Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Rise and Fall of the East: How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success, and Why They Might Lead to Its Decline

The Rise and Fall of the East: How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success, and Why They Might Lead to Its Decline

Huang, Yasheng

Hardcover

Chinese HistoryGeneral Political Science

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 0300266367
ISBN13: 9780300266368
Publisher: Yale Univ Pr
Published: Aug 29 2023
Pages: 440
Weight: 1.77
Height: 1.19 Width: 6.42 Depth: 9.52
Language: English
The long history of China's relationship between stability, diversity, and prosperity, and how its current leadership threatens this delicate balance

Riveting.--Tunku Varadarajan, Wall Street Journal

A Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2023

Chinese society has been shaped by the interplay of the EAST--exams, autocracy, stability, and technology--from ancient times through the present. Beginning with the Sui dynasty's introduction of the civil service exam, known as Keju, in 587 CE--and continuing through the personnel management system used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)--Chinese autocracies have developed exceptional tools for homogenizing ideas, norms, and practices. But this uniformity came with a huge downside: stifled creativity.

Yasheng Huang shows how China transitioned from dynamism to extreme stagnation after the Keju was instituted. China's most prosperous periods, such as during the Tang dynasty (618-907) and under the reformist CCP, occurred when its emphasis on scale (the size of bureaucracy) was balanced with scope (diversity of ideas).

Considering China's remarkable success over the past half-century, Huang sees signs of danger in the political and economic reversals under Xi Jinping. The CCP has again vaulted conformity above new ideas, reverting to the Keju model that eventually led to technological decline. It is a lesson from China's own history, Huang argues, that Chinese leaders would be wise to take seriously.

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