Minister Rockhill
to the Secretary of State.
American Legation,
Peking, September 19,
1905.
No. 97.]
Sir: In my dispatch No. 85, of the 5th instant,
I had the honor to transmit to you copy of the recent imperial decree
abolishing the present competitive examinations for the civil service
and establishing an entirely new educational system.
I had not then time to advert to the great importance of this measure,
which more than any other which could be taken might have been supposed
capable of shaking Chinese society to its very foundations. It was, as
noted by the writer of the editorial I inclose herewith, the
promulgation of a similar decree by the present Emperor in 1898, which
was one of the principal causes of his removal from power.
The names of the six signers of the memorial in response to which the
decree was issued are interesting. They are in first line the Viceroy
Yuan Shih-k’ai and the Viceroy Chang Chih-tung, the latter the most
celebrated living scholar in China. After these come Chao Erh-hsün, the
new governor-general of Manchuria, who, the Department will recollect,
was the strongest supporter of Professor Jenks’s plan of currency
reform; the Viceroy Chou Fu, of the Liang Kiang Provinces, who has
always shown himself a prudent, honest, progressive, and careful
administrator. The fifth signer is the viceroy at Canton, Tsen
Ch’un-hsüan, and the sixth the governor of Hu-nan Province, Tuan-Fang,
who is now a member of the high commission being sent abroad to study
governmental methods of foreign countries, and is counted among the most
liberal officials of China. His son is being educated in Washington.
I inclose herewith an extract from recent issue of a Shanghai newspaper
on the signers of this epoch-making memorial.
I have, etc.,
[Page 183]
[Inclosure.]
The disappearance of the literary
examinations.
[The North China Daily
News.—Impartial, not neutral.—Shanghai,
September 12,
1905.]
Among the Emperor Kuang Hsü’s reforms whose promulgation was the
cause of his removal from power by his aunt, the Empress Dowager, in
1898, was one for the abolition of the examinations which for
centuries had made China famous as the one autocratic country where
by sheer intellectual merit the son of the poorest peasant could
rise to the highest offices in the Empire. These examinations were
regarded as part of the very bone and sinew of the Chinese
constitution. China without her examinations was unthinkable. Every
foreign writer on China pointed out that China’s decay was in
reality due to these very examinations and to the course of study
which the student who hoped for success must follow. A thorough
knowledge of the literature of two thousand and more years ago was
the passport to success. What the literary chancellor himself had
learned when he was a candidate, no more and no less, was the
measure of the knowledge which the Chinese student who hoped for a
degree, the key to official life, must possess. Prompted by Kang
Yu-wei, who was the Emperor’s secret adviser in all his reforms, the
Emperor, on the 23d of June, 1898, issued a decree to the board of
rites ordering that board to entirely remodel the examinations,
saying: “We have been compelled to issue this decree because our
examinations have degenerated to the lowest point, and we see no
other way to remedy matters than by changing entirely the old
methods of examination for a new course of competition. Let us all
try to reject empty and useless knowledge, which has no practical
value in the crisis we are passing through.”
The consternation that followed the promulgation of this decree can
be imagined. The coup d’état followed, and on the 13th of November,
1898, the Empress Dowager issued a decree approving “a memorial from
the ministers of the board of rites, dilating on the supreme
importance of making it known throughout the whole Empire that there
are to be no changes from the old methods of literary examinations
among candidates for degrees, in order to set at rest, once for all,
the present uncertainty that has been caused by the Emperor’s recent
reform measures in the above direction.” But the leaven which the
Emperor had introduced was working in the Empire, though he himself
had become a discredited prisoner in the palace, and by degrees
western subjects were added to the curriculum that had always
obtained. In the last five years, since the complete bouleversement
caused by the Boxer troubles, the reforms advocated by the Emperor
seven years ago have been one by one adopted, and at last His
Excellency Yuan Shih-k’ai himself, the most powerful subject in
China, and the man whose devotion to the Empress Dowager when the
Emperor called for his assistance made the coup d’état possible, has
sent in a memorial, which was approved and accepted in an imperial
decree dated the 2d instant, “advocating the summary abolition of
the old style of literary examinations for the Chujên (M. A.)
degree, in order to allow the expansion of the modern modes of
education.” With his unfailing astuteness the viceroy points out,
however, that it is not a new scheme, but a return to an old scheme
that he is proposing. The literary examinations seem to us to be of
venerable antiquity, but His Excellency Yuan Shih-k’ai shows that
they are really modern innovations on an older and much better
system which he is proposing to recall. His is not the destructive
hand of the reformer, but the conservative hand of the restorer. The
decree says:
“Before the era of what is termed the “Three Dynasties” men for
office were selected from the schools, and it must be confessed that
the plan produced many talented men. It was indeed a most successful
plan for the creation of a nursery for the disciplining of talents
and the molding of character for our Empire of China. Indeed, the
examples before us of the wealth and power of Japan and the
countries of the West have their foundation in no other than their
own schools. Just now we are passing through a crisis fraught with
difficulties and the country is most urgently in want of men of
talents and abilities (of the modern sort). Owing to the fact that,
of late, modern methods of education have been daily on the increase
among’ us, we repeatedly issued our commands to all our viceroys and
governors of provinces to lose no time in establishing modern
schools of learning in such number that every member of this Empire
may have the means of going there to study and learn something
substantial in order to prepare himself to be of use to his country.
We have indeed thought deeply on this subject.”
The decree goes on to mention that the ministers of education have
suggested the gradual abolition of the examinations, but His
Excellency Yuan Shih-kai, whose experience and knowledge are
admitted, “asserts that unless these old-style examinations be
abolished once for all the people of this Empire will continue to
show apathy and hesitate to join the modern schools of learning,”
the fact being that the demand for the change has really come from
the people. “Hence if we desire to see the spread of modern
education by the establishment of a number of schools, we must first
abolish the old-style studying for the examinations.”
[Page 184]
We therefore hereby command that, beginning from the Ping-wu Cycle
(1906), all competitive examinations for the literary degrees of
Chüjên and Chinshih (master of arts and doctor) after the old style
shall be henceforth abolished, while the annual competitions in the
cities of the various provinces for the Hsiuts’ai (bachelor of arts)
or licentiate degree are also to be abolished at once. Those
possessors of literary grades of the old style Chüjën and Hsiuts’ai
who obtained their degrees prior to the issuance of this decree
shall be given opportunities to take up official rank according to
their respective grades and abilities. So that the officials who
obtained their degrees under the expiring systems are not to be left
entirely out in the cold; but they will have to buy text-books for
themselves and get a smattering at least of western knowledge if
they would avoid being dropped out of the procession. The rest of
the decree is an urgent order to all officials from viceroys to
district magistrates to devote themselves to establishing schools of
all the necessary grades, and to the ministers of education to
distribute text-books at once to all the provinces, “so that we may
have a uniform system of teaching in all our schools.” And a little
word of encouragement is given to soothe the country and induce it
to freely meet the expense involved in these radical changes. “The
government being thus enabled to obtain men of talents and
abilities, it follows that the cities and towns producing such
bright lights of learning will also enjoy a reflected honor
therefrom.”
That it was time for a change is shown by the fact that at the
present moment such is the dearth of statesmen in China the Throne
can hardly find a man whom it can make a viceroy if it wishes to
replace any of the men now holding the post.
