The term “meritocracy” has indeed popped up in a number of recent pieces of analysis on China as it approaches the 18th Party Congress and its once-a-decade leadership transition.

The first standardized tests, any world history student can tell you, were created in ancient China, during the Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD), when officials designed civil service exams to ...

If there’s one principle on which the vast majority of Chinese people agree, it’s meritocracy. People believe that social resources and social status should be allocated according to personal merit ...

Psychology Professor Shannon McCoy tells us about the American Dream and how buying into it can alter people’s well-being, and Prof Ye Liu tells us about the civil servant exams of ancient China ...

Progressives’ unease with society measuring merit when allocating opportunity and rewards is discordant with the nation’s premises. And rejecting meritocracy at a time when China — the ...

The Rise and Fall of the EAST: How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success, and Why They Might Lead to Its Decline, Yasheng Huang, Yale University Press, 440 pages ...