Abstract
The last century has been marked by a division between the West and East. In particular, since the Second World War, the capitalist and socialist camps have divided the world in terms of culture, economy, politics and ideology. In the West, the ideology of meritocracy has been celebrated for its profound significance. Michael Young first coined the term ‘meritocracy’ in his landmark book, The Rise of Meritocracy (1958), in which he defined merit as ‘IQ plus effort’, and imagined a growing tendency towards meritocracy in educational and occupational selection in modern Britain.
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Notes
- 1.
The term scholar-official class has different variations. Historical research on Chinese history uses literati-official or scholar-official (Elman 2013; Ho 1962; Moore 1966). Another commonly used term is the Mandarin by Ringer (1990). This book uses the term scholar-official to avoid the confusion between Mandarin as a social class and Mandarin as the official Chinese language.
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© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore
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Liu, Y. (2016). Origins of Meritocracy in China. In: Higher Education, Meritocracy and Inequality in China. Higher Education in Asia: Quality, Excellence and Governance. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-1588-5_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-1588-5_2
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Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
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Online ISBN: 978-981-10-1588-5
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