Yasheng Huang 黄亚生 is the author of one of the decade’s greatest books about China — The Rise and Fall of the EAST: How Exams, Autocracy, St

Autocracy and Stagnation: How Imperial Exams Shaped China's Destiny

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2024-09-23 11:30:03

Yasheng Huang 黄亚生 is the author of one of the decade’s greatest books about China — The Rise and Fall of the EAST: How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success and Why They Might Lead to Its Decline. It’s a rich book, a product of a career of reflections, with each page delivering something novel and provocative. It has almost single-handedly rekindled some of my interest in China, which is surreal.

Yasheng Huang: They lived close to each other in historical terms, but in dramatically different political systems. The basic difference was that Wanli didn’t have to deal with anybody to do what he wanted. Specifically, he wanted to nominate his third son as his successor, but that was being pushed back by Confucian bureaucrats. He was dealing with opposition, but he only encountered opposition from the bureaucrats on this one issue and this one issue alone.

Henry VIII, on the other hand, had to deal with peer opposition. The biggest peer was the Pope. He had to get permission to divorce his wife to marry Anne Boleyn, whereas Wanli didn’t need permission at all. He only encountered opposition from the bureaucrats on this one issue. Otherwise, he was completely free. That was the point of the story. The difference between the East and the West was laid down long ago, and that historical imprinting has some bearing on the differences between China and the West.