Governing Empire: Bureaucracy and State Power in Imperial China

Conventional accounts portray the imperial Chinese bureaucracy as a model of meritocracy, in which officials were selected primarily on the basis of competence. Meritocracy shapes China’s state development. This book challenges that conventional wisdom. Drawing on newly assembled data and extensive archival research, I show that imperial Chinese rulers recruited officials through diverse channels and that meritocracy served not only as a mechanism of recruitment but also as an ideological claim that projected political legitimacy. Moreover, rulers strategically appointed officials with different backgrounds to accomplish distinct governing tasks. The book offers a personnel-centered perspective on state-building, demonstrating that the construction and exercise of state power depend fundamentally on the recruitment, selection, and deployment of governing elites.