Reinventing examination and the state in 20th century China and Taiwan
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
5:00 pm to 7:00 pm
- Venue
- SOAS Main Building
- Room
- R301
- Event type
- Seminar
About this event
The Centre of Taiwan Studies is delighted to welcome Dr Shiuon Chu for a talk examining Taiwan’s civil service examination system during the Martial Law period, exploring how provincial quotas shaped debates over inequality, political representation, and governance.
From 1950 to 1992, the regular civil service examinations operated under a provincial quota system based on China's provincial population figures from the 1940s. Not surprisingly, the system became one of the most frequently cited examples of inequality between mainlanders and Taiwanese. Drawing on research from his recent book, the speaker revisits the controversy over the provincial quotas and examines how it generated assumptions about social inequality that shaped – and at times obscured – our understanding of governance during the Martial Law period.
Image credit: Mikael Kristenson via Unsplash
About the speaker
Shiuon Chu is an associate research fellow at Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. His first book, Reinventing Examination in Twentieth Century China and Taiwan, is published by Harvard University Asia Center in 2025. The book traces the innovative uses of examination as an institution of government service and education after the 1905 abolition of the imperial examination system (keju). Chu is currently working on a book project on the non-official actors in the National Language Movement in Taiwan from 1945 to the 1990s.
