So long as we assume (as most people did) that composing poetry and quoting classical literature are the best guides to administrative talent, China can fairly be said to have developed the most rational selection processes for state service known to history.*
*When Britain reorganized its civil service in the 1880s it introduced self-consciously similar examinations, testing bright young men on their knowledge of Greek and Latin classics before sending them off to govern India, and even now British civil servants are still known as mandarins. Nineteenth-century conservatives saw exams as part of a sinister plot to "Chinesify" Britain.
"Why the West Rules – For Now: The patterns of history and what they reveal about the future" - Ian Morris
