Studies on historical institutions and culture traditions: Case of civil examination system (Keju)

Project Description

By digitalising hundreds of thousands of historical government archives and harmonising data over a century, my groundbreaking research on China’s imperial Civil Examination system (Keju) and its long-term impact on human capital development — cultivating what Bertrand Russell termed a “widespread learned culture” — was recognised with the Best Paper Prize by the Royal Economic Society for my paper, "Long Live Keju! The Persistent Effects of China’s Civil Examination System." This work has been pivotal in advancing our understanding of this critical institution in Chinese history.

Building on the impact of the Keju paper above and my follow-up research on historical institutions, cultural traditions and their origins, which have been widely cited and inspired research on similar systems in other Asian countries (e.g., South Korea and Vietnam), I received the Youth Achievement Award in Social Science Research from the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China. This prestigious award, granted to scholars under 40 for innovative and impactful research, is considered the highest research-output-based national honour in the social sciences.

To support my following research along this line on historical institutions and cultural traditions they shaped, I collaborated as Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI) on securing an Areas of Excellence (AoE) grant for the project, "Quantitative History of China: Historical Roots of Research Success and Future Development," which received HKD 74.8 million from the Research Grant Council.

In the awarded study, my co-author and I innovatively utilised historical data from a century ago and combined it with contemporary granular-level data and cutting-edge causal inference method to verify the classic observation by the late Philosopher Bertrand Russell: “At any rate, for good or evil, the examination system profoundly affected the civilization of China. Among its good effects were a widely-diffused respect for learning...” (1922, p. 46)”.

Media coverage by Wen Wei Po:

https://dw-media.tkww.hk/epaper/wwp/20221102/a21-1102.pdf

The video of 2020 Royal Economic Society Prize for the Keju paper:

Project Investigator

Dr CHEN Ting (Department of Accountancy, Economics and Finance)

Project Collaborators

University of Hong Kong
University of Melbourne

Funding/Award

The Royal Economic Society - 2020 Royal Economic Society Prize
The Ministry of Education of the PRC - The 9th Higher Education Outstanding Scientific Research Achievement Awards (Humanities and Social Sciences)
Research Grants Council - Areas of Excellence (AoE) Scheme

Publication

Chen Ting, James Kung, and Chicheng Ma, 2020. “Long Live Keju! The Persistent Effects of China's Imperial Examination System”. The Economic Journal, 130(631): 2030-2064. https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/130/631/2030/5819954