When reviewing the global rankings for mathematics, observers must look down the list to number seven before encountering a Western nation. This dominance becomes even more pronounced when factoring in major metropolitan areas in China. Although China as a whole was not included in every standard dataset, testing conducted in 2018 across the major Chinese urban centers of Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang—collectively known as BSJZ—actually ranked higher than Singapore, which routinely places at the very top of international academic assessments.
This scholastic advantage is not limited to mathematics. East Asian countries also score exceptionally high in reading comprehension, claiming four out of the top five spots globally. This achievement is even more remarkable when accounting for the linguistic complexity of the region. Writing systems based on logographic characters, such as those utilized in Japan and China, are significantly more difficult for children to master than the alphabetic systems foundational to most European languages.
The most immediate answer to the question of East Asian scholastic performance is cultural. Of the six East Asian countries that top the PISA rankings in mathematics, all but Japan exceed the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) average for weekly hours spent in classwork. Furthermore, when including the combined Chinese urban areas of BSJZ, three jurisdictions rank in the top seven worldwide for total hours dedicated to studying. Beyond the regular school day, millions of students in these high-performing educational cultures routinely attend evening "cram" schools—known broadly as hagwons in South Korea or juku in Japan—after their formal classes have concluded.
Whether this intense focus on academics represents a net positive for society remains a subject of intense debate among educators, economists, and parents. On one hand, a highly competitive academic culture can severely limit opportunities for children to play, socialize, and explore extracurricular interests. Critics argue that to the extent specialized academic knowledge fails to translate directly into practical skills for many modern jobs, this high-pressure approach may impose a societal drag, fostering burnout and mental health strains.
On the other hand, it is difficult to ignore the extraordinary economic performance of East Asian nations—particularly the historic growth of the Four Asian Tigers, comprising Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. Their rise, especially in advanced technology and high-technology manufacturing, strongly suggests that an intense societal focus on mathematics and science yields substantial economic and structural dividends.
While education analysts frequently debate the relative merits of different educational cultures—including the fascinating outlier status of Japan, which achieves remarkably high grades with comparatively fewer hours of formal studying—scholars are increasingly looking further back to trace the origins of these academic cultures. Why did such a powerful, enduring emphasis on educational attainment take root in East Asia centuries ago?
The Keju: 1300 Years of Studying
One primary historical explanation for the modern cultural emphasis on education lies in the enduring legacy of the Chinese civil service examinations, historically known as the keju. While medieval Europe was developing feudalism and a decentralized, birth-based aristocracy, the Chinese imperial state was staffed by a meritocratic bureaucracy populated entirely by graduates of some of the most rigorous and competitive examinations the world has ever witnessed.
To understand the profound structural benefits and human costs of this system, historians frequently turn to classic scholarship, such as Ichisada Miyazaki’s seminal study, China’s Examination Hell. Initiated during the Sui dynasty in 605 CE, the civil service examinations were originally conceived as a political mechanism to bypass the powerful aristocratic families that held a monopoly on influence within the imperial government.
In theory, the examinations were designed to be open to all men. Any male citizen, ranging from the son of an elite noble family down to a common peasant, was permitted to participate. In practice, however, the immense financial burdens required to fund years or even decades of uninterrupted study meant that effectively only those from well-off families could pursue the path seriously.
Despite these socio-economic barriers, the system permitted a degree of social mobility that was revolutionary for its era. It helped legitimize imperial rule across changing dynasties and served as a powerful tool to centralize political power. Because of these functional advantages, the examination system persisted through dynastic upheavals and foreign conquests for thirteen centuries, finally being abolished only in the waning days of the Qing dynasty.
The psychological grip of the system was absolute. Even figures like Hong Xiuquan, who suffered a nervous breakdown after failing the examinations multiple times, came to believe he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ and launched a devastating civil war that cost tens of millions of lives, ultimately established his own version of the examination system within the territories he controlled. For generations of scholars, the exams were simply an essential facet of organized society.
What Was it Like Taking the Exams?
Historical accounts of the examination system are striking not only for their description of multi-tiered testing regimens centered on memorizing the canonical Chinese classics, but also for their vivid documentation of the physical and psychological toll placed on the candidates. At the height of its administrative complexity in the late Qing dynasty, the examination process was divided into three major stages: provincial, metropolitan, and palace examinations.
The provincial examinations, held nominally every three years, required candidates to be locked inside tiny, isolated cells within massive, labyrinthian examination halls for three consecutive days. Each test-taker was provided with only three wooden boards: one to serve as a bed, one as a bench, and one as a writing surface. Because these vast halls were used infrequently, they were often dilapidated, forcing students to desperately shield their precious examination papers from leaking rainwater.
Candidates faced not only harsh physical confinement, but also profound psychological terrors rooted in folklore and superstition. It was widely believed that supernatural spirits actively punished individuals guilty of hidden or unconfessed misdeeds during this vulnerable period. Seducers, swindlers, and those with troubled consciences frequently experienced intense paranoia, with historical anecdotes recording nervous breakdowns or even suicides during the three days of isolation.
In other instances, perceived karmic retribution was more indirect. A past moral transgression might result in lamp oil accidentally spilling across a candidate’s carefully prepared answer sheets—a technical violation that invariably led to immediate disqualification. Within this cultural framework, any apparent administrative misfortune or unfairness in the grading results was widely interpreted not as random chance, but as divine judgment against concealed crimes.
The few candidates who successfully navigated the provincial trials made the long and expensive journey to the capital to sit for the metropolitan examinations. In the earlier eras of the keju, these metropolitan tests represented the final hurdle, after which a successful scholar was virtually guaranteed a lucrative and prestigious post in the civil bureaucracy.
However, because successful candidates historically owed deep personal loyalty to the senior officials who graded their papers, the system continually generated dangerous political factions. To prevent this patronage from undermining the absolute authority of the crown, palace examinations—judged nominally by the emperor himself—were eventually instituted. This structural adjustment ensured that successful graduates owed their ultimate gratitude not to a bureaucratic examiner, but to the emperor.
Given the staggering career incentives for corruption, the imperial state implemented extraordinary security measures to combat cheating and favoritism. Candidates were thoroughly searched for smuggled crib notes and hidden texts. Examiners were granted access only to a candidate’s assigned seat number rather than their name, and for the highest-level examinations, student answer sheets were meticulously hand-copied by professional scribes to prevent examiners from recognizing a candidate’s handwriting. When high-level corruption scandals did emerge, public backlash was so severe that officials maintained a fierce facade of administrative integrity, with corrupt examiners frequently facing exile or execution.
The statistical reality of the testing process was punishingly competitive. To even enter the formal system, candidates had to pass a local preliminary exam that typically maintained a pass rate of just one to two percent. Provincial examinations featured a pass rate of approximately five percent, while metropolitan exams hovered around fifteen to twenty percent. Although very few candidates failed the final palace examinations—which functioned more as a ranking mechanism than an elimination test—the final placement achieved had a monumental impact on a scholar’s subsequent career trajectory. Out of hundreds of thousands of initial applicants across the empire, perhaps only a dozen individuals would ultimately achieve the highest rank of jinshi, or imperial graduate.
Unlike modern university systems where academic credentials are acquired in early adulthood, the grueling cycle of studying and testing often consumed entire lifetimes. It was entirely commonplace for newly minted graduates to be elderly men with grey hair. In some compassionate instances, elderly recurring examinees were granted honorary degrees simply to acknowledge their lifelong dedication, recognizing they had long since passed the normal age of retirement for government service.
Legacy of the Imperial Examination System
Measuring the direct historical impact of China’s ancient examination system on contemporary educational achievement in East Asia remains a complex task for modern researchers. One prominent empirical study utilized natural variations in historical exam intensity—measured by the density of jinshi graduates per 10,000 residents across different regions—and discovered a clear correlation: regions with a historical doubling of imperial graduates exhibited an 8.5 percent increase in modern educational attainment.
Other scholars remain cautious about drawing direct causal lines across centuries. For millennia, China exercised profound cultural influence over its neighbors, meaning that even nations like Japan, which never established its own native equivalent of the imperial examination system, nevertheless absorbed extensive elements of Chinese civilization. From the adoption of logographic writing characters to the integration of philosophical traditions, educational attitudes and a general reverence for scholarship inevitably diffused throughout the region, even absent a formal imperial testing bureaucracy.
Yet whether one can trace a direct statistical line from the keju to modern classroom hours, the historical legacy of the system remains profoundly influential. For over a millennium, the examination apparatus fostered a societal valuation of education that had no historical parallel in medieval Europe.
Despite its clear structural flaws and human costs, the system was remarkably progressive for its epoch. Distributing powerful government positions based on competitive merit rather than hereditary birthright was practically unknown in Western governance until the nineteenth century. The fact that an institutionalized meritocracy emerged while European societies were establishing rigid feudal hierarchies—and endured until the dawn of the twentieth century—remains a historic milestone.
The broader cultural fallout of the keju extends well beyond the classroom. One notable historical consequence was the systematic suppression of the military class. While parallel military examinations existed alongside civilian tests, military achievement rarely translated into high social prestige or supreme government office. Battlefield generals faced strict institutional ceilings on their political advancement, ensuring enduring civilian control over the armed forces.
At the same time, while the centralization of state power and the subordination of military ambition fostered internal peace and administrative stability across East Asia, historians have argued that this intense bureaucratic centralization may have inadvertently discouraged the decentralized, disruptive innovations that later sparked the Industrial Revolution in Europe.
Furthermore, the narrow content of the exams themselves has invited modern criticism. While mastering the Confucian classics was theoretically intended to impart ethical judgment and upright administrative conduct, critics question whether memorizing ancient texts was an optimal preparation for practical governance. From a contemporary educational standpoint, devoting decades of human capital to skills far removed from technical problem-solving appears to many modern observers to be an inefficient allocation of intellectual talent.
This tension raises broader questions about modern educational cultures. As contemporary societies grapple with credential inflation—where university degrees and advanced certificates are increasingly required without necessarily guaranteeing vastly greater human capital or societal productivity—analysts wonder how future generations will judge our current obsession with standardized testing, grades, and academic credentials.
Whether future historians ultimately view the historical keju as an essential forerunner to a meritocratic, knowledge-driven society, or as an exorbitantly wasteful scholastic competition, their verdict will reveal as much about the evolving role of education in modern culture as it does about the ancient system itself. Regardless of how those interpretations settle, the imperial examination system remains a remarkable window into the enduring power of education to shape societies across generations.
