Hu hinted in his article that in his plan there would be limits to the qualification of the “equivalent learning capacity” candidates for seating in college entrance exams, such as 4-5 years of residence in secondary schools and above 80% in average grade. With these restrictions, the actual policy Hu envisioned was far more conservative than the bold language he employed against the so-called failed secondary schools. Relying on criteria created in schools to maintain a manageable number of college entrance examinees, Hu had to recognize the authority of the secondary school administrators in confining students within the year-grade system. In other words, external/centralized examination and the policy of “equivalent learning capacity” could only produce a minor reduction of the schools’ credentializing power. This structural limit had also shaped the Nationalist Government’s policy of separating huikao and college admission, as I will discuss in the next section.

The second uncertainty in the “education failure” narrative regarded the distribution of

225 Luo Zhitian 羅志田, “Siwen guan tianyi: 1932 nian qinghua daxue ruxue kaoshi de dui duizi fengbo 斯文 關天意: 1932 年清華大學入學考試的對對子風波,” Jindaishi yanjiu 近代史研究 3 (2008); “Wuming zhi bei gaixie lishi: 1932 nian qinghua daxue ruxue kaoshi de zuowen ti zengyi 無名之輩改寫歷史: 1932 年清華大 學入學考試的作文題爭議,” Lishi yanjiu 歷史研究 4 (2008): 71-83; Wang Zhenbang 王震邦, Duli yu ziyou: Chen Yinke lunxue 獨立與自由：陳寅恪論學 (Taipei: Linking Books, 2011), 140-50. 226 In 1936, there were over 600,000 secondary school students and less than 90 tertiary institutions. Guan Meirong, “From Separation to Joint,” 121.

132 responsibilities. While the schools were blamed explicitly, were the students—who were the product of the failure—exempted from the symbolic and institutional punishments? Generally speaking, students were depicted by reformists as victims of the failed system and the corruption of the school administration. This was especially true among the left-leaning writers. To borrow again from Lu Xun, a sentimental outcry for “saving the children” (jiujiu haizi 救救孩子) was usually used to establish the moral high ground for their criticism of education.

But such a position was difficult to maintain as the quality of education became the focus of the failure discourse. When the performances of students were used to indicate the inefficiency of the schools, labels of failure were simultaneously attached to the students. Students were not only assessed as individuals taking specific exams but also as a social category that could easily be connected to social problems, as the judgment of poor performance was often based on criteria embedded in class and cultural politics. This is exemplified in Zhu Ziqing’s 朱自清 open critique of high school graduates’ writing quality based on his experience as an examiner of the 1933 Tsinghua entrance exam—one year after the “Monkey King incident.” In an article published in the Independent Review 獨立評論, the famous essayist and chair of Tsinghua’s Department of Chinese focused mainly on his distaste for the students’ sense of social inequality, rather than on their language skills. Zhu dismissed such sentiments of

“hating the rich and pitying the poor” (henfu lianqiong 恨富憐窮) as clichés adopted from vulgar writings in popular magazines, rather than as “legitimate” philosophy and thought.227 Therefore, rather than providing a neutral assessment, the quality and performance of students could in fact become pretexts for suppressing ideas the educators saw as dangerous.

Suspicion and fear of students can be traced to a time before the New Culture Movement. In the

1910s, the large number of modern students produced by the expansionary policy in the late Qing New

Policy Reform generated an enormous demand not only for occupations, but also for opportunities for

227 Pei Xian 配弦 (Zhu Ziqing), “Gaozhong biyesheng guowen chengdu yiban 高中畢業生國文程度一斑,” Duli pinglun 獨立評論 65 (1933): 9-12.

133 social advancement. Under the pressure of such demands, the officials and non-official leaders in the education sector who benefitted from the expansion in education (as shown in Chapter 1) responded by stigmatizing the students as a social problem. In 1912, Lufei Kui 陸費逵, the prominent educator and publisher who founded the Chung Hwa press, had already used the term “upper class vagrants” (gaodeng youmin 高等遊民) to describe the graduates from modern schools who could not get a proper vocation.228

From the viewpoint of an educator and employer, Lu expressed his worry that these students’ self-esteem and high expectations for achievement and reward would prevent them from obedience and conformity to the social order. Such a view was popularized through the publishing media connected to Lufei, as well as vocational training projects launched in the 1910s by the 中華職業教育社. The narrative of unemployed students as social threat even entered official discourse when Fan Yuanlian 范源廉, the Minister of

Education in the Beijing Government, employed the term gaodeng youmin in 1916 to articulate the problem created by the disconnection between education and vocation.229 In other words, even before the

1919 May Fourth Movement established a new paradigm of student activism and opened possibilities for radicalism, “excessive students” were already articulated as a potential threat to the social order.

When this deep-seated concept of students as a social problem entered the education failure discourse, the suffering of students as collateral damage in the sanctioning of schools, or as direct punishment for the failure of students, would become increasingly acceptable, if not justified. As pointed out in a 1935 editorial in the Taikungpao, among those who advocated reforms in the quality of education, the idea that “the sacrifice of students was necessary to eliminate the underperforming schools

(不犧牲學生，則不足以淘汰劣校，欲淘汰劣校，則犧牲學生爲必不可免)” was a prevailing argument.230

228 Lufei Kui 陸費逵, Jiaoyu wencun 教育文存, vol. 5 (Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1921), 37. 229 Fan Yuanlian 范源濂, Fan Yuanlian ji 范源濂集 (Changsha: Hunan jiaoyu chubanshe, 2010), 85. 230 “Jinri zhi zhongxue jiaoyu 今日之中學教育 (The Secondary Education of Today),” Taikunpao, February 1, 1935.

134 II) Government-School Cooperation in the Centralized Graduate Examination System and Schools as “Players cum Referees”

Although there might not be a coherent intention behind the Nationalist Government’s policies, the institutional configuration established in 1932 demonstrated clear tendencies toward the two questions that emerged in the failure discourse discussed above—the degree to which power was taken over by a centralized institution; and the accountability of schools as entities and students as individuals. Under the

1932 Regulations of Centralized Graduate Examination, the huikao for secondary and high school graduation were designed as independent assessments without connection to admission to high schools and tertiary institutions. Such non-intervening policies created a power dynamic in which the Government and the schools tended to cooperate with each other, despite the fact that the huikao was originally legitimized by the idea of punishing schools for failing in education. In the end, this government-school cooperation led to a shift of responsibility for the quality of education to students as individuals. Students already had to bear a disproportionately high institutional cost to sustain the huikao system, as they were taking the exam to fulfil an extra requirement for graduation without being rewarded by the opportunity for further education.

The significance of the huikao as an examination detached from reward to students is often obscure in literature on the history of education, which tends to see it as simply a step toward the joint college admissions systems developed after 1937. In this line of argument, the huikao was the Nationalist

Government’s first attempt to seize the power of assessment and allocation from the schools, which had been autonomous under the weak late Qing and Early Republican Beijing governments. Before entering the wartime emergency, the Nationalist Government could only impose control on assessment of graduates but not on the admission to tertiary education institutions, as it was limited by the public opinion favoring autonomy in education, as well as non-conformance from the schools and provinces, which was beyond the reach of its power.

Such an argument not only ignores the Nationalist Government’s detachment from the joint college admissions systems, to which we will return in the next section, but also the fact that the huikao

135 had been designed and sustained as an examination irrelevant to admissions throughout the Nationalist rule of China proper. The 1932 Regulation was based on the University Law 大學法 and Secondary

School Law 中學法 established in 1930, in which the schools’ autonomy in making admissions decisions was rectified.231 Between 1932 and 1937, though suggestions for merging with admission examinations were often seen in the media, the huikao was run as a system solely for assessment. The first connection of the huikao to college admissions decisions began only in 1938, when the Nationalist Government introduced the examination exempt program in which provincial Bureaus of Education recommended

(baosong 保送) top-ranked examinees in the huikao to colleges in their jurisdiction. The quota of baosong, however, was legally limited to 15% of the total number of admitted students. And in practice, the actual number of recommended examinees was far less than the regulated percentage.232

Advancement in education, or any other kind of reward, had never been an integral part of the huikao system.

The authority of huikao therefore rested on discipline in legal-administrative terms. Under the

1932 Regulation and its subsequent revision (in 1937), without taking the huikao, credentials earned by completing coursework and passing school examinations would in theory be made automatically illegal.

But the effect of such regulations was limited by the huikao’s separation from advancement in education.

As the colleges and universities conducted admissions examinations, including those joint admissions systems during the war, students who did not pass/take the huikao were still frequently enrolled in tertiary institutions. Unless the graduate was in need of a “legal” certificate of graduation—one authorized by the

Ministry of Education—he/she could indeed ignore the huikao.233 As shown in Xu Tianyu’s experience,

231 As there were no significant distinctions between the legislative and executive branches and the leaders of the Nationalist Party at the time, it is indeed difficult to contend that there was a plan to intervene in admissions through the huikao when the 1932 Regulation was issued. 232 Ministry of Education, “Jiaoyubu guanyu zhongdeng xuexiao biye huikao deng shixiang wendian 教育部關 於中等學校畢業會考等事項文電,” SHA 5-7040, 38. 233 When Chen Lifu became the Minister of Education in 1938, he countered the protests against huikao by ordering governmental departments and private enterprises not to recognize the credentials of graduates unless they had passed the huikao. Chen Lifu, Zhanshi jiaoyu xingzheng huiyi 戰時教育行政回憶 (Taipei:

136 in the 1930s and 40s, the requirements for such legalized credentials were loose, even in the public sector: before the Cooperative Bank was absorbed by the Farmer’s Bank and became more directly connected to the central state, Xu was able to work there as a graduate of Sichuan University without ever fully passing the high school huikao.

Given the limit of legal-administrative means, coercion—both symbolic and physical—was employed to punish students who refused to take or failed the huikao. Under the 1932 Regulation, the scores of individual students were to be announced to the public after each exam. In practice, these scores usually appeared in the format of “board notice” (bang 榜) in schools, and in some cases, lists of students who failed were published in local journals of education as well as newspapers.234 These practices pressured students to take the huikao seriously with the threat of personal humiliation. And to tackle the student protests against the huikao, which were further fulminated by the provocative strategy of public humiliation, the Nationalist Government did not hesitate to use physical force. In 1932 Jinan (Shandong) and 1934 Taiyuan (Shanxi), troops were mobilized to suppress protests after students boycotted the huikao and stormed the Bureaus of Education in their respective provinces.235

The authority built on law and violence, however, was not sufficient for the examination system to function. The logistics of huikao—including the record of graduating students to be tested, the venues for examination and other administrative works—were not handled directly by the Ministry of Education but were instead assigned to the schools, mostly those participating in the same examination. Including the schools in facilitating the exam not only opened room for them to manipulate for better results— heavy reliance on the schools for cooperation made it difficult for the Ministry to put into practice the goal of eliminating poor-performing schools, the major justification for the huikao system. Moreover, there were no effective ways for the Ministry officials to monitor closely the enormous amount of

Commercial Press, 1974), 26-7. But the effect of this practice might have been limited to the public and enterprises with direct connections to the state. 234 “Guanyu zhongxue huikao 關於中學會考,” Taikungpao 大公報, May 28, 1935. 235 “Jinan xuechao ganyan 濟南學潮感言,” Taikungpao, December 2, 1932; “Taiyuan xuesheng fandui huikao niangcheng canan 太原學生反對會考釀成慘案,” Shuhui zhoubao 社會週報 2, no. 22 (1934): 3.

137 logistics conducted on the school level in different provinces. Nor could the Ministry impose control via finances, as the huikao was funded by the provincial governments, which tended to simplify the exam procedures to reduce the pressure on their budgets.236 As a result, the centralized graduation examination system generated contradictory practices of “players acting as referees” and was hardly “centralized” at all.

In theory, to make huikao a reliable assessment of school performance, a consistent standard of sampling among students needed to be maintained. The examination should either include all students graduating in the year or enlist a sample among the pool of prospective graduates. In both cases the roster of graduating students should be rigorously censored, or even compiled directly, by the central Ministry of Education to prevent manipulation. However, as there was not an official registration system for students in schools under the rule of the Nationalist Government, such tasks were outsourced to the schools. Before every year of huikao, the schools were required to submit a roster of the students who were graduating and would take the centralized examination. This indirect form of registration was a convenient way for the Nationalist Government to obtain information about students without conducting comprehensive surveys, but it opened loopholes in the huikao as a system of school assessment. Since the first huikao in 1932, the practice of pre-selecting examinees was common among schools. Students who the school administration assumed would perform poorly were either hidden from the roster submitted to the Ministry, forced to repeat/defer graduation, or even kicked out before the exam. Despite the complaints voiced in official reports and printed media, the Ministry took no measures to prevent this.

Instead, such practices were partially legalized when the Ministry approved the petition—submitted collectively by schools via the provincial Bureaus—for testing only sample students when resources were limited, especially after the outbreak of war in 1937.

The huikao was also embedded in the existing school system in spatial terms. For the Ministry of

Education, it was unrealistic to build examination halls for centralized exams held once a year for the

236 “Jiaoyubu guanyu zhongdeng xuexiao biye huikao deng shixiang wendian,” SHA 5-7040, 50.

138 large number of secondary and high school graduates scattered in different provinces. To set up temporary examination venues, there were no other places more convenient and suitable than schools. As schools spacious and equipped enough (at least with sufficient desks and chairs) were rare even in well- developed cities, it was difficult to prevent situations in which examinees taking exams in their own schools enjoyed “home court advantage”—including cheating with the aid of teachers and administrators.237

The Ministry’s reliance on their cooperation provided leverage for the secondary schools, which was translated into their power of selecting examination committee members. Usually the provincial

Bureau of Education would only assign a few of its officials as ex officio members (dangran weiyuan 當

然委員), and the rest of the committee would be appointed from local educators with reputations via meetings of headmasters who participated in the huikao. This conflict of interest had not gone unnoticed since the 1932 inaugural huikao. After the completion of the huikao in Jiangsu, opinions emerged in the press about employing committee members from educators outside the province. But the proposal was rejected by the examination committee in the official report submitted to the Ministry of Education. The appointment of local educators to the committee, the report stated, “did not generate any malpractice because all the members were able to prevent conflict of interest by self-discipline (zibi xianyi 自避嫌

疑).”238 Though the effect of such self-discipline was doubtful, given their reliance on the cooperation of

237 A more thorough practice to prevent “home court advantage” is seen in the 1933 huikao in Peking. To create seats for 6,038 examinees, nine examination centers were established. Five were in tertiary institutions: including the Normal University (with two centers in different campuses), Peking University, China College 中國學院 and the Municipal Normal Institute, which prevented manipulation by participating high schools/secondary schools. The other four centers were located in secondary schools: the Peking First, Peking Second, Peking Fourth and the Northern China Secondary School 華北中學—and students from these schools were shuffled to other centers. “Chakan huikao didian baogao biao 查勘會考地點報告表,” Shidai jiaoyu 時代 教育 2, no. 6/7 (1934): 43-9. This practice, however, was indeed rare, especially in cities and counties less developed than Peking. According to the recollection of a student who took the 1934 Xian huikao, for example, the examination was conducted in his own school. Zhuo Chuo 拙輟, “huikao de huiyi 會考的回憶,” Shiri tan 十日談 35 (1934): 38-9. 238 “Chengfu jiaoyubu guanyu ershiyi niandu jiangsu quansheng gaoji zhongxue xuesheng biye huikao qingxing diaocha gedian 呈復教育部關於二十一年度江蘇全省高級中學學生畢業會考情形調查各點,” Jiangsu jiaoyu 江蘇教育 2, no. 12 (1933): 28-9.

139 schools, the Ministry of Education officials had no choice but to accept, if not buy into, this narrative.

The schools did not just manipulate the system to evade its negative consequences. Cooperating with the huikao was in fact beneficial for discipline in schools. The affiliation of students to a particular school following the year-grade system, as shown in Chapter 1, had been the foundation of order in modern education since the late Qing New Policy reform. Only with students institutionally attached could schools sustain themselves financially, as tuition and public funds were measured and justified by the number of students. The introduction of the huikao system and the requirement to register via schools consolidated such order, as pressure on students to maintain an institutional affiliation to schools had increased. Moreover, the presence of the centralized (though nominally) examination also helped to divert the grievances of students originally aimed at the school administration. In internal examinations and other in-school issues, the administrators had to negotiate directly with their students. Lacking coercive force and legal-administrative devices, they usually had to make concessions under the pressure of student protests, which had been common throughout the first half of the twentieth century in China. The introduction of huikao did not help schools by reducing the number and intensity of student riots. Instead, with huikao as the new focus of student movements, dissidents were at least partly redirected from the schools to the state. The long-term consequence of this shift was complicated—student movements targeting the powerful central state remote from reach would easily lose momentum over time or be suppressed by state-owned force; meanwhile, the connection of originally-scattered discontents to the state could also foster the politicization of student movements, which snowballed into large-scale disturbances with high political stakes. In the short term, however, the pressure on school administrators was reduced with the state’s presence in the huikao.

The last obstacle to state-school cooperation in the huikao—the humiliating effect on schools with poor performance—had been dissolving since its implementation. In the 1932 inaugural huikao, the stunningly low passing rate of many schools, especially those in allegedly educationally “bankrupted” provinces like Guanxi and Hubei, came under the media spotlight and received sharp criticism. Yet the blame on these schools was soon pushed back by criticisms of the system. For example, in Tao Xingzhi’s

140 1934 article “The Murderous Centralized Examination and Constructive Assessment (Sharen de huikao yu chuangzao de kaocheng 殺人的會考與創造的考成)”—arguably the most important in the anti-huikao discourse—the low passing rate was pinpointed as proof of flaws in testing methodology, rather than of the incompetence of the schools. Critics of huikao also attributed good performance in examination to intensive training, which they blamed for harming the mental and physical health of students. Some even pushed further to argue that the honest schools that did not overwork students or employ other illegitimate means of performance enhancement suffered under the system.239 These arguments enabled the schools to defend themselves against accusations coming from the “education failure” narrative.

In fact, the enormous amount of data generated from the huikao was never managed systematically to hold the schools accountable. In comparison to those on individual students’ grades, there were neither regular official records nor publications of schools’ huikao statistics, in spite of the requirement in the 1932 Regulation that such information was to be disclosed along with the individual scores of students. In the revised Regulation in 1937, the requirement was officially suspended, as the large number of students disconnected from their native provinces and home institutions made it impossible, and somewhat meaningless, to assess the schools with examination results. With few exceptions, the evaluation of schools via data from the huikao had never been brought back into the official examination policy before the Nationalists fled to Taiwan in 1949.240 Even before the official abolition, the results of huikao did not lead to any punishment and closing of inferior schools—the initial goal and justification of the system—in the first five years of implementation (1932-1937).

III) Separation of Assessment and Resource Allocation in Wartime Governance

The cooperation between the Nationalist Government and the schools continued during the War

239 “Huikao jieguo yu zhongdeng jiaoyu 會考結果與中等教育,” Tianjin Yishibao 天津益世報, July 22, 1934. 240 In Shanxi, which remained under Yan Xishan’s sphere of influence, the provincial Bureau of Education issued an order in 1943 that the schools were to be given grades of A-B-C-D based on their performance in huikao. Ministry of Education, “Shanxi sheng laiwang wenshu 山西省來往文書,” SHA 5-7053, 4.

141 of Resistance, when the resettlement of displaced students became the most pressing issue in education policy. After 1937, a large number of students evacuated from Japanese-occupied areas, mostly in educationally-developed coastal provinces, to the inland areas under Nationalist control. Although they provided human resources to be mobilized for warfare, these students were also potential security threats for the Nationalist Government. Ironically, the hyperbole that a society would be destabilized by

“excessive students” and “upper class vagrants” became reality during the war. Not only were they easy targets of infiltration by the Japanese, the collaborators and the Communists, the sudden influx of a young, energetic and educated population (mostly from relatively well-off social backgrounds) had itself created a burden for the Nationalist Government, which was establishing its foothold inland after retreating from Nanjing. Throughout the eight years of war, more than 400,000 displaced secondary and college students were registered for government resettlement—the number of those unregistered and unrecorded would be much larger.241 As the training program for young refugees managed by the Party and the military was founded only in 1943 and designed to exclude students, the displaced students were to be absorbed by the schools, including both those originally situated inland and those that had migrated and reorganized from the occupied areas.

Under the urgent need for placements, the pre-war voices for enhancing education quality by slashing schools almost immediately disappeared from policy debates and public discourse. Between

1937 and 1945, the number of secondary schools soared from 1,240 to 3,727. In both post-war Nationalist propaganda and recent research on the Nationalist rule in China, this expansion of education during the wartime difficulties is celebrated as an “education miracle” achieved by the Nationalist Government.242

The assumption behind the concept of “miracle”—which sees education as a “luxury” that usually flourishes only in peacetime and should have been undermined by social disturbance during the war—not

241 “Zhanqu zhongdeng yishang xuexiao xuesheng zhi jiuji 戰區中等以上學校學生之救濟,” SHA 5-13494. 242 Wu Junsheng 吳俊升, “Zhanshi zhongguo de jiaoyu 戰時中國的教育,” in Banian duiri kangzhan zhong zhi guomin zhengfu 八年對日抗戰中之國民政府 (Taipei: Commercial Press, 1978); “Kangzhan shiqi de zhongguo daxue jiaoyu 抗戰時期的中國大學教育 (an interview of Jin Yilin 金以林),” Institute of Modern History, Chinese Academy of Social Science, August 25, 2015, http://jds.cass.cn/ztlm/jnkzsl70zn/bwzf/201605/t20160506_3329789.shtml.

142 only obscures the function of schools as institutions for refugee resettlement during the War of

Resistance, but also over-simplifies the interaction between the Nationalist Government and the schools during the expansion. It is tempting to assume that the wartime displacement enabled the Government to centralize power through the process of resettlement, such as the reorganization of schools which evacuated from the occupied area into National High Schools (guoli zhongxue 國立中學) directly affiliated with the Ministry of Education. Yet as the few National Schools could not handle the large number of displaced students, the Government counted on the cooperation of those schools not under direct control of the Ministry. Even in the National Schools, the Ministry officials could hardly dictate daily management.

Despite the increase of government investment in schools to create openings for students from the warzone (zhanqu 戰區), the school administrators remained autonomous in decisions of admission. As shown in the petitions made by students to the Ministry of Education, it was not uncommon for displaced students assigned by the Ministry to particular schools to be declined by those schools. There were also cases in which a National School, run mostly by teachers and administrators who had migrated from the occupied areas, refused to conform to the deal made between the Ministry and local community leaders to reserve a quota for local students. The school administrators were further empowered after the introduction of the “public studentships (gongfei 公費),” which were invested by the government to support the livelihoods of warzone students. Instead of being allocated via the centralized review of the

Ministry, the studentships were placed under autonomous management of committees consisting of school administrators and teachers. As the Nationalist Government did not define explicitly the selection criteria for studentships, all relevant factors—including academic performance, status as refugee/warzone student and financial need—were subject to the arbitrary judgment of the committee members.243

243 Yang Ruoxia 楊若霞 (Student of Second National High School 國立第二中學), “Wei jiapin qinlao jingji laiyuan duanjue yangqi jianhe zhunyu quanbu daijin daiyu yimian shixue you 為家貧親老經濟來源斷絕仰祈 鑒核准予全部貸金待遇以免失學由,” SHA 5-7187, 89. Comment of Chen Lifu, “查國立中學戰區學生申請 貸金之核准, 應由學校組織學生貸金委員會審查決定, 仰逕向學校申請核辦.” SHA 5-7187, 88.

143 The autonomy of schools had reduced pressure on the Nationalist Government to handle the welfare of displaced students (and the youth in general) with insufficient resources. Throughout the War of Resistance, the management and distribution of government funding, including both the gongfei and the various subsidies (such as the subsidy for meals provided at schools) invested to schools became the focus of student protests. Despite the differences in format and degree of politicization (which usually meant connection to Communists in the political context of the time), the embezzlement of funds by administrators emerged as a dominant theme of the wartime student protests. These protests also demonstrate a similar power dynamic between the students, the school administrations and the

Government/Ministry. Dissidents usually targeted the corrupt school administrations—which were alleged to have mishandled precious national resources—rather than the state for failing to satisfy the needs of its displaced citizens. Meanwhile, the school administrators also appealed to the Ministry (as the representative of the Party state), not only to defend themselves against the allegations, but also to request state support to suppress the protests, which they attributed to the incitement of Communists and other national enemies.244 The Nationalist Government’s authority was thus established as a remote arbitrator unaccountable for the actual distribution of resources.

This explains why the huikao remained disconnected from the allocation of placements and welfare to students. Among the students discontented with the management of gongfei by schools, there were voices demanding more direct state intervention. In 1941, for example, students from the Second

National Secondary School, which consisted of refugees mostly from the prosperous Jiangsu province who were known for their frequent protests against the schools and conflicts with the local community, proposed a new system of studentship awarded according to centralized assessment, including the results of the huikao.245 Despite its patriotic language, which reproduced neatly the wartime propaganda of the

244 “Students of the Ninth National High School to the Ministry of Education (1941),” SHA 5-7584, 128. 245 “Qiu Ximina 邱熙民 and Chen Xingmu 陳星沐 (students of the Second National High School) to Chen Lifu 陳立夫 (April 18, 1941),” SHA 5-7245, 83. “抗戰重於一切……假建國之名躲在後方, 是懦夫野心家 之流……獎勵高中畢業生上前線: 上前線者可由教部名譽獎，物質獎之。高中畢業升大學者, 不得在萬 鈞國難重壓下的今天, 瞎吃貸金, 多少學生以貸金為職業, 賴貸金鬼混, 青年果真清寒, 果真優秀, 其學業

144 Nationalist party state, the proposal did not receive any feedback from the Ministry. The Ministry’s effort to maintain its detachment from practical issues was also demonstrated in the development of the regional joint college admission system (fenqu lianhe zhaosheng banfa 分區聯合招生辦法). Under the joint system formed in 1942, as well as the experimental “Unified Entrance Examination” (tongyi zhaosheng kaoshi 統一招生考試) practiced between 1938 and 1943, admissions decisions continued to be made by the tertiary institutions participating in the program. The only role played by the Ministry, at least nominally, was to coordinate the reviews and examinations of the different institutions in order to reduce the cost of logistics from separate admissions. Although a recommendation program (mianshi 免試入學, examination exempt) which included huikao results as part of assessment was introduced in 1937, it was up to the college administrations whether or not to accept the recommendations from the provincial government.

As a system of pure assessment, the huikao was further detached from the schools when students were frequently uprooted from their native places and home institutions. Displaced students, who usually had attended multiple schools during their evacuation, could hardly represent the education performance of particular schools. As a result, the grades and scores of huikao could be used as indicators of individual achievement, but not of the efficiency of education institutions. This led not only to suspending the calculation of examination results by schools right after the outbreak of the war, as discussed in the previous section, but also to an individualization of assessment, which was reflected in the policy for retaking huikao (bukao 補考) revised in 1945. Under the new regulations, examinees eligible for retaking

(which meant they had failed only one or two subjects) could re-register for examination with the Bureau of Education in their province of relocation, if their home institution and authority in their native province

成績總平均, 至少八十分以上(嚴格考試), 八十分以下者, 智質既差（成績不好，焉有成就）可取消其貸 金資格, 另謀職業.”

145 could no longer process their re-examinations.246 These re-takers thus became individuals without any school affiliations who were solely accountable to the government’s assessment.

This individualization, however, did not free students from the discipline of formal education.

Individual registration was strictly limited to the repeating huikao examinees, who had registered as graduates in their original institutions in the first place. In other words, the policy of re-registration and re-examination did not become an “equivalent ability” type of assessment in which the government granted credentials to an individual who had not completed formal secondary education based on a state- run examination. Throughout the war, the Ministry of Education received a large number of petitions for flexibility in the registration of huikao—many of which were based on practical difficulties—for example, a sudden evacuation in the graduation year before the school had submitted the roster of graduates for huikao.247 Yet as seen in the official responses that have survived in the Ministry of

Education archives, these requests were all rejected, and the students were required to apply to another school and complete the coursework there before being permitted to take the huikao. Despite the strong incentives for a more flexible policy of credentialing during the war—for instance, reducing the cost of funding formal education by encouraging self-education—the Ministry of Education adhered to the pre- war doctrine that prevented students from using huikao as an alternative to the routine of the year-grade system.

The Nationalist Government’s preference for school-centred order was demonstrated in a brief encounter with the education system of colonial Hong Kong. In October 1940, Wu Wexian 伍文獻, who studied in the high school of the Diocesan Boys School in Hong Kong, applied to take the huikao. As shown in his petition letter forwarded to the Chungqing Ministry by the Guangdong Bureau of Education,

Wu was aware that under the current huikao system, only those students from schools registered by the

246 “Sasinian chunji yiqian huikao yierke bujige xuesheng bukao banfa 卅四年春季以前會考一二科不及格學 生補考辦法 (1945),” SHA 5-7040, 160. 247 “Chen Manjun 陳曼君 (student of Sun Yatsen University in Guangzhou) to the Ministry of Education (October 10, 1943),” SHA 5-7050, 63.

146 Nationalist Government were eligible for the examination. As a school outside the territory of the

Republic of China, the DBS was not on the list, despite its renowned reputation in Hong Kong. To request exceptional treatment, Wu argued that the Nationalist Government should open its centralized examination to private candidates (zixiusheng 自修生, self-educated students), like the Colonial

Government did in the Hong Kong School Certificate Examination—an external exam established in

1937 for students who had received five years of secondary education or with equivalent academic ability

(translated as huikao 會考 in Chinese characters). In the conclusion of his petition, Wu attempted to strengthen his case with a nationalistic sentiment. “I feel humiliated by the fact that the academic credential of a Chinese like me is to be certified by foreigners” Wu wrote. “If I can seat for the huikao as an individual candidate (siren mingyi 私人名義), I would be happy to pay the examination fee required.”248

The petition eventually reached Chen Lifu, the powerful Nationalist ideologue who was then the

Minister of Education. As shown in Chen’s response, excluding independent candidates was a consistent policy in the Ministry. In spite of the positive tone—probably because of the language of Chinese nationalism Wu used—Chen did not provide a practical solution to the situation. He concluded the case by asking Wu to send his application through the DBS to the Guangdong Provincial Education Bureau.

Such a recommendation might have been an indirect means of refusal, as the Guangdong Bureau could not process an application from DBS without violating the regulation that only registered schools were eligible for the huikao. Even if Chen’s response was sincere—that is, he would arrange with the

Guangdong Bureau to make an exception—Wu’s application was to be reframed into a formal school application before being accepted. Either way, independent examinees would not be allowed in the huikao system.

248 “按中學畢業制度，各考生須由各立案之學校派遣參加中學畢業會考...英國考試, 主辦之中學會試, 全 屬公開性質....凡具有學識者, 皆可參加, 斯謂之自修生也, 我國則未有斯例. 竊以中國人之學歷, 而需外國 人證明，殊覺羞赧…..以私人名義參加會考, 願繳納考試費.” “Wu Wenxian 伍文獻 (graduate of the Diocesan Boys School, Hong Kong) to the Ministry of Education (October 24, 1940),” SHA 5-7050, 33.

147 What the policy against independent candidates protected was an assumption that all students were embedded in schools, that is, only those students affiliated with particular schools were to be managed by the state. This administrative doctrine had not only justified the Nationalist Government’s absence in the allocation of resources in both the pre-war and war years, but also buffered it from overwhelming demands during the post-war rehabilitation.

After the Japanese surrendered in 1945, applications for relocation to education institutions flooded the Ministry of Education. The applicants included students whose education was disrupted and those who sought further education after surviving the war. As national reconstruction after victory in the

War of Resistance became a dominant theme in both official and popular discourse, these demands for education relocation occupied the moral high ground. Under such pressure, the Ministry of Education applied various procedural principles to screen applicants. Displaced students were to be returned to their home institutions whenever these institutions were available or going to be restored. From the Ministry’s perspective, wartime displacement could not be used as an excuse for transferring to a new school. In cases in which the original institution ceased to exist, students would be sent to a new school, but only as

“seating” (jiedu 借讀) students who were not formally enrolled.249 For actual admission, they would need to undergo the schools’ own entrance examination or application process. In other words, the Nationalist

Government would not intervene before a tie between the students and schools was forged by the autonomous processes between them.

Epilogue

Under Communist threat in the years after WWII, the Nationalist Government continued to urge provincial governments to conduct huikao at least until mid-1948, right before its defeat in the Chinese civil war and migration to Taiwan. Eighteen years later, the huikao was restored by the Nationalist

249 “Zhanqu geji xuexiao xuesheng zhuanxue ji jiedu banfa 戰區各級學校學生轉學及借讀辦法,” SHA 5- 13470, 2.

148 Government. This restoration, however, was limited in scale, as only three subjects were tested, and, more importantly, it was short-lived. After the 1946 huikao, a bill for its abolition was passed at the Taiwan

Provincial Council, the representative institution established in 1951 (based on the Advisory Council founded in 1948, which consisted of Taiwan representatives chosen by the Nationalist Government). In contrast to the policy adopted in mainland China, the Government did not insist on the practice of huikao as an assessment independent from college admissions exams. The huikao, and other kinds of centralized graduate examinations irrelevant to college admission, were not revived in the rest of the twentieth century in the Republic of China in Taiwan.

The different fates of huikao in China proper and Taiwan reveal how and why the system was sustained while being irrelevant to resource allocation in the first place. In 1956 and 1957, the provincial representatives had put pressure on the provincial Education Bureau by reducing the budget assigned to the practice of huikao. What is shown in their action was by no means the power of “democracy,” as they claimed in the draft submitted to the council—in the tense political atmosphere in the age of white terror, it was unlikely for the councilmen to confront a policy if it was supported by the circle of political leaders—but a new financial relationship between the central and provincial governments in Taiwan.

As shown in this chapter, since 1932, the huikao had been funded by provincial governments in mainland China. In theory, the provincial budget was directed and overseen by the central government, but in practice the Nationalist state had limited control of the money taxed by the provincial governments, many of which had been autonomous political regimes before complying with the nominal unification in

1928. Requiring the provincial governments to fund and manage a centralized examination was therefore a cost-effective way to perform the power of the state while indirectly taxing the provinces. Yet the policy of provincially-funded huikao did not produce the same effect after 1949, when Taiwan became the only province under the control of the Nationalist Government. When the Taiwan Provincial Government was founded in 1947, the military occupation office under direct order of Chiang Kai-shek had already started extracting wealth and resources from the former Japanese territory by coercive means, including the confiscation of properties labelled as “enemy assets.” The Provincial Government, as a civil facade of

149 Chiang’s military rule of Taiwan, did not have a self-sustaining system of taxation and public finance.

Any expenditure of the somewhat symbolic local government would be a burden for the central state, which was now also feeding on the limited resources of the island of Taiwan.

In Taiwan, the Nationalist Government also saw a drastically different landscape of education in which the demand for tertiary education put less pressure on the state. The Japanese left to Taiwan an education system with better connections between the secondary and tertiary sector. Not only was the portion of high schools to colleges/universities much smaller than in mainland China under Nationalist rule, the colonial technical and vocational education institutions also did better than their China counterparts in terms of providing alternatives to advancement via comprehensive universities. Though impacted by the political and cultural takeover by the Chinese, as well as the influx of Chinese migrants into Taiwan, the system was still able to absorb the pressure on the Nationalist Government to allocate educational resources. On the other hand, during the last years in China and the white terror period in

Taiwan, open protests about the lack of opportunities and resources were silenced by the purge of suspected Communists. Thus, in the context of post-war Taiwan, the huikao, as a separation of state assessment and resource allocation in schools, was no longer a necessity the Nationalist Government had to maintain at high cost.

Although the huikao was terminated, the Nationalists’ approach to education management embodied in the exam has left a lasting legacy in Taiwan since 1949. First, it has affected the formal autonomy of educational institutions. The doctrine of school self-governance (xuexiao zizhi 學校自治） emerged first in the 1930 Laws of University and Secondary Schools brought to Taiwan by the

Nationalist regime. In the Nationalist Government’s decision to revive Chinese tradition, the strategic cooperation between the government and the education sector was also articulated in cultural doctrines of respecting teachers and scholars (youli shiren 優禮士人 for the rulers and zunshi zhongdao 尊師重道 for the general population). Reforms against the schools—like the slashing of those with inferior performance in huikao and other external examinations proposed in the 20s and 30s—became unthinkable in policy

150 discussions. Further, autonomy in admissions was institutionalized. The joint college admissions system, developed during the war according to this doctrine of self-governance, was re-established in Taiwan in

1953, at around the same time as the restoration of huikao was aborted. Under this system, a joint admissions examination for Taiwan University, Provincial Normal Institute (later the National Normal

University), Provincial Agricultural Institute (later the National Chunghsin University) and Provincial

Industrial Institute (later the Chengkung University) was coordinated with the aid of the government. The management and admissions decisions, however, remained in the hands of a joint examination committee

(headed by Chien Ssuliang, the headmaster of National Taiwan University) that consisted of administrative and faculty members from the schools, representing the autonomy of their colleges.250 In the following decades, the joint committee expanded as most of the universities and colleges participated in the joint admissions system. Eventually in 1987, the committee evolved into the College Entrance

Examination Center (dakao zhongxin 大考中心), a non-governmental foundation with a legal persona.

Throughout the martial law period, a formal “respect” of educational autonomy was maintained and ironically coexisted with the Party state’s brutal suppression of freedom of speech and political participation.

Another cultural legacy of the huikao was the rhetoric of an “educational crisis,” which injected authority into assessment by constructing the inferiority of examinees. Since the establishment of joint college admission in 1954, it had become a convention in Taiwan that the examiners and other experts in education would express their concerns with the declining academic quality reflected in the answers after

250 In a conference organized by the Ministry of Education after the first joint admissions examination, the representatives of the participating colleges were against the routinization of the joint system because of the logistical and financial burden imposed on them. However, under pressure from Zhang Qiyun 張其昀, the Minister of Education at the time, the joint system was preserved. Guan Meirong and Wang Wenlong, “Jiang Zhongzheng (Chiang Kai-shek) qiantai chuqi de jiaoyu gaizao 蔣中正遷台初期之教育改造,” in QIantai chuqi de Jiang Zhongzheng (Taipei: Chiang Kaishek Memorial Hall, 2011), 36-7. Guan and Wang argue that Zhang insisted on the joint examination system in order to make the Three People Principle—the Nationalist ideology—a compulsory subject for all candidates for college admission. This argument, however, is based on an assumption that the college administrators would automatically exclude Nationalist ideology if they were to conduct separate admissions exams, which is by no means self-evident. For my argument in this chapter, the episode demonstrates that the formal autonomy of colleges was an established principle of Nationalist education policies to which even those who advocated further direct control by the Party-state had to comply.

151 nearly every open examination for college and high school admission. Under the cultural norm of respecting teachers, which was sanctioned by the institutional cooperation between the state and the schools, the alleged poor performance was naturally attributed to the individual weakness of the students, while the school administrators were not held accountable. Proposals of reform that emerged from these criticisms focused either on curriculum changes, in which the students were obligated to adjust to the preferences of the examiners and the education critics, or reform in the procedure of testing and admissions, in which the students had to bear the extra risk and cost when they went through the complicated and unstable administrative procedures. The result was a circular narrative—the assumed existence of failure justified the existence of tests and critics who discovered the failure—as seen in the early twentieth century discourse about huikao.

The “crisis narrative” was especially visible in accusations of the decline of Chinese language/national language (guowen) proficiency. The post-war Taiwan examiners cum education critics inherited the practice of high-profile attacks on students for the quality of their Chinese language from early republican writers like Zhu Ziqing, whose writings were included in the national language curriculum under Nationalist rule. In addition to Zhu's fear of the radical or socialist tendencies among the youth—or, his hostility to the youth in general—the guowen discourse after 1949 was further politically loaded in the context of the Nationalist Government's project of “decolonialization.” Under the official narrative, the Chinese compatriots in Taiwan had been polluted by the enslaving education of Japanese colonial rule. An amnesia of their own national language and cultural tradition should be cured, the argument went, by re-education.

After the end of the martial law period, the explicit Chinese nationalism gave way to an ambiguous Taiwanese identity in the last two decades of the twentieth century, but the narrative of the weakness in guowen continued to be reproduced. In recent years, pressure groups like the “saving national language alliance (qiangjiu guowen lianmeng 搶救國文聯盟)” have been formed by a network of examiners, scholars and writers who occupy positions in the dakao zhongxin and universities. Until the

152 present day, they have continued to build their existence and authority upon recurrent outcries about the critical crisis of Chinese language in Taiwan.

153 CHAPTER 5

Civil Examinations under the 1947 Constitution and the Ideology of Competition in the Republic of

China in Taiwan

“In the selection of public functionaries, a system of open competitive examination shall be put into operation, and examinations shall be held in different areas, with prescribed numbers of persons to be selected according to various provinces and areas. No person shall be appointed to a public office unless he is qualified through examination.”

“公務人員之選拔, 應實行公開競爭之考試制度, 並應按省區分別規定名額, 分區舉行考試, 非經考試

及格者, 不得任用.”

--Article 85, Constitution of the Republic of China (1947)

Introduction

For the first time in the long history of examination in traditional and modern China, Article 85 of the

Constitution of the Republic of China, which was passed in Nanjing in 1947, defined civil service examination on the constitutional level. Shortly after the 1947 Constitution came into effect in 1948, the

Nationalists were defeated by the Communists and re-established the Republic of China Government in

Taiwan in 1949.251 Despite the suspension of the provincial quota system based on the population of pre-

1949 mainland Chinese provinces in the 1992 amendments of the Constitution, until the present, Article

85 has remained the highest level official definition of civil service examination in the Republic of China in Taiwan.

In the 1947 Constitution brought from Mainland China to Taiwan, Article 85 (as cited above) did not reflect an overarching concept of examination that was necessarily Chinese, Nationalist, or Sun Yat- senist. Instead, it embodied two contrasting visions of social fairness in civil service exams. In the first

251 For the background of the making of the 1947 Constitution, see Xiaohong Xiao-Planes, “Constitutions and Constitutionalism: Trying to Build a New Political Order (1908-1949),” in China, Democracy, and Law: A Historical and Contemporary Approach, eds. Mireille Delmas-Marty and Pierre-Étienne Will (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 284-93.

154 half of the Article, an abstract concept—formed by connecting “open” (gongkai 公開) and “competition”

(jingzheng 競爭)—implies that capable civil servants can emerge naturally through competition as long as the examinations are open to a reasonably wide population. The second half, in contrast, outlines a specific policy that regulates the number of passing examinees from different provinces in order to maintain balanced representation in the civil service. Such regulation by definition undercuts the openness and competitiveness of examination, as the chances of examinees from different regions are made uneven regardless of their performance on the exams. In other words, this text of the Article reveals a fundamental tension between the ideology of competition and the actual politics embedded in the institutional configurations.

The coexistence of these two visions was created by the complicated history of the 1947

Constitution. Immediately after the Second World War, the Nationalist Government came under U.S. pressure to negotiate with the Communists and normalize its rule of China. This normalization of politics included the participation of multiple political parties, such as the Communist Party and the China

Democratic League, and the passage of a formal constitution, which had been absent since the establishment of the Nanjing Government in 1927. The multiple party negotiation materialized as the

Political Consultative Conference (zhengzhi xieshang huiyi 政治協商會議) in early 1946, at which

Democratic League leader Carson Chang (Zhang Junmai 張君勱, 1887-1969) was appointed to pen a draft of the new constitution, which is now known as the Political Consultative Conference Constitution

Draft (zhengxie xiancao 政協憲草, 1946 Draft hereafter). In this 1946 Draft, Chang, who was a renowned legal scholar and jurist, included the principle of openness and competitiveness in civil service exams— which did not appear in the 1933 Draft produced by the Nationalists that embodied Sun Yat-sen’s ideas of the power of examination. In the fall of 1946, the Nationalists initiated the National Assembly for

Constitution (zhixian guomin dahui 制憲國民大會), which was boycotted by the Communists, but in which the democrats participated with the condition of adopting Chang’s 1946 Draft as the foundation for

155 revision.252 At this National Assembly that passed the eventual 1947 Constitution, a provincial quota system for civil service examinations based on population was written into the Constitution due to the proposal from a group of Yunnanese delegates and general support within the Nationalist Party.253 This history made Article 85 a collage of different ideas about examination and political agendas.

This chapter traces not only the ideological and institutional origins of Article 85 in Mainland

China before 1947, but also its implications in post-WWII Taiwan until the 1990s reforms. The two agendas in Article 85 address two broader questions about examination and social justice. The first concerns the detachment of the ideology of open competition from the practices of examination politics.

As demonstrated in the proliferation of “special” exams that reserved government recruitment for specific groups and individuals in Taiwan under Nationalist rule, the idea of open and competitive exams did not generate any meaningful definitions and regulations on practices called “examinations,” regardless of the fact that it was written into the Constitution. Part of the problem was the unchecked executive power during a prolonged state of emergency, known as the dongyuan kanluan shiqi 動員戡亂時期, between

1948 and 1991. For instance, the two especially controversial special exams discussed in this chapter— the Special Civil Service Examination for Demobilized Soldiers (tui chu yi junren zhuanren gongwu renyuan tekao 退除役軍人轉任公務人員特考, 1958-present) and the Grade A Special Examination for persons with exceptional qualifications (jiadeng tekao 甲等特考, 1968-1994)—were launched by executive order of President Chiang Kai-shek. However, it was indeed surprising that the Constitutional principle of open and competitive examination remained marginal, if not absent, in the long discussion about these special exams and their eventual reforms and abolition in the 1990s. The more crucial and

252 Lei Zhen 雷震, Zhonghua minguo zhixian shi: zhixian guomin dahui 中華民國制憲史: 制憲國民大會 (Taipei: Daoxiang chubanshe, 2011), 36-41. 253 Taibei shi Yunnan sheng tongxiang hui ziliao zu 臺北市雲南省同鄉會資料組, “Zhixian guomin dahui de Yunnan ji daibiao ji qi gongxian 制憲國民大會的雲南籍代表及貢獻,” Yunnan wenxian 雲南文獻 17 (1987); Guomin dahui di shisan ci huiyi jilu 國民大會第十三次會議紀錄 (Nanjing: Guomin dahui mishu chu, 1946), 38.

156 long-standing problem, therefore, was the assumption that open competition could automatically generate reasonable and fair results without any political and institutional contexts.

Secondly, by looking into the history of the provincial quota system across pre-1949 Mainland

China and post-1949 Taiwan, I not only reassess the influential thesis of “Taiwanization of the Republic of China” in the fields of Cold War history and Taiwan studies, but also draw attention to the ideology of competition shared by the Mainland Chinese rulers and the Taiwanese elite. As shown in the works of historian Masahiro Wakabayashi and legal scholar Tay-sheng Wang, Taiwanization was a process by which the social reality of Taiwan overcame the virtual Chinese-ness of the Republic of China, as shown in the revision of Chinese-ness in the Constitution and democratic election of legislators and the President by the people of Taiwan during the 1990s.254 It was commonly believed that the provincial quota system, which was calculated according to the population of Mainland Chinese provinces and Taiwan in the

1940s, had been creating an advantage for Mainlanders over the Taiwanese in regular Advanced and

General Level Examinations since the coming of the Nationalist Government. The suspension of the system by the 增修條文 is thus also seen as an important episode in the wave of Taiwanization. This interpretation, however, ignores the Examination Yuan’s consistent hostility toward the system, as well as the striking similarity between the Taiwanese political activists who had emerged in the “extra-Party” democratic movement (dangwai yundong 黨外運動) since the 1970s and the Mainland Chinese Yuan officials in terms of the inclusion of the Taiwanese in the regular civil service exams. Therefore, the fall of the provincial quota in 1996 was not necessarily a triumph of Taiwanese political agency, but instead of the ideology of open competition against political regulation shared by the Examination Yuan and the

Taiwanese activists.

I) Constitutionally Defining Examination as Open and Competitive

254 Masahiro Wakabayashi, Taiwan no Seiji: Chukaminkoku Taiwanka no Sengoshi (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 2008); Tay-sheng Wang, The Process of Legal Modernization in Taiwan—From “The Extension of Mainland” to “Independent Reception” (Taipei: National Taiwan University Press, 2015).

157 The clause that civil servants should be recruited by “open and competitive examination” in

Article 85 of the 1947 Constitution came directly from Article 91 of the 1946 Draft 政協憲草. It could thus be seen as the work of Carson Chang, who was the leading legal scholar in the democratic parties.

Chang had not thoroughly discussed this article in his writings, but the background of his idea of “open and competitive” was elaborated by Lei Zhen (雷震 1897-1979), who was a senior Nationalist Party member assigned by Chiang Kai-shek to rally the democrats to participate in the 1946 National Assembly boycotted by the Communists. Lei, who was sympathetic to the agenda of Chang and the democrats, became an advocate of constitutionalism in post-war Taiwan, and eventually a political prisoner between

1960 and 1970. After his release, Lei wrote a manuscript on the history of the constitution in early twentieth century China, which provides a detailed account of the penning of the 1946 Draft.

According to Lei, Carson Chang saw open and competitive examination as a solution to the favoritism in government recruitment under Nationalist rule. The highest government positions, Lei wrote, were occupied by powerful families in the Nationalist Party. For example, Sun Ke, Sun Yat-sen’s son, served in key positions including as the President of the Executive Yuan; Song Ziwen, Chiang Kai- shek’s brother-in-law, was the Minister of Finance; and even in the Examination Yuan, which was established to replace personal favoritism with fair examination, the long-time president, Dai Jitao, had appointed his grandson as the head secretary of the Department of Assessment. For the writers and advocates of the 政協憲草, this corruptive “spoil system” could only be tackled by “open and competitive examinations” protected by the Constitution.255

In drafting Article 85, Chang adopted the history of the U.S. 1888 civil service reform as a model of using examination against favoritism.256 In his and Lei’s understanding, the Nationalist Party’s intervention in government administration at the time was similar to mid-nineteenth century U.S. politics

255 Lei Zhen 雷震, Zhonghua minguo zhixian shi: Zhengzhi xieshang huiyi xianfa caoan 中華民國制憲史：政 治協商會議憲法草案 (Taipei: Daoxiang chubanshe, 2011), 282-85. 256 Such idea was adopted from Luo Longji and Zhang Rui’s interpretation of the US civil service reform. For Luo and Zhang’s works, see Chapter 3.

158 under the so-called “spoil system”—the victorious political party in elections dominated the nomination of positions in the federal civil service in a winner-take-all manner. Affiliation to political party thus outweighed personal ability and led to a deterioration of bureaucratic efficiency. Corruption also intensified because civil servants had to return favors and bribes to maintain their party connections. The situation changed only after open and competitive civil examination was introduced under the 1883

Pendleton Act, and a non-partisan Federal Civil Service Commission was established to handle bureaucratic recruitment and appointment. Luo and Zhang’s expectation was that the Examination Yuan, the China counterpart to the Federal Civil Service Commission, would introduce equally open and competitive exams and eventually undercut the Nationalists’ dominance in bureaucracy.

Taking the U.S. civil service reform out of the context of bipartisan politics and institutional configurations, Chang and the advocates of the 1946 Draft assumed that open and competitive examination could automatically create an objective selection of civil servants. Yet as their ideas about openness and competitiveness lacked any substantial definition, the 1946 Draft and the resulting 1947

Constitution could not prevent the manipulation of power by formal examinations. In practice, it is impossible for any exam to be absolutely open to all. Professional exams, such as those in the medical and legal professions, are by definition exclusive to those who have received specific training and pre- examination qualifications. Even for general civil service exams, certain academic credentials are required to maintain a pool of candidates manageable by the examination authority. Therefore, without specifying the range of openness and the rationale behind it, the Constitutional article of “open and competitive examination” became an empty statement that could not be translated into actual effects on policies.

The weakness of the abstract principle of open and competitive examination was demonstrated by the persistence of two controversial civil exams in post-war Taiwan long after the passage of the 1947

Constitution—the Special Civil Service Examination for Demobilized Soldiers (tui chu yi junren zhuanren gongwu renyuan tekao 退除役軍人轉任公務人員特考) introduced in 1958, and the Grade A

159 Special Examination for persons with exceptional qualifications (jiadeng tekao 甲等特考) implemented between 1968 and 1994. By a literal definition of the “open and competitive examination” principle, both exams violated the Constitution, as they were reserved for specific groups of candidates—veterans and those with post-graduate degrees (or equivalent credentials). Article 85, however, did not play a significant role in the controversies over both systems. Even when the Grade A examination was suspended in 1996, public outrage was focused on the corruption committed by a few candidates from prominent ruling elite families, rather than on the fundamental contradiction between the system and the

Constitutional concept of open competition. i) Special Civil Service Examination for Demobilized Soldiers

Between its introduction in 1958 and reform in 1983, the Special Civil Service Examination for

Demobilized Soldiers had been a major source of new civil servants for the ROC government in Taiwan.

From the 122,099 demobilized soldiers seated for the examination, 59,749 passed and were qualified to be assigned to positions in the civil service.257 The positions available to those who passed overlapped to a large degree with those open to passers of the regular Civil Service Examination (Advanced and

General), including posts in general administration (divided into grades A to C), human resource administration, finance, accounting and auditing, public health administration, education administration, and various engineering posts.

Unlike the regular civil service exams that were supervised solely by the Examination Yuan, the only basic governmental branches (Yuan) empowered to conduct civil examination by the 1947

Constitution, the Special Examination for Demobilized Soldiers was co-organized by the Yuan and the

Veteran Affairs Council (Guojun tuichuyi guanbing fudao weiyuanhui 國軍退除役官兵輔導委員會), which was established under the Executive Yuan in 1954 to manage the soldiers who migrated from mainland China to Taiwan after 1949. More importantly, this exam had a significantly smaller pool of

257 Li Zhenzhou 李震洲, Zhonghua minguo tezhong kaoshi zhidu 中華民國特種考試制度 (Taipei: Cheng Chung Bookstore, 1984), 122-23.

160 candidates than the regular exams, and its grading policy was also more lenient. In regular civil service exams, the candidates had to pass every subject tested, but in the demobilized soldier exam, the passes were decided by the average scores of all subjects tested.

Despite the obvious conflict between the demobilized soldier exam and regular civil service exams, the justification for reserving a large number of government positions for a confined group had not been challenged. Nor was it articulated as a violation of the independent and fair examination guaranteed by the Constitution. On the contrary, the official narrative depicted the participation of demobilized soldiers in exams organized by the government as a manifestation of the authority of the independent power of examination in the Constitution. In the Veteran Affairs Council’s report on the first demobilized soldier exam in 1962, Zhao Juyu 趙聚鈺, the Vice-President of the Council, wrote that the veterans had made significant contributions to the country during the Northern Expedition, Anti-

Communist wars, the War of Resistance (against Japan) and the “pacification of chaos” (kanluan 戡亂) since the exercise of martial law in 1947. It was thus indeed admirable for them to “safeguard the spirit of the examination system” (weihu kaoshi zhidu zhi jingshen 維護考試制度之精神) through their efforts to attend the civil service exams.258 For Zhao, the so-called “spirit of the examination system” was reduced to the veterans’ compliance to the formal settings of the demobilization exam. Its systemic design, as well as its constitutional foundation, became irrelevant.

In fact, throughout the martial law period between 1947 and 1987, fundamental and constitutional problems of the demobilization examination were nearly absent in political discourse.259 The debate over the demobilized soldier exam was focused on legal and procedural practicalities, mostly the format and procedures of examination. Fear of suppression from the authoritarian Nationalist regime, however, was not the only cause for diminishing the problems. Given the vagueness of the constitutional article, it was

258 Wushiyi nian tezhong kaoshi tuichuyi junren zhuanren gongwurenyuan banli jingguo baogaoshu 五十一年 特種考試退除役軍人轉任公務人員辦理經過報告書 (Guojun tuichuyi guanbing fudao weiyuanhui 國軍退 除役官兵輔導委員會, 1962). 259 One rare exception is the writings of Jao Chiawen 姚嘉文, whom we will discuss in the next section.

161 indeed difficult to define “open and competitive examination” in practical terms. As argued above, whether implicitly or explicitly, a certain degree of exclusiveness exists in any kind of examination. If the

Article was taken literally, there would not be any constitutional examinations under the Nationalist government. Such detachment from reality made it difficult, if not impossible, to challenge policies limiting the scope of “openness” to potential examinees.

The emphasis on a procedural definition of fairness in examination is demonstrated in the revision of the demobilized soldier exam in 1967. On June 22, after two demobilized examinations held in

1962 and 1965, the office of Chiang Kai-shek proposed a revision of the system to tackle the increasing number of demobilized soldiers who had accumulated since the Nationalist Government’s move to

Taiwan. In the draft of “Regulations on Transferal Civil Service Examination for Reserved Soldiers and

Enforcement Rules 後備軍人轉任公職考試比敘條例及其施行細則,” the “reserve soldiers” were defined as either demobilized military officers (junguan 軍官), soldiers of voluntary service, or soldiers who had left the military because of injuries from their service.260 Under this regulation, demobilized soldiers from compulsory service, which consisted of a large number of Taiwanese conscripted after

1950, were excluded from opportunities to transfer into the civil service through the demobilization exam.

Viewed from a literal interpretation of the Constitution, the revision was a further violation of the “open and competitive examination” article—the demobilization exam was not only reserved for retired soldiers, it was also not open to all demobilized soldiers originally eligible to transfer into civil service.

When the draft was discussed in the Legislative Yuan, the increasing exclusiveness of the demobilized soldier exam remained untouched by the legislators, who had been elected in mainland

China in 1947 shortly after the Constitution came into effect. The major issue raised in the debate was the recognition of “review” (jianhe 檢覈) of credentials and experiences as an equivalent of written examination. In the fifth article of the drafted Regulation, for veterans with ranks higher then colonel who had served in non-military governmental positions (waizhi 外職) before, the transfer examination could

260 Li, Zhonghua minguo tezhong kaoshi zhidu, 114.

162 be conducted in the format of review (de yi jianhe xingzhi 得以檢覈行之). For those who drafted the regulation, achievement in the military and experience in non-bureaucratic positons were no less reliable indicators than examination of the ability to work in the civil service. This view was challenged by legislators, including Zhang Jinjian 張金鑑, Deng Xiangyu 鄧翔宇 and Zhong Zhaoxiang 仲肇湘, who served in the “Organic Laws and Statutes Committee 法制委員會.” Zhang, Deng and Zhong argued that the replacement of written examination with review was a violation of Article 85. This argument did not have an actual effect on demobilization policy, as the draft was eventually passed at the Legislative

Yuan.261 But even if the challenge had been accepted by a majority of the legislators, the understanding of openness and competitiveness in the Constitution would have focused on the format of testing. In both cases, exclusion of non-veterans and “unqualified” veterans from a civil service exam that was supposed to be open and competitive became naturalized.

Despite a significant reduction of passing quotas in 1983, the Special Civil Service Examination for Demobilized Soldiers, which was originally designed for Chinese soldiers from the Mainland, has persisted throughout the 1990s democratization and in present-day Taiwan. One of the major reasons for the system’s preservation was its verification as “constitutional” by the Grand Justices in a case in the last years of the Martial Law period.262 In 1985, a veteran, Mr. Zhang (whose name was not fully disclosed in reports on the Grand Justice interpretation of the Constitution), who passed the 1983 demobilization examination, filed a constitutional lawsuit against the Veteran Affairs Council and Examination Yuan.

After his success in the exam, Mr. Zhang applied for a position as a public health administrative officer but was declined. The VAC explained the decision by a regulation for the 1983 demobilization exam announced by the Examination Yuan, which stated that the position of public health administrative officer would be assigned only to veterans with the status of officer (junguan 軍官) in the military, not to non- commissioned officers (shiguan 士官). After Mr. Zhang filed complaints through the system of

261 Ibid., 115. 262 Justices of the Judicial Yuan, Republic of China, Interpretations of the Constitution, No. 205 (1986).

163 “executive petition” and went back and forth with the VAC, he arrived at the Constitutional Court organized by the Justice of the Judicial Yuan two years after the examination. In his 1985 petition to the

Grand Justices, Mr. Zhang argued that the 1983 regulation contradicted the principle of open competition in Article 85. According to the spirit of the Constitution, all passers of a civil service examination should be given equal access to government positions.

After more than a year, Mr. Zhang’s petition was eventually rejected by the Grand Justices.

Interestingly, in the verdict announced on May 23, 1986, the Grand Justices did not directly respond to the argument regarding open and competitive examination (Article 85), but instead focused on interpreting Articles 7 and 18, which guaranteed that all citizens of the ROC possessed the equal right to

“seat for examination and service in the civil service” (ying kaoshi fu gongzhi zhi quan 應考試服公職之

權). This equality, the Grand Justices explained, was defined in practical/actual terms (shizhi shang zhi pingdeng 實質上之平等), rather than being absolute. Under this definition of practical/actual equality,

“appropriate” limitations on examination and official assignment could not be seen as unconstitutional as long as such limitations were imposed by legal means.

The Grand Justices’ interpretation certified the futility of the principle of open competition.

Applying the concept of practical/actual equality to Articles 7 and 18 on basic rights, they gave the government a “blank check” to screen examinees from attending civil service exams. As the government was empowered to restrict access to civil examination, the emptiness and meaninglessness of Article 85 was fully exposed: the largest possible scope of “open” was “all citizens who possessed the power to take civil service examinations,” but even by this broadest definition, the government could still legally demarcate examinees and examination passers in the name of achieving “practical” equality. ii) Grade A Special Examination

In comparison to the demobilized soldier exam, the Grade A Special Examination drew far more public attention. Introduced to recruit personnel with post-graduate degrees to upper-level government positions, the Grade A was held nine times between 1968 and 1988—all before the end of the Martial

164 Law period. During this time, strong public sentiment against the Grade A Examination had accumulated.

The system was seen as specially designed for those who were affiliated with the Nationalist ruling elite to provide them a fast and easy track of advancement in the civil service. Furthermore, various cases of cheating and fraud exposed in the mid-1980s made the system one of the symbols of the corruption under the Nationalists’ authoritarian rule. Yet in spite of the strong public sentiment against the system, the principle of open and competitive examination from Article 85 was rarely, if ever, invoked. Nor did it ever come under the interpretation of the Grand Justices until its eventual abolition in 1996.

Established to recruit higher ranking civil servants than those hired from the regular Civil Service

Examination, the Grade A had a strict pre-examination qualification that excluded most of those eligible for the Advanced and General exams. According to the “Regulation for 1968 Special Civil Examination –

A Level Examination (Wushiqi nian tezhong kaoshi gongwu renyuan jiadeng kaoshi guize 五十七年特種

考試公務人員甲等考試規則)” announced by the Examination Yuan, to seat for the exam (the subject of

“general administration”), the candidate should meet one of three sets of criteria: 1) obtained a PhD, and had work experience in the field of expertise for at least three years with a rank equivalent to the jianren

薦任 rank in the civil service; 2) obtained a Masters degree, and had work experience for at least five years with a rank equivalent to the jianren rank; or 3) professor or associate professor with over three years of experience in tertiary institutions. The successful examinee would be secured to a jianren (rank

10) government position, much higher than the jianren 簡任 (rank 6) for which those who passed the

Advanced level qualified (but were not necessarily assigned). The Grade A created a sharp demarcation between candidates in terms of post-graduate academic credentials, which were, and probably are still, accessible only for those with sufficient economic and social capital. Under the constitutional principle of openness and competitiveness, the legitimacy of the Grade A could be contestable.

Moreover, the division of subjects in the Grade A examination enabled exams to be tailor-made for specific groups of candidates, or even individuals. Under the Grade A system, government departments in the executive branch proposed their needs for particular kinds and numbers of personnel

165 with post-graduate qualifications. The Examination Yuan would accordingly arrange subjects in each

Grade A exam. In addition to the relatively general subjects like “general administrative officer 普通行政

人員” and “legal personnel,” there were highly specialized subjects including “art and craft” (1965),

“historical document compiling and management” (1970 and 1980), “food administration” (1978), and cutting-edge disciplines like “nuclear engineering” (1979).263 For these subjects, there would be even fewer potential candidates with relevant knowledge who could simultaneously meet the degree and work experience requirements.

Take the example of nuclear engineering in 1979: the passed candidate, Yang Yiqing 楊義卿, earned a Masters degree from the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the National Tsing Hua

University, which was re-established in Hsinchu, Taiwan by the ROC government in 1956 as a base of nuclear and military science research. As the Department of Nuclear Engineering did not introduce its

Masters program until 1970, Yang was in an extremely small cohort of nuclear engineers with this degree from the only research institution on nuclear science in Taiwan.264 Such specialization meant that when the government administrators submitted their proposals, they often had in mind a few possible candidates. They could even tailor subjects for specific individuals already working in their departments.

Although these practices might have been efficient in terms of elevating the quality of specialized knowledge in the civil service, their technocratic tendencies were indeed at odds with the ideal of openness and competitiveness, which tends to prevent concentration of power in closely tied social networks.

This structural tension between expert knowledge, especially in science and technology, and openness in civil service remained unnoticed in post-war Taiwan, not least because of the popular recognition of scientists and engineers as agents of progress measured in material terms. The challenges

263 “Jiadeng tezhong kaoshi luqu renyuan mingce 甲等特種考試錄取人員名冊,” in Wuquan xianfa de kaoshiquan zhi fazhan: Jiadeng tezhong kaoshi gean fenxi 五權憲法的考試權之發展: 甲等特種考試個案分 析, ed. Cai Liangwen 蔡良文 (Taipei: Cheng Chung Bookstore, 1993), 293-339. 264 National Tsing Hua University Digital Archive. Accessed May 22, 2017. http://archives.lib.nthu.edu.tw/history/timeline/timeline03.html.

166 against the Grade A were thus focused on the candidates from fields in the humanities and social sciences, as well as on the format of examination. One of the most distinctive features of the Grade A among other civil service exams was its replacement of written examination with a review of published works on research. According to the 1968 Regulation, the published research (zhuzuo 著作) must be over 30,000 words and written in Chinese, while scientific and technological experiments and inventions could be exempt from such criteria. For each of the works submitted by a candidate, the examination committee would recruit two experts in the field as external readers to grade the work on a hundred-point scale.

When there was a difference of over twenty points between the readers, a third expert would be invited and the decision would be made according to the average of the scores given by all three readers. Given the high degree of specialization in subjects, it was very probable that the readers and candidates knew each other. This risk of conflict of interest was raised in a 1974 review report.265 Critics also singled out the “uselessness” and “irrelevance” of academic works on the arts and humanities. “A thesis on Song-

Yuan literature or textual analysis of the Classics,” wrote Professor of Public Administration and later

Grand Justice Dong Xiangfei 董翔飛 in 1980, “does not fit with the knowledge required in modern administration.”266

The focus on the format of assessment was also reflected by the term heiguan 黑官 (illegitimate, or literally, dirty officials) popularized in the mass media. Emerging in the newspapers of the 1980s, the term heiguan refers to the civil servants who were not recruited by examinations in proper format, namely seated written tests like those practiced in the Advanced and General Examinations.267 According to this narrative, the Grade A Examination opened a special channel for non-examination heiguan into the government to obtain equivalent, or even higher, qualifications than regular officials without passing the written exam.

265 Executive Yuan, Republic of China, “Woguo xianxing yunyong renli youguan fagui zhi yanjiu baogao 我國 現行運用人力有關法規之研究報告 (1974),” 36; Cai, Wuquan xianfa de kaoshiquan zhi fazhan, 274-75. 266 Ibid., 240. 267 Ibid., 244-45.

167 This process, named “bleaching of dirty officials” (heiguan piaobai 黑官漂白), is best exemplified by the career path of two prominent figures in post-Martial Law Taiwan politics— James

Soong Chu-yu, Governor of the Taiwan Province 1994-1998, and Ma Ying-jeou, President of the

Republic of China from 2008-2016. After obtaining a PhD from Georgetown University, Soong became

Chiang Ching-kuo’s personal secretary in 1974. Without passing a civil service exam, he was appointed

Vice-President of the Government Information Office (GIO) in 1977. By passing the Grade A

Examination in 1978, he was given the regular civil service rank of jianren and became the President of the GIO in 1979. Ma also began his career as Chiang’s personal secretary after returning from the U.S. with a Harvard S.J.D. in 1981. He became a regular jianren civil servant and the head of the Research,

Development and Evaluation Commission of the Executive Yuan after passing the Grade A in 1986. It is noteworthy that, because of the fear of Chiang Ching-kuo’s authority as both an authoritarian and benevolent ruler, Soong and Ma’s cases did not appear in the heiguan narratives before the end of the

Martial Law (and were rarely seen even in political discourse since the 1990s, except a few from the opposition Democratic Progressive Party. The heiguan was usually depicted as an anonymous, shadowy group in the civil service that did not possess the impressive credentials of Soong and Ma.

Complaints about the bleaching of heiguan by non-written examination did not threaten the

Grade A system before actual cases of fraud were exposed in the early 1990s. Two of the most enraging cases came from the family of Li Huan 李煥, a senior official in the KMT and former President of the

Executive Yuan. In 1993, Li Qingzhu 李慶珠, Li Huan’s daughter who had passed the 1988 Grade A in the subject of “Overseas Chinese Affairs Administration (English),” was investigated by the Examination

Yuan for plagiarism in her scholastic work submitted for review. This case was started in response to a report from Chen Shuibian, the DDP star legislator who in 2000 became the first non-KMT president of the ROC. Results of the investigation showed that most of Li’s thesis “On the Outflow and Inflow of

Human Resources of the ROC 我國人才外流與回流之探討” was plagiarized from a Masters thesis from

Chengchi University. In 1994, the Examination Yuan withdrew Li’s Grade A qualification, and she

168 resigned from the Overseas Chinese Affairs Committee. Li Qingzhu’s case refreshed the public memory of her brother Li Qingzhong’s 李慶中 fraudulence in the 1986 Grade A Examination, which was also exposed by Chen Shuibian. At the 1986 Grade A, Li collaborated with the examination committee members and replaced an external reader who failed him with another reader who was an acquaintance.

The case concluded with Li Qingzhong’s resignation from the office of Vice-President of the Department of Environmental Protection in 1992.

Fueled by public sentiment, Democratic Progressive Party legislators Lu Hsiu-yi 盧修一 and

Frank Hsieh 謝長廷 proposed a revision of the Examination Law to remove the Grade A Examination.268

In the revised Article 3, only Grades B to D special exams could be conducted according to “special needs” (shiying teshu xuyao 適應特殊需要) in the government. However, this revision did not directly respond to the contradiction between special examinations, which confined the pool of candidates to specific groups or even individuals, and the Constitutional principle of open and competitive examination.

II) Debate over the Provincial Quota System in the National Advanced and General Level

(Regular) Examinations

While the principle of open and competitive examination remained insignificant, the second part of

Article 85—the principle of allocation by provincial quota—became one of the focal points in the 1990s

Constitutional discourse. After the death of Chiang Ching-kuo in 1988 and the withering of the “national representatives” elected from pre-1949 mainland China, the succession of government power became uncertain. Amid the struggle between camps of KMT elite, Lee Teng-hui, a Taiwanese politician who emerged from Chiang Ching-kuo’s policy of cultivating Taiwanese technocrats, won by skillful manipulation of the differences between camps to became an unlikely successor of Chiang. To establish a new structure of succession, and also to consolidate his power against the elite in the KMT, Lee promoted an agenda of democratization, including direct election of the President and the comprehensive re-election

268 Wang Zuorong 王作榮, Zhuangzhi weichou—Wang Zuorong zizhuan 壯志未酬—王作榮自傳 (Taipei: Commonwealth Publishing, 1999), 265.

169 of representatives. As these elections were not stated in the 1947 Constitution, Lee’s agenda has triggered processes of constitutional revision since 1990.

In 1992, the provincial quota system for regular civil service examination stated in Article 85 was suspended (tingzhi shiyong 停止適用) by an amendment (zengxiu tiaowen 增修條文) to the Constitution.

In the conventional narrative of the simultaneous “democratization” and “Taiwanization” of the Republic of China in Taiwan, the provincial quota designed according to the population of mainland Chinese provinces is seen as a system that discriminates against the Taiwanese. The principle of allocation by provincial quota in Article 85 led to the legislation of the quota system on July 21, 1948. Under the new

Examination Law, in regular national civil service exams (the Advanced and General Levels), in all

Chinese provinces—including Taiwan, which incorporated after the defeat of Japan in 1945—five quotas would be given for every 3,000,000 people in the province, and one extra quota would be given for every

1,000,000 people beyond that. As this calculation was based on a survey conducted in the first half of

1948, and remained largely unchanged when applied in Taiwan between 1950 and 1992, the quota for

Taiwanese candidates was disproportionate to the demography of the ROC in Taiwan after 1949, in which

Taiwanese (beshengren 本省人) were the majority. If the quota system was strictly followed, candidates from other Chinese provinces (waisheng 外省, or Mainlanders) would have significant advantage over the

Taiwanese, as their quota was calculated according to the population in 1948 China, rather than to the much smaller migrated population in post-1949 Taiwan. Therefore, the outnumbering of Mainlanders over Taiwanese in the civil service has often been attributed to this system.269

The suspension of the provincial quota, however, was not a breakthrough in social equality—the effect of the quota system on the Mainlander-Taiwanese imbalance in the civil service was overstated.

Between 1950, the first year of the civil service exam after the ROC government relocated to Taiwan, and

1992, the year the system was suspended, most of the civil servants were recruited by “special” exams,

269 Hsueh-chi Hsu, “Institution of Provincial and Area Quota System for Senior Examinations and its Actual Operation in Taiwan, 1946-1968,” in Papers from the Fourth International Conference on Sinology: Shaping Frontier History and its Subjectivity, ed. Kuo-Hsing Hsieh (Taipei: Academia Sinica, 2013), 174-77.

170 including for police, local administrative personnel, transportation personnel and the demobilization exam discussed above. By 1992, there were 354,319 civil servants who had come from special exams and only

80,407 who came from regular Advanced and General examinations.270 As the “special” exams were not regarded as “national” like the Advanced and General Level exams, they were not subject to the provincial quota system stated in Article 85. In other words, the quota system was not the major reason for the overwhelming number of Mainlanders in the civil service, which persisted after the 1992 suspension of the provincial quota.

Focusing solely on the provincial quota system also obscures the function of regular (Advanced and General Level) examinations in the Nationalist Government’s rule of post-1949 Taiwan. As I argued in Chapter 3, under the Nationalist rule in the 1930s and 40s in mainland China, the regular civil service exams relied on the candidates’ participation to establish the government’s authority of assessment. In the official narrative of the Examination Yuan, the number of candidates and their pre-examination credentials were employed to demonstrate the social recognition of the civil service exams. Maintaining a convincingly large pool of candidates thus became a major task of the Yuan, even after its relocation to

Taiwan in 1949. As the provincial quota system significantly reduced the opportunity of Taiwanese candidates, it was at odds with the Yuan’s goal to enhance participation. i) Visions of the Provincial Quota System before the 1947 Constitution

To understand the place of the provincial quota system in the Republic of China in both the

Mainland and Taiwan, we first need to trace the history of its entrance into the 1947 Constitution. The core of the provincial quota system outlined in the Constitution—allocating quotas according to the population proportion among the provinces—did not gain significant voice in policy debates until the end of the War of Resistance. This was because the Nationalist Government did not have direct control over territories outside its sphere of influence surrounding Nanjing before the War, despite its nominal

270 Numbers from Statistics of Examination and Recruitment of the Republic of China 中華民國考選統計 by the Ministry of Examination (考選部). Cited in Luoh Mingqing, “The Ethnic Bias in Recruitment Examinations for the Civil Service in Taiwan,” Taiwan Economic Review 31, no. 1 (2003): 95.

171 unification of China in 1928. As many provinces remained under the somewhat autonomous rule of various “warlord” regimes, the regional balance of participation in the national civil service had not been a pressing issue in politics. During the drafting process of the 1930 Examination Law, the need to introduce a provincial quota—not to mention its allocation by population—was rejected by Yuan officials and legislators. Nor was the need for regional balance included in the 1933 Draft of Constitution (Wuwu xiancao 五五憲草). In the making of the Draft, Zhang Zhiben, a senior Nationalist Party member and advocate of Sun-Yatsenism, proposed establishing regional divisions of the Examination Yuan across

China, accompanied by a division of civil service exams into three tiers: national, provincial, and county.

Yet such policies were aimed at enhancing participation by logistical improvements, rather than balancing the number of passers from provinces by post-examination interventions.271

It is noteworthy that Dai Jitao, the President of the Examination Yuan from 1928 to 1948 and the main architect of Nationalist examination policies, did not share the concept of provincial equality that eventually appeared in the 1947 Constitution. At the 1940 Central Conference on Personnel

Administration (zhongyang renshi xingzheng huiyi 中央人事行政會議), Dai suggested a provincial quota system for civil service examinations in the future. Yet he saw provincial quota as a device fostering general advancement in education quality across China, instead of as protecting the equal political participation of different provinces.272 In Dai’s proposal, the quotas for those passing civil exams were to be allocated by the number of eligible candidates in the provinces and cities (“切依每屆各省市區應考人

數比例分配”). Given that advanced credentials and degrees were required to register for examination, the provincial governments had no way to boost the quota but to cultivate more university graduates (“那麼

那一省不想方法培養大學畢業生，連報考都不行”). In other words, provincial quotas were used as

271 “Zhang Zhiben shi zhi xianfa caoan chugao 張知本氏之憲法草案初稿 (1933),” in Collection of Documents and Data in Relation to the History of Chinese Constitution, ed. Miao Chuan-chi (Taipei: Academia Historica, 1989), 450. 272 Deng Qifeng 鄧奇峰, Dai Jitao xiansheng yu kaoquan zhidu 戴季陶先生與考銓制度 (Taipei: Zhengzhong shuju, 1984), 386-8.

172 incentives for the provincial governments to invest in education. And in return, the expansion of the pool of candidates with high academic credentials would further consolidate the authority of civil service examinations.

A contrasting concept of provincial equality emerged only when the political landscape fundamentally transformed during the War of Resistance, when the Nationalist Government gained significant power in mobilizing material and human resources across China. The establishment of the wartime government in Chongqing, Sichuan also led to the integration of previous autonomous regions into the central state. Although provincial leaders remained the major agents of local governance, they now had to engage with the expanding central state in a national negotiation to maintain their power, unless they took a confrontational line against the Nationalist Government like the Communist Regime did. Such negotiations became increasingly visible in the Nationalist Party and policy debates in which provincial leaders participated. At the second meeting of the Second National Assembly in 1942 (guomin canzheng hui dierjie dierci dahui 國民參政會第二屆第二次大會), several representatives proposed a quota system based on the idea of equal political participation.273 If politics were in the hands of outsiders

(yidi renshi 異地人士), they argued, there would be dissidents among the locals that would weaken their recognition of the central state. This argument also implied that equal distribution among provinces was a political issue that should be prioritized over the uneven educational development among provinces.

The idea of provincial equality based on population rather than academic credential eventually materialized after the War in a June 1946 proposal written in the name of Party members and submitted to the Committee of National Defense. It proposed that quotas for national civil service examination and government-sponsored overseas studies should be allocated according to the proportion of the population in provinces.274 In the meantime, the demands for a provincial quota system were reflected in the 1946

273 “Can erjie erci dahui jianyi gaodeng kaoshi ying fen shengqu dinge 參二屆二次大會建議高等考試應分省 區定額 (February 1942),” Kuomintang Party Archives, National Defence 003/1880. 274 “Geji kaoshi ji liuxuesheng paiqian an diqu renkou guiding shue an 各級考試及留學生派遣按地區人口規 定數額案 (1946),” Kuomintang Party Archives, National Defence 003/3825.

173 Draft Constitution (zhengxie xiancao 政協憲草). Carson Chang included a clause in Article 90 stating that in national civil service examinations, the “provincial quota system can be practiced in case it is needed” (biyao shi de fenqu dinge 必要時得分區定額).275

The inconclusive article in the 1946 Draft could not satisfy the demand for a system guaranteeing even distribution of civil service placements. At the National Assembly 制憲國大 held in December

1946, a multi-party meeting to finalize the Constitution,276 two groups of Yunanese National Assembly

Representatives (gouda daibiao 國大代表) urged regularizing the provincial quota in the Constitution in the interest of “boundary” (bianyuan 邊遠) provinces. The first proposal came from the group of Lu Han

盧漢, the military strongman who took over the control of Yunnan after Chiang Kai-shek disarmed Long

Yun 龍雲─his predecessor who was nicknamed the “king of Yunnan” (Yunnan wang 雲南王). Lu suggested introducing special quotas for periphery provinces to maintain a minimum number of new civil servants from these provinces. Another proposal came from representatives led by Duan Kechang 段克

昌, a politician who gained power and the trust of Chiang Kai-shek while in charge of the wartime

Yunnan Bureau of Military Food Supply (junliangju 軍糧局).277 Duan advocated a revision of Article 90 to make provincial quota compulsory for all national civil service exams. The revision also included a clause stating explicitly that the provincial quota be allocated according to the proportion of provincial populations.278 “As conscription of soldiers was allocated by provincial population,” the proposal argued,

“civil examination should also have quotas regulated by provincial quotas according to population.” Only

275 第九十條: 公務人員選拔，應實行公開競爭之考試制度，必要時得分區定額，非經考試及格者不得 任用. 276 The Communist Party boycotted the Assembly and condemned it as Chiang Kai-shek’s plot to consolidate one party rule of the KMT by dominating the making of the Constitution. To counter such accusations, and under pressure from the U.S. for the participation of multiple political parties, Chiang desperately needed the presence of democratic parties at the Assembly. As a result, he provided the 1946 Draft 政協憲草 as a blueprint for discussion and review at the Assembly as the condition under which the Democrats would participate. 277 “Duan Kechang xiansheng xingshu 段克昌先生行述,” Yuannan wenxian 雲南文獻 8 (1978): 57-62. 278 “本條擬修改為’公務人員選拔, 應實行公開競爭之考試制度, 并按照人口比例, 分省定額, 非經考試及 格者, 不得任用.’”“Zhixian guomin dahui de Yunnan ji daibiao ji qi gongxian.”

174 by doing so could civic duties and rights be balanced.279

It was Duan’s proposal that shaped Article 85 in the 1947 Constitution. In the finalized Article, the principle of provincial quota became essential for any national civil service exam. While the clause regarding the population principle did not enter the Constitution, it was eventually adopted in the 1948

Examination Law, which was legislated according to the Constitution.

This revision would not have passed without agreement by the leading cliques (such as the CC) of the Nationalist Party, which occupied a dominating majority (over 900) of the 1,367 seats at the National

Assembly.280 For Chiang Kai-shek and those in the central authority of the Party, the provincial quota system based on population proportion was a convenient way to prevent further conflicts within the KMT sparked by the elections of the National Assembly (guomin dahui) and Legislative Yuan (Lifayuan 立法

委員) in 1946—the two parliamentary organs of the Republic of China. On the eve of the elections, KMT branches in provinces fought fiercely for Party nominations, which almost guaranteed respective seats because of the high degree of manipulation of election results.281 In this context, mechanically distributing provincial quotas via population proportion became an effective means to settle controversies within the

Party. ii) The Examination Yuan’s Position

For the Examination Yuan, however, the quota system was a challenge to its authority in assessment. Protected by the provincial quota based on population, candidates from provinces less developed in education could have a higher chance of passing than candidates from developed provinces.

This might discourage highly credentialed candidates from developed provinces from sitting for civil examination. The Yuan’s reluctance to put the quota system into practice was demonstrated in an article

279 “徵兵應役, 均以人口為準, 考選制度, 自應以人口為比例, 分省規定名額, 庶義務權利兩相持平.” 280 Zhang Pengyuan 張朋園, Zhongguo minzhu zhengzhi de kunjing (1909-1949): Wanqing yilai lijie yihui xuanju shulun 中國民主政治的困境 (1909-1949): 晚清以來歷屆議會選舉述論 (Taipei: Linking Books, 2007), 170. 281 Ibid., 189-97.

175 written by Dai Daoliu 戴道騮, an official who had served in the Examination Yuan since the 1930s.282

Written in late 1946 and published in New Chung Hwa (Xin Zhonghua 新中華, the current affairs magazine of the prominent Chung Hwa Book Company 中華書局), the article was a direct response to the demands for provincial equality at the 1946 National Assembly for constitution making.

To counter the argument that a quota system balanced the political participation of provinces, Dai

Daoliu returned to Dai Jitao’s idea and argued that enhancing education development in provinces was more crucial than protecting candidates from less developed provinces regardless of their abilities. While conceding that special quotas should be reserved for candidates from less developed provinces, Dai

Daoliu argued that these candidates should be assigned to offices in their respective provinces, in order to fully utilize their familiarity with local affairs, instead of to the central government, which should be determined in national competition without artificial intervention like protected quotas. And as provincial disparity could be significantly reduced within two decades after the War of Resistance, the special quotas should be temporary rather than permanent. Dai supported this prediction with the example of the Soviet

Union. Before the 1917 Revolution, he pointed out, nearly 90% of the highly-educated (receiving education beyond high school) population came from the areas of Moscow and Leningrad. But this pattern had changed rapidly with the first five-year plan (1928-1932), after which the percentage of the highly-educated population from Moscow and Leningrad was reduced to 57%. Therefore, the provincial quota system should not be written into the Constitution because it would soon become obsolete as education advanced in post-war China.

Dai’s argument was also based on his interpretation of the history of late imperial keju, which was often used as a precedent in the proposals for provincial quota in the 1930s and 40s. In contrast to his contemporaries, Dai differentiated three practices in late imperial civil examination that were usually

282 Dai Daoliu, “Kaoshi fenqu dinge fangan 考試分區定額方案,” Xin Zhonghua 新中華 2: 10-16. The article was developed from part of Dai’s book Proposal for the Connection of Examination, Selection and Education 考試銓敘教育聯繫方案, published by the Chung Hwa Book Company earlier in 1946.

176 lumped together under the term “provincial quota.” During most of the Ming and the Qing, xuee (學額) was the quota for entrance into official schools (guanxue 官學) that qualified one for taking examination.

Jiee (解額) was the quota for candidates advancing from the provincial examination to the metropolitan examination. Finally, the fenjuan (分卷) system was practiced only at the metropolitan exam. It limited the number of passing candidates from provinces divided into three groups: northern (Shandong, Shanxi,

Henan, Shanxi, Beiji [Beijing region]), central (Sichuan, Guangxi, Yunnan, Guizhou, part of Nanji

[Nanjing region]) and southern (Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Fujian, Huguang, Guangdong, part of Nanji).283

For Dai, the xuee and jiee were reflections of the regional development in education, instead of political intervention in examination results like the provincial quota system proposed by his contemporaries. They were not determined by the total size of the population, but mostly by the number and capacity of official schools in counties and provinces. In contrast, the fenjuan system was a political move employed by the late imperial emperors to check the concentration of power of officials from southeastern provinces. The system was developed from the policy of Ming Taizu, the first emperor of the

Ming Dynasty. After the 1397 metropolitan examination, the emperor punished the chief examiner Liu

Sanwu 劉三吾 for favoring southern candidates. After a review of the examination papers, a large number of northern candidates was included in the new list of passers. Such imperial intervention was then institutionalized in the brief (1424-1425) reign of Rezong 仁宗, the fourth emperor of the dynasty.

Despite changes in quotas and the division of north/central/south groups, the idea of regional balance persisted not only in the Ming but also in the subsequent Qing dynasty, during which the Manchu rulers adopted the system to put the Han cultural elite from southeastern provinces in check. Yet these strong political moves and policies could by no means offset the disparity in educational development in the late imperial period. With the fact that over 2/3 of prime ministers (zaixiang 宰相, officially grand secretariat

內閣首輔/ 大學士) in the Ming dynasty came from southern provinces, Dai concluded that the political

283 Wu Xuande 吳宣德, Mingdai jinshi de dili fenbu 明代進士的地理分布 (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2009), 91-9, 127-45.

177 might of late imperial emperors could not resist the economic power of the south (zhengzhi shang zhi weishi, zhong budi jingji shang de zhi quanli 政治上之威勢, 終不敵經濟上之權力).284 By the same token, he concluded, using an artificial quota system to ensure regional balance in politics would also be in vain. iii) The Provincial Quota System Brought to Taiwan and the Yuan’s Adjustment Policies

Dai’s argument did not reverse the introduction of the provincial quota system. It was first implemented in the 1948 General and Advanced civil exams held in 11 areas, including Nanjing and

Taipei. The quotas for each province were calculated based on the population number provided by the

Ministry of Interior, which was in fact generated from the 1941 census.285 For the Advanced Level, for example, Taiwan Province was given 8 quotas in comparison to the Jiangsu Province, which was given

44 quotas, the most among the 36 provinces (and regions). Taiwanese candidates did not occupy a large portion of the pool of examinees: this was because of the purge of Taiwanese elite in early 1947 and the relatively large number of Mainland Chinese candidates in the exam practiced across provinces in China proper.

The problem became acute in the 1951 Advanced and General Levels, the second year of examination after the Nationalist Government retreated to Taiwan in 1949. This year saw an explosion in the number of Taiwanese candidates—774 out of a total of 2,409. For these educated Taiwanese, the 1950 exams might have seemed a signal that the Nationalist Government had moved away from purging the

Taiwanese elite, demonstrated in the February Twenty Eighth Incident and the subsequent massacres, toward a more peaceful and inclusive policy.286 In fact, the inclusion of Taiwanese in the examination system had been an agenda advocated by the Examination Yuan officials. Yet this attempt was largely

284 “明宰相一百八十九人，南方實佔三分之二強，而江淮以北，尤為不容易取得鼎甲。且有明一代, 科 舉學校之制, 自童生考試以至鄉會試考試，固皆有為世人所稱頌「依額錄取」制之存在，而亦無補於人 材實際上之調劑，此考試上之分區選拔制，與任用後發生聯繫而後.” 285 Hsu, “Institution of Provincial and Area Quota System,” 200. 286 There were only 12 Taiwanese candidates in the 1950 Advanced Level exam. Hsueh-chi Hsu, “Alternative Channel for Personnel Selection: Provincial Civil Service Senior Examination (1952-1968),” Taiwan Historical Research 22, no. 1 (2015): 118.

178 limited by the provincial quota system stated in the Constitution, which prevented a significant number of qualified (reached the passing score) Taiwanese candidates from passing the exam. In an official report to

Chiang Kai-shek, a Yuan writer praised the Taiwanese examinees for their outstanding overall performance. But under the provincial quota system, he wrote, “only 9 were passed. It is indeed unfair

(for the Taiwanese) in comparison to those provinces with fewer candidates but more quotas” (按之其他

各省應考人少, 取額數多, 殊未得其平). 287

With the assumption that the Yuan officials intended to maintain a discriminative system against

Taiwanese examinees, this official comment from the Yuan will be seen as half-hearted, if not hypocritical. What is ignored in this perspective is the contradiction between the provincial quota system, which was written into the 1947 Constitution to settle the political tension within the Party, and the authority of the Examination Yuan’s assessment, which had been based on the quality and number of candidates in regular exams (Advanced and General Levels) since the 1930s. This was revealed in Dai

Daoliu’s argument that political intervention like the protected quotas could not reduce regional disparity as educational development did. After the Nationalist Government retreated to Taiwan, the Examination

Yuan was in urgent need of Taiwanese candidates—which constitute the largest portion of the well- educated (under the Japanese school system) population on Taiwan—to prove the quality of the regular examination it held. A provincial quota system that might discourage participation in exams was in fact undesirable for the Yuan’s power in Taiwan.

The inclusion of Taiwanese in the regular examination system was also crucial for the construction of the cultural superiority of Mainland Chinese. It is well known that in post-1949 Taiwan, Mandarin was used as a “national language” (guoyu 國語) to construct the superiority of Mainlanders over the

Taiwanese, who had been exposed to a more thoroughly modernized education system under Japanese colonial rule. Yet it is often neglected that the participation of Taiwanese examinees was crucial to

287 Cited in Jao Chia-wen 姚嘉文, “186 bi 1 de chayi……gaopukao haiyao lun shengji ma? 186 比 1 的差異 ……高普考還要論省籍嗎?” Taiwan Political Review 2 (1975): 17.

179 staging the superiority of Mainlanders. This was shown in the research project initiated by the

Examination Yuan to analyze exam results. According to the reports written by Ai Wei, a leader of the

Standardized Test Movement (as seen in Chapter 2) who now served on the Committee for Examination

Method Research under the Examination Yuan (Kaoshiyuan kaoshi jishu weiyuanhui 考試院考試技術委

員會), the results of the 1950, 1951 and 1952 Advanced and General exams revealed that guoyu, rather than intelligence and academic ability, was the major weakness of Taiwanese candidates.288 Ai’s research, as well as other arguments for the re-education of the Taiwanese with guoyu, legitimized the Nationalist

Government as an authority of education and assessment on Taiwan. To fuel this discourse, the

Examination Yuan had to maintain the appeal of regular civil exams, as it had in pre-1949 mainland

China.

Seen in this light, the Yuan’s response to the problems caused by the provincial quota system was indeed spontaneous, and reasonably quick given that it was not able to openly challenge the quota system in the Constitution. Soon after the 1951 regular examinations, the complaints in the Yuan’s report led to an executive order from President Chiang Kai-shek to provide additional passes to qualified Taiwanese candidates. To circumvent the Constitutional regulation that all national civil exams were subject to the provincial quota system, the Taiwanese candidates were post facto placed into a separate “examination district” (despite the fact that the “national” exam was also held on the island of Taiwan), and the exam they took was renamed a “regional examination” (sishinian gongwu renyuan gaodeng putong kaoshi

Taiwan qu kaoshi 四十年公務人員高等普通考試臺灣區考試). With this executive order, 58 Taiwanese candidates who had obtained average scores of over 50 and were originally barred by the provincial quota were all passed.289 As the Taiwanese candidates were removed from the official records of the 1951

Advanced and General Level exams, the number of Taiwanese examinees passing the regular examination became zero in the statistics of that year.

288 Ai Wei, Kaoshiyuan kaoshi jishu yanjiu weiyuanhui yanjiu baogao 考試院考試技術研究委員會研究報告, vol. 3 (Taipei: Examination Yuan, 1955), 50. 289 Hsu, “Institution of Provincial and Area Quota System,” 194.

180 In the next year, this executive order was turned into an independent civil examination for

Taiwanese candidates, named the Taiwan Provincial Advanced and General Level Examination (臺灣省

高等普通考試). As a parallel system with the National Advanced and General Level exam, the Taiwan

Provincial Examination qualified 1,581 candidates for positions in the civil service between 1952 and its suspension in 1968. It is noteworthy that Taiwanese candidates, legally defined as those who had

Taiwanese hukou records registered before 1949, were able to take both the National and Taiwan

Provincial exams, which to a large extent overlapped in terms of subjects and content.

Since around 1960, the Examination Yuan officials had been designing new ways to overcome the problems of provincial quota without creating a parallel examination. The result of their research was a complicated extra quota system (zenge luqu 增額錄取) implemented in the 1962 National Advanced and General exams. The design of the system originated from a 1957 emergency executive order by

Chiang Kai-shek that enabled the Examination Yuan to adjust the quotas given the Taiwanese on an ad-hoc basis during the grading process. This adjustment was articulated as fine-tuning on the level of “details of execution” (shixing xize 施行細則) and thus did not directly violate the quotas set in the 1948 Examination Law or Article 85 in the 1957 Constitution. In

1962, these ad-hoc adjustments, which were usually one-time increases of provincial quotas for the

Taiwan province, were legalized in a law allowing the Examination Committee to expand unspecified number of quotas (典試委員會決議增加若干倍錄取) when the number of candidates who reached the passing score from a province (usually Taiwan) exceeded the provincial quota. This revision of Article 21 of the Examination Law was passed in the Legislative Yuan before the 1962 regular civil service examinations.290

The extra quota system was actually a much bolder move to “bracket” the 1947 Constitution than the Taiwan Provincial Examination. Its implication was that “practical needed” and “actual

290 Ibid., 198-99. “各省區應考人數錄取與否，端視考試成績之高低, 其成績在錄取標準以上之人數, 如超 過臺灣省區定額時, 典試委員會決議增加若干倍錄取, 以應選擇.”

181 circumstances” justified government officials to shape administrative measures directly contradicting the

Constitution. After the implementation of the extra quota system, the Taiwan Provincial Examination became unnecessary and was eventually abolished in 1968.

Under these adjustment policies, Taiwanese candidates gradually became the mainstream in the regular exams, including the Advanced and General exams as well as the Taiwan Provincial Examination, which was regarded as equivalent to the Advanced Level. The increasing number of Taiwanese passers became more proportionate to the population of Taiwanese and Mainlanders registered under Chinese provinces. In the 1962 Advanced Level examination right after implementation of the extra quota system, the number of Taiwanese passers (100) for the first time exceeded the number of Chinese provinces (71).

In the same year, 43 Taiwanese passed the Taiwan Provincial Examination. The portion of Taiwanese in the cohort of passers increased steadily after that year. Despite the end of the Taiwan Provincial Exam in

1968, Taiwanese candidates accounted for 65% of those who passed the Advanced Level Exam that year because of the extra quota system .291 In this regard, the reforms initiated by the Yuan were indeed effective in creating reasonable opportunities for Taiwanese candidates in the regular exams. With the appeal of regular examinations maintained, Taiwanese participation continued to support the legitimacy of the Yuan as an authority of assessment. iv) Social Justice on Taiwan with the 1947 Constitution Bracketed: Jao Chia-wen and the 186:1

Thesis

The history of the adjustment policies above also points to the fact that the provincial quota system had not been the determining factor in the dominance of mainland Chinese in the civil service.

The various special exams, which were not subject to the provincial quota in the first place, had not gone through the adjustments by the Examination Yuan. Yet the number of candidates who qualified by special exams between 1950 and 1992 was five times those who passed the regular (Advanced, General, and

Taiwan Provincial) exams. This is also why the dominance of Mainlanders—in terms of the number of

291 Hsu, “Institution of Provincial and Area Quota System,” 196.

182 civil servants—has persisted even after the 1992 abolition of the provincial quota system to the present day.

On the other hand, the quota system has remained a symbol of the inequality between the

Taiwanese and Mainlanders, which has often been invoked in anti-Nationalist and pro-independence discourses since the emergence of the “extra-party” (dangwai 黨外) democratic movement in the 1970s.

The symbolic significance of the provincial quota system was largely shaped by Jao Chia-wen’s 姚嘉文

1975 article “The Difference between 186 and 1……Do We Still Need Provincial Quota in the Advanced and General Levels Examinations?”292 Jao, who was an established lawyer who had graduated from the prestigious National Taiwan University, joined the democratic activism initiated by Taiwanese legislators

Huang Shin-chieh 黃信介 and Kang Ning-hsiang 康寧祥 in the 1970s.293 To promote their political agenda and rally support for the upcoming re-elections in the mid-1970s, they started the Taiwan Political

Review in 1975, the first political magazine beyond the control of the Nationalist Party. Jao was invited to be the Review’s legal consultant. In the second volume in September 1975, he published “The Difference between 186 and 1” based on his previous research on civil service exams. Ranked first in the 1957

Taiwan Provincial Civil Service Examination on the subject of “statistics personnel” (tongji renyuan 統計

人員), Jao became a convincing and iconic critic of the examination system. The article’s aura was enhanced by subsequent events. At the Legislative Yuan meeting on October 4, 1975, Chiang Ching Kuo, who had become the leader of the ROC in Taiwan after his father Chiang Kai-shek died in April of that year, openly criticized Jao for fanning conflicts between Mainlanders and the Taiwanese. And in January

1976, the Nationalist Government ordered the suspension of the TPR because of its connection to a

“conspiracy” for Taiwan independence. Although “The Difference between 186 and 1” did not directly lead to this suppression, the incident gave it unexpected fame in the history of democratic and pro- independence movements.

292 Jao, “186 bi 1 de chayi,” 14-21. 293 Huang and Kang won their seats in the re-elections in 1969 and 1972, which were held when legislators elected in China in 1948 were dead.

183 Jao’s article was also a huge success of political rhetoric, as it provided a catchy conceptualization of the inequality faced by the Taiwanese in regular civil service examinations. As the title suggested, Jao argued that in 1975 the probability for a Mainlander on Taiwan to pass the Advanced and General exam was 186 times that of their Taiwanese counterpart. This stunning number came from the following calculation:

The Chance for Taiwanese in the Advanced Level Examination

Population registered under Taiwan Province = approximately 13,000,000

Quotas given to Taiwanese candidates in the 1975 Advanced Level Exam: 13

Number of successful candidates in every 1,000,000 = 1

The Chance for Mainlanders in the Advanced Level Examination

Population registered under all other Mainland provinces = approximately 450,000,000

Quotas given to Mainland candidates in the 1975 Advanced Level Exam: 558

Actual population of Mainlanders on Taiwan = approximately 3,000,000

Number of successful candidates in every 1,000,000 = 186294

This calculation was problematic because it ignored the adjustment policies of the Examination

Yuan, which was not only pointed out by critics but was also admitted by Jao himself. In the rest of the article, Jao acknowledged that the actual situation for Taiwanese candidates was not as grave as this number suggested (在實際上沒有數字上那樣嚴重) because of the Taiwan Provincial Civil Service

Exam and the extra quota system for the Advanced and General Level Exams. Yet he contended that the result was “unfair” even when Taiwanese candidates became the mainstream among those who passed these regular exams. The Taiwan Provincial Examination did provide extra opportunities for Taiwanese in the “national” advanced and general exams. However, the extra quota system, while releasing most of the

294 Ibid., 21. “台灣省定額依照五十七年終內政部戶籍統計人數計算」，而仍然使一千三百萬的台籍人 民限制在十三個配額之內，至於三百萬的其他省區人民，享有本來應該屬於四億五千萬同胞的五百五 十多個配額，換句話說，每一個在台灣的外省人擁有比台籍人士 186 倍的機會可以考上高普考.”

184 Taiwanese candidates with passing scores from the cap of provincial quota, also included practices of passing examinees who had initially failed from provinces lacking qualified candidates.

The only way to achieve fairness between Mainlanders and Taiwanese, Jao argued, was open competition without any intervening policies. He thus advocated the abolition of the provincial quota system based on the registration of native place-province (shengji 省籍). His proposal also implied a reform of household registration that replaced origin from Chinese provinces (including Taiwan after

1945) with birthplace, which, for those born after 1949, was naturally regions on Taiwan. Such registration would no longer be related to any special treatment in the competitive examination and thus access to the civil service.

Despite being labeled anti-Nationalist and pro-independence, Jao’s idea of open competition without the limit of provincial quota actually echoed the policies of the Examination Yuan. Both sides were finding ways to further the incorporation of Taiwanese into the regular examination system by circumventing the 1947 Constitution. Jao’s attitude toward the Constitution was shown in his response to the critics published in the November issue of the TPR. Most of the challenges he faced were related to the Constitution—the abolition of provincial quota and native place-province registration would violate the Constitution and the ROC’s theoretical sovereignty over mainland Chinese provinces. Jao contended that these constitutional issues should be set aside in order to tackle the actual problems on Taiwan.295 To justify the bracketing of the Constitution, he argued that the participation of Mainlanders in exams conducted on Taiwan could, by definition, be un-constitutional. As stated in Article 21 of the

Examination Law, the division of national and provincial examination and conducting exams outside native place-province violated the Constitution article that candidates should take national exams in their respective regions (“分區舉行考試”). If this regulation was strictly followed, all Mainlanders could not take civil exams on Taiwan without re-registration of households under the Taiwan Province.296 As

295 “有關憲法根據問題，筆者在拙作中終想避免討論，以免又引起太多人的情緒” 296 “筆者不願提及憲法, 就是認為如果照憲法而言，外省人士轉籍為台灣台北省市外，就無法應考， 確是不合理之至”

185 adherence to the Constitution created unreasonable results, Jao admitted that he had been deliberately avoiding the Constitution during the discussion. The implication of such an omission is indeed radical— the Republic of China Government in Taiwan could function without the 1947 Republic of China

Constitution.

Jao’s radical departure from the 1947 Constitution, however, was not meant to be a threat to the legitimacy of the Nationalist Government/ROC regime on Taiwan. This is demonstrated in his unexpectedly mild, almost unnoticeable, critique of special examination, which was the actual source of the Mainlander-Taiwanese imbalance in the civil service. Despite the dominance of special exams in terms of the number they passed, they were not mentioned in Jao’s original article. Only after he explained in his response that the problems surrounding the 1947 Constitution should be suspended did he mention the effect of special examinations, especially the Demobilized Soldier Civil Service

Examination, in passing. Jao pointed out that the six Demobilization Exams had already passed 30,510 candidates at a stunningly high passing rate of 49.34%. “This special examination,” he wrote, “dissipates the achievement of the Advanced and General Level Exams (ci xiang tezhong kaoshi , shi gaoupukao shise bushao 此項特種考試，使高普考失色不少).” But his criticism was limited to the Demobilization

Exam, rather than extended to other special examinations, which enabled the Nationalist Government to exercise arbitrary power of recruitment by designing exams reserved for specific groups and individuals.

In fact, Jao himself saw the arbitrary power of special examination as an effective solution to the problem of provincial quota. “In recent years,” he stated in the original article, “a lot of important national examinations were conducted in the format of special examination. For example, the examinations for

Taiwan Province construction officers (Taiwan sheng jianshe renyuan kaoshi 台灣省建設人員考試), judges (sifaguan 司法官), diplomats, transport officers, postal (youdian 郵電) officers, employees of the

Central Bank,中央銀行, and agents of the Investigation Bureau (Diaochaju 調查局) were all exempted from the provincial quota system based on Article 21 of the Examination Law.” Contending that this exemption should also be applied to the Advanced and General levels, Jao was in fact advocating a

186 further empowerment of the Nationalist Government to breach the restrictions imposed by the

Constitution.

In light of this consensus between the Yuan officials and Jao as a Taiwanese activist, the 1992 suspension of the provincial quota system might not have been a one-sided victory of so-called

“Taiwanization.” The eventual end of provincial quota was no less a triumph of a consistent agenda of the

Examination Yuan over the 1947 Constitution produced amidst political contingencies. The inclusion of well-educated/credentialed candidates in the regular exams, as argued above (and in Chapter 3), was the foundation of the Examination Yuan’s power as an authority of assessment. Without such authority, the special examinations—by which the government institutions exercised the arbitrary power to recruit specific groups or individuals with a low number of open competitions—could not be justified by their linguistic (the name “examination”) and formal (practices such as written tests) proximity to the regular exams. After migrating to Taiwan in 1949, the provincial quota system became an obstacle to this mechanism, as it dissuaded Taiwanese candidates, who were overall well educated, from participating

(and thus from imbuing trustworthiness) in the regular exams. On the other hand, as the interests of

Mainland Chinese networks were protected, and reproduced, by the arbitrary power of special exams, the provincial quota system was in fact unnecessary for the consolidation of the ROC’s governance on

Taiwan.

Another unintended consequence of the “186:1” thesis was its vulnerability under attacks from the pro-Nationalist/anti-independence discourse. In his 1975 speech at the Legislative Yuan,

Chiang Ching-kuo could retaliate against Jao’s complaint of unfairness by simply referring to the increasing number of Taiwanese candidates in the Advanced and General exams. Indeed, by 1975, 70-

80% of the total number of regular examination passers were Taiwanese, or in Chiang’s wording,

“compatriots of the local provinces” benshengji tongbao 本省籍同胞. Chiang then emotionally accused

Jao (as well as other Taiwanese political activists) of demanding the unity of bensheng and waisheng under the Republic of China. The next day, Chiang’s point was elaborated in an official response from the

187 Examination Yuan published in all major newspapers in Taipei. By listing the percentage of Taiwanese candidates who had passed the Advanced and General exams over the past ten years (1965-1975), the writer emphasized the Yuan’s efforts to reform the regular examinations for the sake of Taiwanese participation—a claim that was warranted by facts, even though the effects of the special examination were left out of the picture.297 This rhetoric, which implicitly condemned the Taiwanese for being ungrateful for the inclusive policies of the Nationalist Government, has been reproduced, even after the

1990s democratization, to besmirch not only independent activists (broadly defined) but also the

Taiwanese people as a whole.298

Conclusion

As shown in this chapter, the history of Article 85—from its formation in Mainland China to its effects in Taiwan—was a continuous process in which an ideology of competition prevailed over the regulation of governmental power by the Constitution. Despite the various controversies over examination policies and the reforms in the 1990s, the principle of open and competitive examination has never been challenged for its remoteness from the reality that every exam is, to a certain degree, exclusive by nature. Nor has this principle been invoked against the “special examinations” that obviously deviated from the literal definition of openness and competiveness, namely the Special Examination for

Demobilized Soldiers and the Grade A Special Examination for candidates with advanced degrees and administrative experience. Given the vagueness of the first half of Article 85, the ROC state was able to legalize exams designed for specific groups or even individuals as long as it adhered to the examination format, such as the written test, and regulations, such as the prohibition of bribing examiners. As a result,

297 “Jiang yuanzhang zai liyuan qiangdiao quanli zhixing guoce tancheng jieshou yijian 蔣院長在立院強調 全 力執行國策坦誠接受意見,” United Daily News 聯合報, October 4, 1975. 298 This is exemplified in the writings of Xu Youshou 徐有守, who served as Administrative and Political Deputy Minister in the Examination Yuan for over 20 years, and simultaneously taught and published on the government (his books on administration and examination unsurprisingly became important textbooks for the civil service exam). Xu dismissed all of the critiques surrounding the quota system as being generated by ignorance of the legal and administrative nuances of the Yuan. Xu Youshou, “Woguo kaoshi zhong de fenqu dinge 我國考試中的分區定額,” in Kaoqun xinlun 考銓新論 (Taipei: Commercial Press, 1996), 38-42.

188 the abstract principle of open competition coexisted with the strictly exclusive special exams that generated most of the civil servants in post-war Taiwan. In a symbiotic relationship, the ideology of open competition embodied in Article 85 remained unchallenged because it was detached from political and institutional realities; and in return, it provided the government enormous power to establish a wide range of legal exams without explicitly breaching the Constitution.

The protests against the provincial quota system and its eventual suspension in 1992 were another side of this process. As a specific policy written into Article 85 due to the political circumstances during the 1948 National Assembly, the provincial quota system, regardless of the original intentions of its advocates, imposed actual control on the Government’s power in examination policies. It disrupted the mechanism that generated the Examination Yuan’s authority of assessment in both Mainland China and post-1949 Taiwan. As we saw in Chapter 3, since its establishment in 1928, the Yuan had been relying on the number and quality (measured in terms of pre-exam credentials) of examinees in regular Advanced and General Level Examinations to demonstrate its social recognition. After the relocation of the ROC

Government in Taiwan in 1949, the Yuan’s source of “quality” examinees was threatened by the provincial quota system, which largely reduced the passing rate, as well as the appeal, of examination for

Taiwanese candidates. In response, the Yuan designed various policies that circumvented the second half of Article 85—such as the Taiwan Provincial Civil Service Examination and the Extra Quota system—to include as many Taiwanese candidates as possible in the regular examination system. Such policies provided the government extra administrative power unrestricted by the Constitution.

Focusing on the equality of Taiwanese and Mainland Chinese candidates in the Advanced and

General Level Exams, Jao Chiawen, as an advocate of Taiwanese political agency, became a strange bedfellow of the Examination Yuan. While the Yuan employed administrative practices to sidestep the provincial quota regulation in Article 85, Jao moved further and argued that the 1947 Constitution could be selectively neglected in actual policy decisions given the peculiar political circumstances of post-war

Taiwan. Seeing special exams as the model of examination without provincial quota, Jao envisioned the use of extra-constitutional power to grant formal equality for the Taiwanese to compete with the

189 Mainland Chinese in regular exams. Seen in this light, Jao’s 186:1 thesis, though widely circulated and employed in extra-Party democratic discourse, did not threaten the governance of the Republic of China in Taiwan. His thesis in fact diverted attention from the overwhelming number of civil servants created by special exams, which was the actual cause of the dominance of Mainland Chinese in the civil service.

More importantly, the irrelevance of the 1947 Constitution to actual policies could be translated into a

“bracketing” and preservation of that Constitution, rather than the pursuit of a Taiwanese nation-state with a new constitution.299

These developments—the persistence of the principle of open competition and the discontent with the provincial quota system—were crystalized in the amendment to the Constitution passed in 1992.

Under the Sixth Amendment, the provincial quota system based on the historical population of Mainland

Chinese provinces was suspended. Neither equivalent regulations for the promotion of regional balance in

Taiwan, nor any other restrictions on the examination policies of the Government, were introduced in replacement. Until the present, what remains in Article 85 is a constitutional blank check for the ROC

Government to legalize any examinations that formally, or even nominally, are open and competitive.

299 For Jao’s position on the 1947 Constitution in recent years, see Jao Chia-wen, Taiwan jianguo lun 台灣建 國論 (Taipei: Avanguard Publishing House, 2010), 100-102.

190 CONCLUSION

Examination and State Power in Modern China

I Three Features of Power in Modern Chinese Examination i) Negative Mobilization for Participation

One of the basic features of examination as an institution that has emerged in this dissertation is its reliance on the examinees to demonstrate the authority of assessment. This is especially clear in

Chapter 3, in which the Examination Yuan used pre-examination credentials to demonstrate the social recognition of the civil examinations it organized. Such reliance on examinees also existed, though in different forms, in keju and Euro-American examinations. In late imperial keju, the quality and future achievement of examinees was used to prove the credibility of the examiners’ assessments. This concept of “the examination became significant because of the examinees (ke yi ren zhong 科以人重)”300 generated a popular trope, especially in the genre of anecdote collections (biji 筆記) in late imperial

China, commemorating specific years of examination via the famous examinees/officials who were passed.

Developments around testing in Europe and America also show the importance of the presence of a mass of participants in establishing the authority of testing. Intelligence tests, for instance, were originally focused on abnormal subjects, such as those who were extraordinarily intelligent or regarded as retarded or insane. Such tests became applicable to the general public only after the experiment on the

Army soldiers during the Great War provided a large quantity of test subjects with “average” intelligence.

In general, participation, either of the notable few successful candidates in late imperial Chinese keju or the mass testing of IQ in the early twentieth century U.S., should be seen as an investment of energy in examination.

300 A phrase from a poem by Gong Zizhen 龔自珍, a prominent scholar and poet in the early nineteenth century. Gong, “Yihai zashi 已亥雜詩,” no. 54.

191 What was peculiar to modern Chinese examination was the tendency of criticizing examinees in spite of the reliance on them. This is exemplified in the complaints about examination performance and the examinees’ lack of practical experience, which was the typical theme of official reports from the

Examination Yuan in the 1930s and 40s, as well as the “education failure” narrative popularized in the same period, which was shared by both education bureaucrats and educators represented by the voices of prominent college professors like Chen Yinke and Zhu Ziqing (Chapter 4). The result is ironic—the participation of examinees provided the authority for those in the position of examiners to impose inferiorities on them. On the other hand, the censure of examinees was also an implicit self-denial of the examiners, as they were working within a system that reproduced the “failures” about which they complained.

This dissertation provides two lines of explanation for the prevalence of negative mobilization in modern Chinese examination. First is the replacement of specific rewards with institutional and social pressure in modern Chinese education, which emerged during the late Qing New Policy Reforms in the

1900s. After the subsequent abolition of monetary rewards in traditional academies, advancement to officialdom through keju, and official title incentives for graduates—caused by the conjuncture of political circumstances described in Chapter 1—educator reformers, as agents of the modern state, did not have incentives to attract participation in education and examinations. They eventually turned to legal and financial means, such as the prohibitive fine for leaving schools, to keep students under the discipline of modern schools. At the same time, with their dominance in the flourishing published media, reformers were able to shape the image of students in modern schooling as a morally suspicious group which needed to prove its worthiness in society by subordinating itself to the education and examination system.

This logic was also at the core of the centralized graduate examination system between 1932 and 1949, under which high school students were required to take an extra exam that connected them to neither placements in higher education nor jobs. The drive for participation in the huikao was mostly pressure— either institutional, such as disqualification by the state, or social, such as being labeled as “students who were afraid of examinations that expose their weakness”—a rhetoric used not only by Nationalist Party

192 ideologues, like Yang Quan while in charge of the Suzhou huikao in the early 1930s, but also by non- official educators who were hostile to the students as a group/social problem.

The second explanation constituted a paradox in examination orthodoxy. Coined by Sun Yat-sen, the concept of orthodoxy (zhengtu 正途) meant that only those who passed civil examinations could be recognized as legitimate government officials, including those who conducted examinations for the state.

Yet as shown in Chapters 3 and 5, regular examinations, namely the Advanced and General Level Civil

Service Examinations (gaopukao 高普考), remained marginal in the bureaucracy of Nationalist regimes throughout the twentieth century. Even the Examination Yuan, which was supposed to be the agency of the principle of orthodoxy, had been led for a long time by non-examination officials, ranging from Party seniors like Dai Jitao, Niu Yongjian 紐永建, and Sun Ke 孫科 and politicians like Mo Dehui 莫德惠 to cultural leaders like Wang Yunwu 王雲五. To cope with pressure from the “orthodox” civil servants, their defects were constructed to explain away the fact that non-examination officials endured in mainstream bureaucracy, as well as the paradoxical condition that “legitimate” examinees were assessed by standards erected and executed by “illegitimate” examiners.

ii) Ambiguity of Standards and Rules

The quantification of assessment is another feature that marked the departure of modern Chinese examination from late imperial keju. Yet as argued in Chapter 2, quantification was not a set of neutral technologies transferred from Euro-American countries to China. Instead, quantitative assessment, and more importantly, the underlying concept of objectivity, was embedded in social and political contexts.

As demonstrated by John Carson with the history of the IQ test, in the U.S., quantification in public affairs implied public scrutiny of the numbers provided; in France, experts were expected to be accountable for the outcome of their judgments. In other words, these contrasting developments reflect the different approaches to maintaining the authority of standards and rules in response to popular pressure.

193 The quantification of modern Chinese examination took a different path from both the U.S. and

French models. As shown in the history of the Standardized Test Movement in the 1920s and 30s, experts—the scholars of quantitative education research who had returned from the U.S.—used their authority as experts in objective testing to defend the examination against sceptics who had accumulated since the beginning of modern education in the 1900s. Once objective methods were practiced, these scholars contended, all controversies surrounding the use of examination would become meaningless. But throughout the two decades of the Movement, they increasingly conceded to the conventional examinations, especially those with essay-type tests, that they had once alleged subjective and valueless.

At one point Zhang Yaoxiang, the early leader of the Movement, even acknowledged imperial keju as an objective test of intelligence. Nor did the STM scholars respond to the two significant new policies of examination after the Nanjing Nationalist Government came to power—the civil service examination organized by the Examination Yuan in 1930, which completely consisted of essay-type tests with a traditionalist aura of the keju, and the centralized graduation examination, which did not follow a consistent standard of scoring across provinces. This detachment from actual policies not only enabled the

STM scholars to coexist with the Nationalist ideologues, but also prevented them from being held accountable for the outcome of specific examinations or for the inconsistencies in their arguments for objective method, which had been instrumental in silencing the activism against examination as an institution of resource allocation in the 1910s and 20s.

The ambiguity of standards and the unaccountability of those who made them were also seen in the laws of examination under Nationalist regimes. Ironically, the 1947 Constitution of the Republic of

China, which was written in Nanjing and eventually became the Constitution effective in Taiwan until the present day, generated even more confusion about the state’s power of examination. As shown in Chapter

5, the principle of open and competitive examination, which was written into the Constitution by democrats outside the Nationalist Party, was too vague to have any meaningful restrictions on the design of state examinations. In post-1949 Taiwan, therefore, various examinations were established that advantaged specific status groups—ranging from the Demobilization Examination reserved for high-

194 ranking veterans, who were mostly mainlanders, to the Grade A Special Examination for holders of advanced degrees, access to which was closely monitored by the Nationalist party-state.

On the other hand, the idea that the Constitution could be neglected developed from the contradiction between the provincial quota system of Mainland China and the social reality of Taiwan.

Before the democratic reforms in the 1990s, the revision of the Constitution had been a political taboo, because it might rectify the fact that the Nationalist Government would never recover its territory in the mainland, and it was also impractical in procedural terms, as it required a re-election of the National

Assembly by the people of the Republic of China, including the mainland population. As a result, the

Examination Yuan officials and the Taiwanese political activists advocated the use of “special examination” as an administrative means to circumvent the provincial quota principle. In the name of equal opportunity for Taiwanese in regular Advanced and General Civil Service Examinations—which in fact occupied a small share of new recruitments in the bureaucracy—their proposals justified the state to design examinations not limited by the Constitution. iii) Examiners as Unaccountable Outsiders

These tendencies toward negativity and ambiguity were enabled by the positioning of examiners—those who made and implemented standards—as outside the examination as a system. The continuous alienation of examiners from examinees distinguishes modern Chinese examination from the late imperial keju. After dynastic changes in imperial China, such as the Yuan-Ming transition, it was common for examinees to be assessed by examiners without previous success in keju, who emerged in the time when such examination was terminated or inaccessible. The norm of examiner-examinee mobility would be restored once successful examinees emerged as a new generation of examiners. This process of normalization, however, was prevented by the frequent rebuilding of assessment systems in modern

China, which was caused not only by the rise and fall of political regimes, but also by an ideology that justified rapid changes to institutions in the name of reform. Amid the constant remaking, or experiments, of rules and standards, those in the position of examinees could not find leverage in established conventions against those who acted as examiners. As a result, the subordinate position of examinees was

195 reproduced via a combination of unaccountable examiners, negative mobilization and ambiguous rules coated with formality—such as the standardized test without consistent methodology and the examination laws that were at odds with the power of examination defined in the 1947 Constitution.

II State Building in Twentieth Century China and Taiwan

This dissertation not only captures these three general features of modern Chinese examination, but also responds to broader questions regarding state building in China and Taiwan throughout the twentieth century. i) State Building in Early Twentieth Century China: Late Qing and pre-1927 Regimes

Once dismissed as the Qing empire’s failed attempt for revival, the 1900s New Policy Reform is now widely accepted by historians as the beginning of modern state building in China. The institutional changes in this period, including the abolition of keju and the introduction of modern schooling, endured despite the fall of the Qing in 1911. Earlier works were inclined to be critical of the dismantling of existing social practices, or the “cultural nexus of power,” to borrow from Prasenjit Duara’s terminology, by forces of modern state building.301 Recent scholarship has challenged the dichotomies implied in the narratives of transformation, such as state-society and traditional-modern. Scholarship on early developments in modern education in China reveal social actors’ spontaneous initiations of state building projects. For instance, Robert Culp traces the popularization of civic education by non-state and non-

Nationalist Party elite in the Jiangnan area in the early twentieth century; Elizabeth R. VanderVen researches how villagers in Northeast China local communities engaged in the project of replacing sishu by modern schools.302 On the other hand, historians have also paid attention to the complexity of knowledge and institutional systems developed in the 1900s, which cannot be grasped by the traditional- modern dichotomy, such as the fusion of conservatism and modernism in the knowledge production of

301 Prasenjit Duara, Culture, Power, and the State: Rural North China, 1900-1942 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988). 302 Robert Culp, Articulating Citizenship: Civic Education and Student Politics in Southeastern China, 1912- 1940 (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2011); Elizabeth R. VanderVen, A School in Every Village: Educational Reform in a Northeast China County, 1904–31 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2012).

196 the 1900s, and the 1904 Education Charter as an eclectic innovation of late Qing officials, rather than an adaptation of the school system of Meiji Japan.303

While drawing our attention to the complexity of the state building process, revisionist accounts run the risk of shifting away from the tension generated in the change of power dynamic and its consequences. Crucial questions remain unanswered: Who were empowered and who deprived under the new rules? Beyond representing the messiness of complicity and dissecting the traditional-modern and state-society dichotomies, are there ways for us to critically assess modern education as a Chinese state building process?

Revisiting the New Policy Reform, I take seriously the diagnosis by scholars in the early

Republican period that the first two decades of modern Chinese education were a failure, as shown in

Chapter 4. The cause of this failure, however, should be the tendency toward unregulated and unaccountable expansion as demonstrated above, rather than the individual quality of students, which was mostly a rhetoric used by Nationalist ideologues and cultural elite in the 1930s and 40s.

In Chapter 1, I focus on the material foundation on which the power dynamic between examiners- educators and examinees-students became more imbalanced in the late Qing. The building of modern schools in this period was based on a dominant assumption that modern education could save the nation in international competition. The actual effect of such a venture, however, could hardly be proven. As a result, the increase in the number of schools and students/graduates became the only indicator of the achievement of education reform, which supported further investment in the expansion of schools.

Meanwhile, to maintain the number of students, disciplinary practices, including the strict year-grade system and the fine for students dropping out before graduation, were designed. These practices were then made universal within the empire by the reformist governors, who shaped the 1904 Education Charter, and justified by publishers via a narrative condemning the students who did not adhere to these

303 Paul Bailey, “Modernising Conservatism in Early Twentieth Century China: The Discourse and Practices of Women’s Education,” European Journal of East Asian Studies 3, no. 2 (2004): 241-71; Ya-pei Kuo, “The Emperor and the People in One Body: The Worship of Confucius and Ritual Planning in the Xinzheng Reforms, 1902-1911,” Modern China 35, no. 2 (year?): 123-54.

197 practices—with accusations of greediness, lack of national sentiment, and no motivation for personal improvement. With this circular dynamic—increase in the number of schools indicated the demand for further expansion—and the low level of financial regulation from the central states of both the late Qing and the Beijing Government, education became a powerful device of unregulated extraction of a public resource. A network of educators, reformers and publishers who benefited from the expansionary development in education, known as the “education sector (jiaoyu jie 教育界),” became virtually unaccountable. ii) The Nationalist State during the Nanjing Decade and the Second Sino-Japanese War

In the roughly two-decade rule of the Nationalist state over China proper (1927-1949), the threat from students became no longer a mere rhetoric used by educators to justify discipline in schools, but a real social issue to be tackled. This was caused not only by the rapid increase in the student population in the 1910s and 20s, but also by the emergence of a new paradigm of activism. The May Fourth Movement in 1919, sparked by the diplomatic defeat of the Beijing Government at the Paris Peace Conference, wedded student activism to nationalist sentiment and dissidence against the political regimes. In its aftermath, the Nationalist Party, as an emerging revolutionary power against the Beijing Government, adopted a strategy of directing activism against the so-called warlord regimes. This approach, which was named by historian Lu Fangshang as “mobilization of students (yundong xuesheng 運動學生),” yielded results in the May Thirtieth Movement in 1925.304 Fueled by the death of a child laborer in a Japanese- owned factory in Shanghai and the suppression of subsequent protests by the Beijing Government, student movements accompanied by a general strike broke out. By mobilizing popular support for the

Movement, and adding “anti-imperialist” agendas to its platform, the Nationalist Party gained legitimacy for its revolution, which became known as the Northern Expedition. The mobilized student activism, however, quickly turned from an asset into a burden after the Nationalists established their government in

304 Lu Fangshang 呂芳上, Cong xuesheneg yundong dao yundong xuesheng 從學生運動到運動學生 (Taipei: Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, 1994).

198 Nanjing in 1927. Not only did that Government have to depart from the anti-imperialist claims to obtain recognition by foreign powers, it also had to subdue the students, now an energetic, educated, city- dwelling population that could either be mobilized by opposing powers, such as the left/communist leaning clique within the Party, or by itself become a destabilizing force for the public.

On such grounds, a cooperation between the Nationalist state and schools was forged. This relationship has often been overlooked by existing scholarship on the Nanjing Decade, which focuses mainly on the Nationalist Nanjing Government’s policies toward the “Party- fication (danghua 黨化)” of education. From this perspective, the “education sector,” which gained a large degree of autonomy under the late Qing and Beijing Governments, was in conflict with the Nationalist Party, which had a much higher capacity of ideological control. This narrative not only runs the risk of glorifying the educators, who have emerged as a social class since the late Qing New Policy Reform. It also assumes a struggle for the power of education between the Nationalist state and educators. As shown in the history of the huikao, which is usually regarded as the Nationalists’ policy to seize power from the schools,305 the state functions of student registration and assessment were outsourced by the Nationalist state to the schools.

Moreover, throughout its rule in China proper, the Nationalist Government maintained a policy that detached the huikao from placement in higher education. With these policies of outsourcing and cooperation, the Nationalist Government used the schools as buffers from pressure from students, generated from discontent with the discipline of testing and the demand for advancement in education.

That was the major reason for the formation of the School Laws in the early 1930s, which in fact tended to consolidate the school as a partially autonomous institution. The politics of shifting responsibility, often decorated by the name of autonomy, cannot be captured by the conventional frameworks that assume the state and schools were competing for control.

305 Such as Mei-jung Kuan, “From Separation to Joint: Development of the Joint College Entrance Examination 1938-1940,” Guoshiguan xueshu jikan 國史館學術集刊 16 (2008): 97-101.

199 On the other hand, the pattern of “keeping the mobilized in check” was also seen in the

Nationalist state’s policy toward those who passed the civil examination. Before coming to power in

1927, Sun Yat-sen’s idea that examination was the only legitimate way to recruit for civil service was a powerful ideological weapon against the so-called warlord regimes, which were alleged as being occupied by corrupt bureaucrats who had advanced through personal favoritism. After the establishment of the

Nanjing Government, however, Sun’s high bar of examination orthodoxy could hardly be reached by the

Nationalists. In part, this was because they had to incorporate existing un-examined bureaucrats into the new government. More crucially, the idea of examination orthodoxy challenged the authority of the leaders of both the Nanjing Government and members of the Nationalist Party, who did not advance by examination. Such pressure shaped the seemingly contradictory policies of the Examination Yuan. On one hand, the Yuan officials boasted the pre-examination credentials of the examinees to demonstrate recognition of the examination; on the other, they publicly devalued the successful examinees—in various terms ranging from poor performance in examination to inexperience in administration—in order to maintain the superiority of the existing leaders and officials over these new “orthodox” officials.

This two-fold strategy of the Examination Yuan invites us to reconsider existing frameworks used to assess the Nationalist state. In response to the once-dominant narrative that failures in governance caused the Nationalists’ eventual defeat by the Communists, historians have provided nuanced research on the capacity of the Nationalist state in different areas, as well as on lines of division in the Party and the government.306 In regard to the bureaucracy, this revisionist scholarship tends to see the Examination

Yuan as a project of bureaucratic reform that had limited success either because of opposition from the

Party or the structural problem of the Yuan: as Julia Strauss has pointed out, the disproportionately small size of the Department of Examination compared to the Department of Assessment that was in charge of legalizing existing non-examination civil servants.307 Regardless of the difference in explanation, these

306 William Kirby, “The Internationalization of China: Foreign Relations at Home and Abroad in the Republican Era,” China Quarterly 150 (1997): 433-58; Philip Huang, Code, Custom, and Legal Practice in China: The Qing and the Republic Compared (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 10-11. 307 Li Junqing, Xiandai wenguan zhidu zai Zhongguo de chuanggou 現代文官制度在中國的創構 (Beijing:

200 works share the assumption that bureaucratization—regularizing recruitment through examination—was a goal of at least some of the agents of the state. However, as shown in Chapter 3, the marginalization of the “orthodox” officials had been a persistent policy of the Yuan since its establishment, rather than the result of resistance from the executive branch and the Party.

The developments in the civil service examination and education outlined above did not change significantly after the outbreak of the “War of Resistance” in 1937 and the relocation of the Nationalist

Government to Chongqing. During the war, irregular recruitment of civil servants, which meant appointment without passing the competitive Advanced and General Civil Service Exams, proliferated.

These employees were named by terms that implied exceptions during wartime emergency, such as

“exceptional period (feichang shiqi 非常時期).” Yet they were in fact a further development, rather than a reversal, of pre-war policies, which by design marginalized “orthodox” examinees. In wartime education, the centralized graduation examination (huikao) had been disrupted, schools had been closed, thousands of students had been displaced, but the Ministry of Education maintained the policy that one could legally be regarded as a graduate only after passing the huikao through the affiliated school. The

Ministry would not override the schools and issue credentials to students. The huikao was not connected to college entrance, which remained under the control of the universities despite the introduction of new joint university admissions systems.

This continuity leads us to reconsider a conventional narrative that the War of Resistance was a distinctive period of state building in modern China. Historians often emphasize the wartime increase of the Nationalist state’s capacity to centralize education.308 However, in light of the pre-war developments,

Sanlian shudian, 2007); Hu Xiangdong, Minguo shiqi zhongguo kaoshi zhidu de zhuanxing yu zhonggou民國 時期中國考試制度的轉型與重構 (Wuhan: Hubei renmin chubanshe, 2008); Qin Haoyang, Minguo wenguan kaoshi zhidu yanjiu民國文官考試制度研究 (Beijing: Guojia xingzheng xueyuan, 2009); Julia C. Strauss, Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: State Building in Republican China, 1927-1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 28-57.

308 William C. Kirby, “The Chinese War Economy: Mobilization, Control, and Planning in Nationalist China,” in China's Bitter Victory: The War with Japan, 1937-1945, eds. Steven I. Levine and James C. Hsiung (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1992), 185–213.

201 the “centralization” during the war need further qualification. As demonstrated in Chapter 4, the schools were shaped into institutes to relocate displaced students, who were primarily young and educated refugees. A significant number of schools were reorganized into “national high schools (guoli zhongxue

國立中學)” after retreating from coastal provinces under Japanese occupation—which could be seen as a sign of the expansion of state control. But these national schools were also empowered to determine autonomously the acceptance of refugee students and allocation of state-sponsored scholarship (gongfei

公費) and loans (daijin 貸金). Such autonomy, unsurprisingly, was also seen in non-nationalized schools.

As a result, the school administrations, instead of the Nationalist state, became the usual target of the education protests that proliferated during the War. Following the trajectory developed before the War, the Nationalist state did not expand its power by direct control over the allocation of resources, but in fact diverted the pressure from popular demands to seemingly non-state institutions. The War of Resistance did not see the rise of a bio-political regime rewarding merit—in terms of personal sacrifice for the state—with wellbeing.309 Negative mobilization remained at the core of the Nationalist state’s power in education and examination. iii) The Republic of China as a Colonial or Settler Regime in Post-war Taiwan

After Japan’s defeat in WWII, the Republic of China became an alien regime—sometimes categorized as either “colonial (zhimin 殖民)” or “settler (qianzhanzhe 遷佔者)”—on Taiwan, a former colony of Japan.310 Despite the claim that the Taiwanese people were Chinese compatriots (tongbao 同胞) to be decolonized, the abnormality of ROC-Nationalist rule on Taiwan was demonstrated in the mass murder of the Taiwanese population—especially the elite with social and cultural influence—before and after the February 28th Incident in 1947, as well as in the adherence to the 1947 ROC Constitution—

309 For the bio-politics of merit-based welfare developed by the Japanese Empire near the end of WWII, see T. Fujitani, Race for Empire: Koreans as Japanese and Japanese as Americans during World War II (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 293-8. 310 Huang Chih-Huei 黃智慧, Zhonghua minguo zai Taiwan (1945-1987): “Zhimin tongzhi yu qianzhanzhe guojia shuo zhi tantao 中華民國在台灣(1945-1987) 殖民統治與遷佔者國家說之探討,” in Zhonghua minguo liuwang Taiwan 60 nian ji zhanhou Taiwan guoji chujing 中華民國流亡台灣 60 年暨戰 後台灣國際 處境, ed. Taiwan Association of University Professors (Taipei: Avantguard, 2010), 61-192.

202 written in Nanjing in the name of the people of China proper—that produced the provincial quota system for civil service examination. As shown in Chapter 5, since the extra-Nationalist Party political activism

(dangwai yundong 黨外運動), the provincial quota had been employed to symbolize the abnormalities of

Taiwan under the rule of a Chinese Constitution.

Explanations for the endurance of the ROC as an alien state on Taiwan—from late 1940 to the present day—constitute three major lines of research in the historiography on post-war Taiwan. The first focuses on the social conditions that sustained the authoritarian rule of the Nationalist Government. It is represented by Wu Nai-teh’s 1987 dissertation “The Politics of a Regime Patronage System,” a field- defining work on the Nationalist Government’s exchanged loyalty from local cliques (difang paixi 地方

派系)—a complicated mixture of social institutions like agricultural societies, religious leaders, and gang members—by channeling extra-legal interest to them.311 The second line, which has yielded important results in recent years, focuses on the impact of the U.S. presence on the political economy of post-war

Taiwan. The outbreak of the Korean War and the U.S.-Soviet confrontation in East Asia made Chiang

Kai-shek a needed representative of “Free-China.” The U.S.’s subsequent aid to Chiang’s regime sustained the economy on Taiwan, which had been devastated by the predatory policies of the

Nationalists—notably the seizure of land in the name of reform and the transfer of wealth by a new legal tender. Therefore, the prosperity of Taiwan since the 1970s was mostly the result of U.S. intervention, rather than the achievement of Nationalist governance.312 The third line focuses on the transformation of the ROC in Taiwan in the late 1980s and 90s—the so-called period of democratization.313 As

311 Wu Nai-teh 吳乃德, “The Politics of a Regime Patronage System: Mobilization and Control within an Authoritarian Regime” (PhD Dissertation, University of Chicago, 1987). 312 Lin Bing-yan 林炳炎, Baowei da Taiwan de meiyuan (1949-1957) 保衛大臺灣的美援 (1949-1957) (Taipei: Sanmin, 2004); Hsiao-ting Lin, Accidental State: Chiang Kai-shek, the United States, and the Making of Taiwan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016); Chen Tsui-lien 陳翠蓮, Chonggou ererba: zhanhou meizhong tizhi zhongguo tongzhi moshi yu taiwan 重構二二八: 戰後美中體制, 中國統治模式與臺灣 (Taipei: Acropolis, 2017). 313 Wakabayashi Masahiro, Taiwan no Seiji: Chukaminkoku Taiwanka no Sengoshi (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 2008); Tay-sheng Wang, The Process of Legal Modernization in Taiwan--From “The Extension of Mainland” to “Independent Reception” (Taipei: National Taiwan University Press, 2015).

203 Wakabayashi Masahiro argues, the direct election of the president and legislators in the 1990s, along with the amendments of the 1947 Constitution, was the crystallization of a process he called “Taiwanization,” in which Taiwanese identity had developed since the dangwai activism and the localization policy of

Chiang Ching-kuo in the 1970s. Following this line of argument, reducing of Chinese-ness in the

Republic of China made it sustainable on Taiwan.

While benefitting from the literature on Taiwan under an alien regime, this dissertation highlights the long-term developments of the Nationalist state. In other words, the ROC in Taiwan’s techniques of governance did not emerge solely after its encounter with Taiwan in the late 1940s, but from long-term developments in state building in China proper. The three features of the power of modern Chinese examination, for instance, were seen in the Nationalist state in both China and Taiwan. The two-fold strategy of including and criticizing examinees in the civil service examination, which had been formed since the 1930s under the policy of the Examination Yuan, was transferred onto Taiwan after 1949. With the participation of Taiwanese candidates, who were educated under the well-developed Japanese system, the Examination Yuan not only boasted the social recognition of the civil service examination, but also constructed the weakness of the Taiwanese in Mandarin (guoyu 國語), as shown in Ai Wei’s reports on the intelligence test conducted on examination participants. The outnumbering of regular exams by

“special” exams and non-examination recruitments, which put the “legitimate” officials in check and maintained the loyalty of the others through their ambiguous legal and ideological position, had also transferred from China to Taiwan.

This “long history” approach to the Nationalist state does not write out the distinctiveness of post-war Taiwan, nor incorporate Taiwan back into “modern Chinese history.” The particular strength of this approach is a sensitivity to the reproduction of the effects of the Chinese/Nationalist state on Taiwan, which were prevalent in Taiwanese society, including on those who resisted the Nationalists’ authoritarian rule. For instance, aiming at equal opportunity for Taiwanese in the Advanced and General

Level Examinations, Jao Chia-wen’s proposal for reform legitimized the government’s use of special

204 examination as an administrative means to circumvent the Constitution, which had been an established strategy brought by the Examination Yuan from China proper to Taiwan. This prioritization of formal fairness over the consistency of laws, along with other complicated legacies of Nationalist governance on

Taiwan, did not fade away after the “democratization” and “Taiwanization” in the 1990s. To understand the government on Taiwan ruling in the name of the Republic of China with the 1947 Constitution, the long history—or the pre-history, for those who see the Taiwanization process as complete—of the

Nationalist state is no doubt indispensable. iv) Measure of Merit in the People’s Republic of China

Before ending this dissertation, I will provide preliminary observations on the politics of examination in the Communist People’s Republic of China since 1949, based on the three institutional features of modern Chinese examination outlined above.

In terms of objectivity in standards, the PRC saw the ebbs and flows of quantitative methods in the latter half of the twentieth century. In the 1950s, educators of the Communist Republic sought to remove the American influence on quantitative assessment that had persisted since the 1920s

Standardized Test Movement. This attempt produced a series of official critiques (pipan 批判) of U.S. educational psychology attributed to John Dewey, instead of to Edward Thorndike, the leader of the quantitative movement, not least because of his connection to Hu Shih, who was depicted as the archenemy of the people in the intellectual realm.314 The de-Americanization of testing was accompanied by the introduction of a five-grade scale from the Soviets around 1950, which was aborted by the split with the Soviet Union in 1956.315 With the de-Americanization and the lack of a replacement quantitative method, essay writing remained the dominant form of examination. In the 1957 College Entrance

Examination (gaokao 高考), for example, candidates were asked to write only one essay with the title of

314 Cao Fu 曹孚, Du Wei pipan yinlun 杜威批判引論 (Beijing: Renmin jiaoyu chubanshe, 1951). 315 Jiaoyu ziliao congkan she, ed., Chengji kaocha yu sulian wujifen zhi 成绩考查与苏联五级分制 (Beijing: Xinhua shudian, 1950).

205 “My Mother.”316 At around the same time, political examination (zhengshen 政審), which was further institutionalized with the Anti-Right Campaign in 1957, became increasingly dominant in the access to education and occupation.317 Focusing on political background, the zhengshen was conducted with categories and languages that were often arbitrary and inconsistent. Quantitative assessment did not revive until the 1980s, when standardized tests were tried again after the model of the TOEFL introduced from the U.S.318 Yet similar to the Standardized Test Movement in the Republican period, quantitative assessment replaced neither essay writing, as shown in the high-profile publication of “model essays” from examinations, nor assessments of political loyalty. Despite the spread of ideologies of competition and upward mobility through examination during the 1980 socio-economic reform, the rationale behind these conflicting standards of assessment remained obscure, if not ignored.

In the first three decades of the PRC, mobilization in education had swung between extremes of incentive and negative mobilization. In the 1950s, the state experimented with a non-competitive approach to allocate placements in education and occupation. Scores and passing rates in examinations were used to prove general progress in the quality of education, rather than individual success. This resulted in a soaring of passing rates and number of admissions into middle and higher education institutions, which eventually became the educational counterpart of hyperbolic productivity during the disastrous Great Leap Forward.319 At the end of the decade, the influx of students unsorted by testing and examinations could not be sustained by the education system. Meanwhile, the access to higher education and professional status also needed a mechanism of selection in order to settle the conflict between the older generation of elites and those who emerged in the first decade of the PRC.320 Against this background, a rapid and radical reversal took place in the Cultural Revolution. With all entrance and

316 Jiang Chao, ed., Zhongguo gaokao shi 中國高考史 (Beijing: Zhongguo yan shi chubanshe, 2008), 491. 317 Zhongguo gaokao shi, 582. 318 Qi Shuqing 漆書青, “Sanlun biaozhunhua kaoshi 散論標准化考試,” Jiangxi jiaoyu keyan 1 (1986): 37-46. 319 Suzanne Pepper, Radicalism and Education Reform in 20th Century China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 278-301. 320 Joel Andreas, Rise of the Red Engineers: The Cultural Revolution and the Origins of China's New Class (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), 75-83.

206 recruitment examination abolished in 1966, political loyalty, measured by means including the political examination, became almost the determinant of access to opportunities. As a system of assessment, measurement of political loyalty relied on an extreme form of negative mobilization. Focusing on negative qualities in familial and social background, the regime of political examination made individuals extremely vulnerable to accusations of disloyalty to the Party and the state. Individuals were forced to engage with the system by demonstrating determination in class warfare in political movements, as well as closely monitoring those who were able to make charges against them.

These rapid changes in measures of merit also generated demarcations comparable to those between examiners and examinees under the late Qing and Republican states. Not only did the dual structure of Party and Government, which was comparable to the Nationalist Party-state, prevent the late imperial keju model of mobility between examiners and examinees, but the contrasting conditions under the supposedly same system also created conflicts and tensions, which tended to be directed against those in the position of examinee. This is shown in the celebration of the 1977 restoration of the college entrance examination, which reached its height in the mid-2000s in conjunction with the centennial commemoration of the 1905 abolition of keju, and is returning this year in its 40th anniversary. In the conventional narrative, the “class of 1977 (qiqiji 七七級),” the first cohort of college entrance examinees after the ten-year abolition of the exam, symbolized individual striving for success in extremely difficult circumstances.321 In the 1977 gaokao, among more than 5,700,000 examinees—accumulated in the decade without opportunity of advancement—only 270,000 passed. The low passing rate is often used to show the competitiveness of the class of 1977, and to imply their superiority over later generations of students who did not face such long odds. What is neglected in this narrative is the wide range of opportunities opened to the generation that emerged right after the Cultural Revolution, but not to the students in contemporary China. In this sense, the class of 1977 narrative has a striking resemblance to

321 This is the dominant theme in the 2009 film Gaokao 1977 (高考 1977). A book covering the movie was published in Shanghai in the same year, see Gaokao 1977 (Shanghai: Shanghai cishu chubanshe, 2009).

207 the “students as high class vagrants” narrative in the 1910s and the “education failure” narrative of the

1930s, which both put latecomers in an irreversible position of inferiority.

Comprehensive comparison with the power of examination in the late Qing and the long

Republican period will be possible only after further investigation. What is certain is that the People’s

Republic of China did not inherit a static and complete structure of examination from the late imperial keju. Just like the late Qing and Nationalist states, it invented the modern Chinese ways of examination.

208 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Archival Materials

Academia Historica (Taipei)

Examination Yuan Archives

Ministry of Education Archives

Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archives

Library of the Examination Yuan (Taipei)

Kuomindang Party Archives (Taipei)

General Archives

National Supreme Defence Commission Archives

National Defence Archives

Records of Party Affairs Meetings

Second Historical Archives (Nanjing)

Ministry of Education Archives

Ministry of Interior Archives

Other Official Documents

Qing

Kun Gang 崑岡 et al ed. Daqing huidian shili (Guangxu) 大清會典事例 (光緒朝)

Zhang Boxi 張百熙. Qinding xuetang zhangcheng 欽定學堂章程. Taipei: Wenhai, 1987.

Zhang Zhidong 張之洞. Zouding xuetang zhangcheng 奏定學堂章程. Taipei: Wenhai, 1987.

Xuebuguanbao 學部官報. Taipei: Gugong bowu yuan, 1980.

Republic of China

Beiyang zhengfu dangan 北洋政府檔案. Beijing: Zhongguo ren dangan chubanshe, 2010.

Examination Yuan, Republic of China. Ershier nian (1933) gaodeng kaoshi zongbaogao 二十二年 (1933)高等考試總報告.

______. Kaoshiyuan zong baogao shu 考試院總報告書 (1934)

209 ______. Kaoshiyuan zong baogao shu xubian 考試院總報告書續編 (1935)

______. Kaoshiyuan gongzuo baogao考試院工作報告(1935, 1937, 1941, 1942, 1945, 1946)

______. Kaoshiyuan gongbao 考試院公報

______. Kaoshiyuan kaoshi jishu yanjiu weiyuanhui yanjiu baogao 考試 院考試技術研究委員會研究報告(1951-1956)

______. Kaoshiyuan shizheng biannian lu 考試院施政編年錄

Justices of the Judicial Yuan, Republic of China. Interpretations of the Constitution.

Dierci quanguo jiaoyuhuiyi shimo ji 第二次全國教育會議始末記(1930). Taipei: Zhuanji wenxue, 1971.

Diyici Zhongguo Jiaoyu Nianjian 第一次中國教育年鑑(1934). Taipei: Zhuanji wenxue chubanshe, 1971.

Dierci Zhongguo Jiaoyu Nianjian 第二次中國教育年鑑(1948). Taipei: Wenhai, 1986.

Nanjing shi jiaoyu gailan 南京市教育概覽 (1933). Beijing: Guojia tushuguan chubanshe, 2010.

Miao Chuan-chi 繆全吉 ed., Collection of Socuments and Data in Relation to the History of Chinese Constitution. Taipei: Academia Historica, 1989.

Major Newspapers and Periodicals

Taikungpao 大公報

Shenpao 申報

United Daily News 聯合報

Ceyan 測驗

The Eastern Miscellany 東方雜誌

Jiaoyu zazhi 教育雜誌

Shidai gonglun 時代公論

Zhonghua jiaoyu jie 中華教育界

Collections of Primary Sources

210 Deng Hongbo 鄧洪波. Zhongguo shuyuan xuegui jicheng 中國書院學規集成 (3 volumes). Shanghai: Zhongxi shuju, 2011.

Shu Xincheng 舒新城 ed. Jindai zhongguo jiaoyu shiliao 近代中國教育史料. Beijing: Zhongguo renmindaxue chubanshe, 2012.

Yang Xuewei 楊學為, Liu Fan 劉芃 et al ed. Zhongguo kaoshi shi wenxian jicheng 中國考試史資料集成 (8 volumes). Beijing: Gaodeng jiaoyu chubanshe, 2003.

Published Materials in English

Joel Andreas. Rise of the Red Engineers: The Cultural Revolution and the Origins of China's New Class. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009.

Pierre Bourdieu; Patrick Champagne, Remi Lenoir, Franck Poupeau and Marie-Christine Rivière eds.; David Fernbach tr. On the State: lectures at the Collège de France, 1989-1992. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014.

John Carson, The Measure of Merit: Talents, Intelligence, and Inequality in the French and American Republics, 1750-1940. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.

Kai-wing Chow, Publishing, Culture, and Power in Early Modern China.Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004.

Shiuon Chu, “Failure Stories: Interpretations of Rejected Papers in the Late Imperial Civil Service Examinations,” T'oung Pao 101-1-3 (2015).

Robert Culp, Articulating Citizenship: Civic Education and Student Politics in Southeastern China, 1912- 1940. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2007.

Hilde De Weerdt, Competition over Content: Negotiating Standards for the Civil Service Examinations in Imperial China (1127– 1279). Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2007.

Prasenjit Duara. Culture, Power, and the State: Rural North China, 1900-1942. Stanford: Standord University Press, 1988.

F.Y. Edgeworth, “The statistics of examinations", Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 51(1888): 599- 635.

Benjamin A. Elman, A Cultural History of Late Imperial Civil Examinations. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.

John Fitzgerald, Awakening China: Politics, Culture, and Class in the Nationalist Revolution. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.

Wolfgang Franke, The Reform and Abolition of the Traditional Chinese Examination. Cambridge: Harvard East Asian Research Center, 1960.

Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage, 1995.

211 T. Fujitani. Race for Empire: Koreans as Japanese and Japanese as Americans during World War II. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.

Carol Gluck, Japan’s Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985.

Andrew Gordon. Labor and Imperial Democracy in Prewar Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.

Henrietta Harrison. The Man Awakened from Dreams: One Man's Life in a North China Village, 1857- 1942.Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005.

Ping-ti Ho. The Ladder of Success in Imperial China: Aspects of Social Mobility, 1308-1911. New York: Columbia University Press, 1962.

Keith Hoskin. “Education and the Genesis of Disciplinarity: The Unexpected Reversal,” in E. Messer- Davidow, David R. Shumway, and David Sylvan eds., Knowledges: Historical and Critical Studies in Disciplinarity. Charlotteville; London: The University of Virginia Press, 1993.

Hsiao-ting Lin. Accidental State: Chiang Kai-shek, the United States, and the Making of Taiwan. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016.

Leonard Hsu ed. Sun Yat-sen, His Political and Social Ideals: A Source Book. Los Angeles: University of South California Press, 1933.

Philip Huang. Code, Custom, and Legal Practice in China: The Qing and the Republic Compared. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001.

Sarah Igo. The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007.

Barry Keenan. The Dewey Experiment in China. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 1977.

Andrew B. Kipnis. Governing Educational Desire: Culture, Politics, and Schooling in China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.

William Kirby. "The Chinese War Economy: Mobilization, Control, and Planning in Nationalist China." In Steven I. Levine and James C. Hsiung eds., China's Bitter Victory: The War With Japan, 1937-1945. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1992.

______. “The Internationalization of China: Foreign Relations at Home and Abroad in the Republican Era.” China Quarterly 150 (1997).

Ellen Lagemann. An Elusive Science: The Troubling History of Education Research. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2000.

Tong Lam. A Passion for Facts: Social Surveys and the Construction of the Chinese Nation-State, 1900- 1949. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.

212 Lee Chiu-chun. “Liberalism and Nationalism at a Crossroads: The Guomindang’s Educational Policies, 1927–1930.” in Tze-ki Hon and Robert J. Culp eds. The Politics of Historical Production in Late Qing and Republican China. Leiden: Brill, 2007.

Liu Haifeng.“Rehabilitation of the Imperial Examination System.” Frontiers of Education in China 1.2 (2006): 300-315.

Nicholas Lemann. The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999.

William McCall, “Scientific Measurement and Related Studies in Chinese Education.” The Journal of Education Research 11.2 (1925).

Mission of Educational Experts of the League of Nations. The Reorganization of Education in China. Paris: League of Nations' Institute of Intellectual Co-operation, 1932.

Suzanne Pepper. Radicalism and Education Reform in 20th Century China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Brian Platt. Burning and Building: Schooling and State Formation in Japan, 1750-1890. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2004.

Theodore Porter. Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.

Julia C. Strauss. Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: State Building in Republican China, 1927-1940. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Stephen P. Turner. “Blind Spot? Weber’s Concept of Expertise and the Perplexing Case of China.” In David Chalcraft, Fanon Howell, Marisol Lopez Menendez and Hector Vera eds., Max Weber Matters: Interweaving Past and Present. Surrey: Ashgate, 2008.

Elizabeth R. VanderVen. A School in Every Village: Educational Reform in a Northeast China County, 1904–31. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2012.

Wen-Hsin Yeh. The Alienated Academy: Culture and Politics in Republican China, 1919-1937. Cambridge: Harvard Council on East Asian Studies, 1990.

Wu Nai-teh 吳乃德. “The Politics of a Regime Patronage System: Mobilization and Control within an Authoritarian Regime.” PhD Dissertation, Chicago University, 1987.

Xiaohong Xiao-Planes. “Constitutions and Constitutionalism: Trying to Build a New Political Order (1908-1949).” In Mireille Delmas-Marty and Pierre-Étienne Will eds., China, Democracy, and Law: A Historical and Contemporary Approach. Leiden: Brill, 2012.

Published Materials in Chinese and East Asian Languages

Ai Wei 艾偉. “Yange kaoshi zhi yiyi 嚴格考試之意義.” Zhangshan daxue jiaoyu xingzheng zhoukan 中 山大學教育行政週刊 23 (1927).

213 ______. “Ji lu yu jin sisheng gaozhong yishang xuexiao yingyu chengji kaocha ji 冀鲁豫晋四省高 中以上學校英語成績考察記,” Ceyan 測驗 2(1932).

Cao Fu 曹孚. Du Wei pipan yinlun 杜威批判引論. Beijing: Renmin jiaoyu chubanshe, 1951.

Cai Liangwen 蔡良文. Wuquan xianfa de kaoshiquan zhi fazhan: Jiadeng tezhong kaoshi gean fenxi 五權 憲法的考試權之發展: 甲等特種考試個案分析. Taipei: Cheng Chung Bookstore, 1993.

Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培. Cai Yuanpei Wenji 蔡元培文集. Taipei: Jinxiu, 1995.

Chen Banzao 陳泮藻. “Cheng daxueyuan shizhengfu benxueqi biye huikao jingguo qingxing you 呈大學 院、市政府本學期畢業會考經過情形由,” Nanjing tebie shi jiaoyu yuekan 南京特别市教育月刊 1.12(1928).

Chen Heqin 陳鶴琴. “Kexue de kaoshi fa 科學的考試法.” New Education 新教育 3.5 (1921):555-562

______. Chen Heqin quanji 陳鶴琴全集. Nanjing: Jiangsu jiaoyu chubanshe, 2008.

Chen Huifen 陳惠芬. “Chen Lifu yu 1930 niandai de xunzheng zhengyi 陳立夫與 1930 年代的訓政爭 議” Bulletin of Historical Research (National Normal University Taiwan) (2009): 247.

Chen Lifu 陳立夫. Zhanshi jiaoyu xingzheng huiyi 戰時教育行政回憶. Taipei: Commercial Press, 1974.

Chen Tsui-lien 陳翠蓮. Chonggou ererba: zhanhou meizhong tizhi zhongguo tongzhi moshi yu taiwan 重 構二二八：戰後美中體制、中國統治模式與臺灣. Taipei: Acropolis, 2017.

Chen Xuanshan 陳選善, Jiaoyu ceyan jianghua 教育測驗講話 . Unidentified: Shijie shuju, 1947.

Chen Xingde 陳興德. Ershishiji kejuguan zhi bianqian 二十世紀科舉觀之變遷. Wuhan: Huazhong shifan daxue chubanshe, 2008.

Chiang Yung-chen 江勇振. She wo qishui-Hu Shih(2): Ri zheng dang zhong 舍我其誰-胡適 (2): 日正當 中. Taipei: Linking Publishing, 2014.

Dai Daoliu 戴道騮. “Kaoshi fenqu dinge fangan 考試分區定額方案.” Xin Zhonghua 新中華 2(1947).

Deng Qifeng 鄧奇峰 ed. Dai Jitao xiansheng yu kaoquan zhidu 戴季陶先生與考銓制度. Taipei: Zhengzhong shuju, 1984.

Deng Siyu 鄧嗣禹. Zhongguo kaoshi zhidu shi 中國考試制度史 (Nanjing: Kaoshiyuan kaoxuan weiyuanhui, 1936)

Ding Chongxuan 丁重宣. “Huikao shi shenme 會考是什麼.” Jiaoyu zhoukan 教育周刊 54 (1931): 37.

Fan Yuanlian 范源濂. Fan Yuanlian ji 范源濂集. Changsha: Hunan jiaoyu chubanshe, 2010.

Gu Shi 顧實. “Lun xuetang jiangli 論學堂獎勵” Jiaoyu zazhi vol.3, pp. 1661-1674

214 Guan Xiaohong 關曉紅. Wanqing xuebu yanjiu 晚清學部研究(Guangdong:Guangzhou jiaoyu chubanshe, 2000

______. Keju tingfei yu jindai zhongguo shehui 科舉停廢與近代中國社會.Beijing: Shehuikexue wenxian chubanshe, 2013.

Hayakawa Atsushi 早川敦. “On the Award System for Graduates of Modern Schools in the Late Qing : Between the Civil-Examination and Modern-School Systems in the Period of the Introduction of the Modern School System 淸末の學堂奨勵について近代學制導入期における科擧と學堂のあいだ.” Toyoshi kenkyu 東洋史研究 62.3 (2012).

Hsueh-chi Hsu 許雪姬. “Institution of Provincial and Area Quota System for Senior Examinations and its Actual Operation in Taiwan, 1946-1968).” in Kuo-Hsing Hsieh ed., Papers form the Fourth International Conference on Sinology: Shaping Frontier History and its Subjectivity. Taipei: Academia Sinica, 2013.

______. “Alternative Channel for Personnel Selection: Provincial Civil Service Senior Examination (1952-1968).” Taiwan Historical Research 22.1(2015).

Hu Shih 胡適. “Gongkai jianju yi—cong gudai jianju zhidu xiangdao jinri guanxie de jiuzheng 公開薦舉 議—從古代薦舉制度想到今日官邪的救正.” Guowen zhoubao 國聞週報 11.10 (1934): 1-2.

Hu Xiangdong 胡向東. Minguo shiqi zhongguo kaoshi zhidu de zhuanxing yu zhonggou 民國時 期中國考試制度的轉型與重構. Wuhan: Hubei renmin chubanshe, 2008.

Huang Chih-Huei 黃智慧. “Zhonghua minguo zai Taiwan (1945-1987): Zhimin tongzhi yu qianzhanzhe guojia shuo zhi tantao 中華民國在台灣(1945-1987) 殖民統治與遷佔者國家說之 探討.” In Taiwan Association of University Professors ed. Zhonghua minguo liuwang Taiwan 60 nian ji zhanhou Taiwan guoji chujing 中華民國流亡台灣 60 年暨戰後台灣國際處境. Taipei: Avanguard, 2010.

Huang Yan 黃彥 ed. Sun wen xuanji 孫文選集. Guangzhou: Guangdong renmin chubanshe, 2006.

Jao Chia-wen 姚嘉文. “186 bi 1 de chayi……gaopukao haiyao lun shengji ma? 186 比 1 的差異 ……高普考還要論省籍嗎?” Taiwan Political Review 2 (1975).

______. Taiwan jianguo lun 台灣建國論. Taipei: Avanguard Publishing House, 2010.

Jiang Chao 蔣超 ed. Zhongguo gaokao shi 中國高考史. Beijing : Zhongguo yan shi chubanshe, 2008.

Jiaoyu ziliao congkan she 教育資料叢刊社 ed. Chengji kaocha yu sulian wujifen zhi 成绩考查 与苏联五级分制. Beijing: Xinhua shudian, 1950.

Mei-jung Kuan 管美蓉. “From Separation to Joint: Development of the Joint College Entrance Examination 1938-1940.” Guoshiguan xueshu jikan 國史館學術集刊 16 (2008).

215 Mei-jung Kuan and Wang Wenlong 王文隆. “Jiang Zhongzheng (Chiang Kai-shek) qiantai chuqi de jiaoyu gaizao 蔣中正遷台初期之教育改造.” in Qiantai chuqi de Jiang Zhongzheng. Taipei: Chiang Kaishek Memorial Hall, 2011.

Lei Zhen 雷震. Zhonghua minguo zhixian shi: zhixian guomin dahui 中華民國制憲史(3 volumes). Taipei: Daoxiang chubanshe, 2011.

Li Bing 李兵. “Zhangcheng: Qingdai shuyuan keju hua de zhongyao baozheng 章程：清代書院 科舉化的重要保證.” Yunmeng Xuekan 雲夢學刊 4 (2005).

Li Junqing 李俊清 , Xiandai wenguan zhidu zai zhongguo de chuanggou 現代文官制度在中國 的創構 . Beijing: Sanlian shudian , 2007.

Li Lin 李林.“Huan wenti yu zhuyi zhizheng de benlai mianmu 還問題與主義之爭的本來面目,” Ershiyi shiji 二十一世紀 8(1991): 21-26.

Li Zhenzhou 李震洲. Zhonghua minguo tezhong kaoshi zhidu 中華民國特種考試制度(Taipei: Cheng Chung Bookstore, 1984.

Li Zongwu 李宗吾. “Houhei suibi 厚黑隨筆,” Yuzhoufeng 宇宙風 48(1937).

Liang Qichao 梁啟超, Yinbingshi heji 飲冰室合集 Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1989.

Liao Shicheng 廖世承. Test and the Improvement of Entrance Exams 測驗與入學考試的改進. Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1925.

Lin Bing-yan 林炳炎. Baowei da Taiwan de meiyuan (1949-1957) 保衛大臺灣的美援 (1949- 1957).Taipei: Sanmin, 2004.

Lin Chih-hung 林志宏. “Shibian xia de shibian: kejufeichu he zhishi jieceng de dingwei 世變下 的士變：科舉廢除和知識階層的定位（1900s-1930s）,” in Gan Huai-chen ed., Shenfen, wenhua yu quanli—Shizu yanjiu xintan 身分、文化與權力——士族研究新探.Taipei: National Taiwan University Publish Center, 2012.

Wei-Chih Liou 劉蔚芝. “An Analysis of Doctoral Dissertations from Chinese Students at Teachers College, Columbia University (1914-1929).” Bulletin of Educational Research, vol. 59 no. 2 (2013).

Liu Lung-hsin 劉龍心. “From Civil Service Examinations to New Schools—Tse Lun and Knowledge Transformation in the Late Qing Period 從科舉到學堂－策論與晚清的知識轉型 (1901-1905).” Bulletin of the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica 58(2007).

Lufei Kui 陸費逵. Jiaoyu wencun 教育文存. Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1921.

Luo Longji 羅隆基. “Meiguo weixing kaoshi zhi yiqian de lizhi (1-3) 美國未行考試制以前的 吏治 (1-3),” Xinyue 新月 1.8 (1928): 1-16; 1.9 (1928): 1-13; 1.10 (1928):1-10

216 ______. “The Rule of Experts (zhuanjia zhengzhi 專家政治),” Renquan lunji 人權 論集. Shanghai: Xinyue shudian, 1930.

Luo Zhitian 羅志田. “Siwen guan tianyi: 1932 nian qinghua daxue ruxue kaoshi de dui duizi fengbo 斯文關天意:1932 年清華大學入學考試的對對子風波.” Jindaishi yanjiu 近代史研究 3(2008).

______. “Wuming zhi bei gaixie lishi: 1932 nian qinghua daxue ruxue kaoshi de zuowen ti zengyi 無名之輩改寫歷史:1932 年清華大學入學考試的作文題爭議.” Lishi yanjiu 歷史研究 4 (2008).

______. Quanshi zhuanyi: Jindai Zhongguo de sixiang yu shehui 權勢轉移：近代 中國的思想與社會. Beijing: Beijing sifan daxue chubanshe, 2014.

Luoh Mingqing 駱明慶. “The Ethnic Bias in Recruitment Examinations for the Civil Service in Taiwan.” Taiwan Economic Review 31.1(2003).

Lu Fangshang 呂芳上. Cong xuesheneg yundong dao yundong xuesheng 從學生運動到運動學 生 . Taipei: Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, 1994.

Lu Simian 呂思勉. “Kaoshi lun 考試論 (1928).” in Lu Simian lunxue conggao 呂思勉論學叢 稿. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2006.

Mao Haijian 茅海建. Cong jiawu dao wuxu: Kang Youwei wo shi jianzhu 甲午到戊戌：康有為 我史鑒注. Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2009.

Ouyang Lan 歐陽蘭. “Yu Zhang Yaoxiang xiansheng taolun rencai chansheng di 與張耀翔先生 討論人才產生地,” Chengbao fukan (9 Dec, 1926).

Qi Shuqing 漆書青. “Sanlun biaozhunhua kaoshi 散論標准化考試,” Jiangxi jiaoyu keyan 江西 教育科研 1(1986).

Qi Gong 啟功, Zhang Zhongxing 張中行 and Jin Kemu 金克木. Shuo bagu 說八股. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1994.

Qin Haoyang 秦昊揚. Minguo wenguan kaoshi zhidu yanjiu 民國文官考試制度研究 Beijing: Guojia xingzheng xueyuan, 2009.

Sang Bing 桑兵. Wanqing xuetang xuesheng yu shehui bianqian 晚清學堂學生與社會變遷. Guilin: Guangxi shifan daxue chubanshe, 2007.

Shen Youqian 沈有乾. “Jianshi ganyan 監試感言,” Huanian 華年 3.33 (1934).

Shen Yi 沈頤. “Lun jiaoyu jingfei budang caijian 論教育經費不當裁減, ” Jiaoyu zazhi , vol. 4.

217 ______. ”Lun quanxuesuo bufu mukuan zhi ze 論勸學所不負募款之責” Jiaoyu zazhi, vol. 4.

Su Yunfeng 蘇雲峰. Zhongguo xin jiaoyu de mengya yu chengzhang 中國新教育的萌芽與成長 . Taipei: Wunan tushu chuban youxiangongsi, 2005.

Sun Dezhong 孫德忠. “Duiyu kaoshi wenti de yidian pingyong de yijian 對於考試問題的一點 平庸的意見,” Xin jiaoyu pinglun 新教育評論 1.11(1926).

Tai Shuangqiu 邰爽秋. Jiaoyu diaocha 教育調查. Beijing: Guotu shudian, 1931.

Tao Baichuan 陶百川. “Kaoshi banfa chuyi 考試辦法芻議” Zhongyang zhoukan 中央周刊 4.25 (1942).

Tao Xingzhi 陶行知. Tao Xingzhi quanji 陶行知全集. Chengdu: Sichuan jiaoyu chubanshe, 1991.

Wakabayashi Masahiro 若林正丈. Taiwan no Seiji: Chukaminkoku Taiwanka no Sengoshi 台湾 の政治 : 中華民国台湾化の戦後史. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 2008.

Wang Di 王笛. “Qingmo xinzheng yu jindai xuetang de xingqi 清末新政與近代學堂的興起,” Jindaishi yanjiu 近代史研究 39.3(1987).

Wang Qisheng 王奇生. Dangyuan, dangquan yu dangzheng—1924-1949 nian zhongguo guomindang de zuzhi xingtai 黨員、黨權與黨爭－1924-1949 年中國國民黨的組織型態. Shanghai: Shanghai shudian chubanshe, 2010.

Wang Tay-sheng 王泰升. The Process of Legal Modernization in Taiwan--From “the Extension of Mainland” to “Independent Reception.” Taipei: National Taiwan University Press, 2015.

Wang Zhenbang 王震邦. Duli yu ziyou: Chen Yinke lunxue 獨立與自由：陳寅恪論學. Taipei: Linking Books, 2011.

Wang Zuorong 王作榮. Zhuangzhi weichou—Wang Zuorong zizhuan 壯志未酬—王作榮自傳. Taipei: Commonwealth Publishing, 1999.

Wu Junsheng 吳俊升. “Zhanshi zhongguo de jiaoyu 戰時中國的教育.” in Banian duiri kangzhan zhong zhi guomin zhengfu 八年對日抗戰中之國民政府 . Taipei: Commerical Press, 1978.

Wu Xuande 吳宣德. Mingdai jinshi de dili fenbu 明代進士的地理分布. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2009.

Wu Yourong 吳有容. “Liancheng xian diyijie xiaoxue biye huikao fakanci 連城縣第一屆小學 畢業會考彙刊發刊詞.” Fujian jiaoyu zhoukan 福建教育周刊 19 (1929).

218 Xiao Zongzhi 肖宗志. Houbu wenguan qunti yu wanqing zhengzhi 候補文官群體與晚清政治. Chengdu: Bashu sheshe, 2007.

Xie Guozhen 謝國楨. Jindai shuyuan xuexiao zhidu biaoqian kao 近代書院學校制度變遷考. Taipei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1979.

Xu Yanping 徐雁平. Qingdai dongnan shuyuan yu xueshu ji wenxue 清代東南書院與學術及文 學 (Hefei: Anhui jiao yu chu ban she, 2007).

Xu Youshou 徐有守. Kaoquan Xinlun 考銓新論. Taipei: Commercial Press, 1996.

______. Kaoshiquan de weiji—Kaoquan zhidu de fuxi yu gaijin 考試權的危機── 考銓制度的腐蝕與改進. Taipei: Taiwan Commercial Press, 1999.

Yang Xuewei 楊學為. Zhongguo gaokao shi shulun (1949-1999) 中囯⾼⾼考史述论(1949-1999). Wuhan: Hubei remin chubanshe, 2007.

Yi Kexun 易克櫄, “Zhongxiaoxue xuesheng biye huikao wenti 中小學學生畢業會考問題,” Ceyan 測驗 4 (1933).

Zou Taofen 鄒韜奮. “Zhuzhong tongdeng xueli de kaoshi guicheng 注重同等學力的考試規程 .” Shenghuo 生活 6.5(1931).

Zhang Pengyuan 張朋園. Zhongguo minzhu zhengzhi de kunjing (1909-1949): wanqing yilai lijie yihui xuanju shulun 中國民主政治的困境 (1909-1949): 晚清以來歷屆議會選舉述論. Taipei: Linking Books, 2007.

Zhang Qing 章清. “Policy Questions and the Reception of ‘Western Learning’ in the Imperial Examination System—A Study Based on the Full Collection of Domestic and Overseas Policy Questions, “ Bulletin of the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica 58 (2007).

Zhang Rui 張銳. “Zhongguo kaoshiyuan yu meiguo lianbang lizhiyuan 中國考試院與美國聯邦 吏治院,” The Eastern Miscellany 東方雜誌 26.1 (1929): 25-34.

Zhang Yaoxiang 張耀翔, “Xinfa kaoshi 新法考試,” Chenbao fukan 晨報副刊 (21, November, 1921).

______, “Zhihui zhi fanwei yu dingyi 智慧之範圍與定義.” Xinli 心理 1.2(1922).

______, “Lun keju wei zhiliceyan 論科舉為智力測驗,” Chenbao fukan 晨報副 刊 (16 Febuary, 1926).

219 Zhang Yaqun 張亞群, Keju xingfei yu jindai zhongguo gaodeng jiaoyu de zhuanxing 科舉興廢 與近代中國高等教育的轉型

Zhang Yuanji, Zhang Yuanji shiwen 張元濟詩文(Beijing: Commercial Press, 1986),

Zhang Zhidong 張之洞, Zhang Zhidong quanji 張之洞全集. Shijiazhuang: Henan renmin chubanshe, 1998.

Zhongguo renmin zhengzhi xieshang huiyi Jiangsu sheng weiyuanhui wenshi ziliao weiyuanhui 中國人民政治協商會議江蘇省委員會文史資料委員會 ed. Guomindang de wenguan zhidu yu wenguan kaoshi 國民黨的文官制度與文官考試. Nanjing: Jiangsu wenshi ziliao bianjibu, 1988.

Zhou Xuezhang 周學章, T.B.C.F. zhi de jiantao T.B.C.F. 制的檢討. Nanjing : Zhongguo ce yan xue hui，1934.

______, “Zhongdeng xuexiao huikao fangfa shang zhi shangque 中等學校會考 方法上之商榷,” Jiaoyu xuebao (Beipng) 1 (1936).

Zhou Yutong 周予同, Zhongguo xuexiao zhidu 中國學校制度. Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1931.

Zhu Qianzhi 朱謙之. “Fankang kaoshi de xuanyan 反抗考試的宣言, “ Beijing Daxue xuesheng zhoukan 13 (1920).

Zhu Ziqing 朱自清(Pei Xian 配弦). “Gaozhong biyesheng guowen chengdu yiban 高中畢業生 國文程度一斑.” Duli pinglun 獨立評論 65 (1933).

220