Yasheng Huang, The Rise and Fall of the EAST: How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success, and Why They Might Lead to Its Decline. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2023, 436 pages, INR 3,571.
Huang investigates the factors behind the evolution of the Chinese state in The Rise and Fall of the EAST: How Exams, Autocracy, Stability and Technology Brought China Success, and Why They Might Lead to its Decline. Using historical and qualitative analysis, Huang attributes the success of the Chinese State to the EAST model—Exams, Autocracy, Stability and Technology that produced a unified state with a homogenized society. China’s success has been attributed to its ability to govern a polity without a ‘society,’ an entity that is separate, organized, and has its own identity distinct from the state. According to the author, Chinese rulers have preferred scale over scope with the concept of one ruler, one emperor, one idea (Confucianism or Communism), one party (the Communist Party), and one form of human capital (either the technocratic or the Confucian Mandarin) to prevail even in bureaucracy, limiting diversity and difference (Huang 2023, p. 4). Scale stands for the ability of a society to expand in a homogeneous fashion, whereas scope, refers to the diversity it fosters.
The Keju Exams: Institutionalizing the Psychology of Autocratic Rule
The Keju examination system, the first of its kind, with anonymous exams and standardized syllabus, was democratic in appearance but served to reinforce autocratic values for the Chinese state. Through “institutionalised memorisation, cognitive inclination, and deep cognitive biases that would favour autocratic values,” it produced a homogenous cadre of human capital that was crucial for the Chinese state to grow (Ibid., p. 19). The exams became more systematic with time and turned into an essential anchor to the Chinese political system. It is through conscious crafting of the Keju that Chinese autocracy was able to germinate and grow substantially over time. Exams were critical in institutionalizing the psychology of autocratic rule through the embedding of deep cognitive biases aligned with state ideology. This refers to how the Keju system shaped the male population over a millennium by indoctrinating knowledge and limiting the scope of all other concepts except Confucianism, making people homogeneous and ritualizing a method to acknowledge the emperor’s authority (p. 47).
The Keju was used by the Gaokao, CELA (Chinese English Language Assessment), and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) school system to produce a submissive Chinese citizenry that did not question the CCP. The CCP created institutions to prevent the civil sector from functioning, thus making society a place where critical thinking and debate could not flourish. Without pluralism, an autocratic regime becomes stronger through sameness, and society is weakened. Chinese rulers wanted such homogenization for the sustenance of administrative values and authority.
Autocracy
Huang traces the origins of China's unique (sui generis) form of autocracy to the imperial civil service exams or Keju that began in 587 CE under the Sui Dynasty. While other autocracies rely on force, or elite factions, the Chinese utilized the Keju system to create a meritocratic bureaucracy imposing central authority and control over its political elites. That is what distinguished Chinese autocracy: institutionalizing loyalty within a bureaucracy open to talent. Exams selected candidates by their alignment with state ideology, ensuring that the bureaucracy was ideologically uniform and capable of competent rule. Huang notes that China’s stability stems from the absence of rebellious forces in its elite, in stark comparison to other autocracies such as those in Latin America or the Middle East, where rival elites undermine authority.
Huang notes the extent to which Chinese rulers strategized to keep a tight grip on their autocracy. The CCP restricted formal access to loans for rural households that dropped from 34 percent in 1986 to just 10 percent by 2002. This shift was politically orchestrated: by making loans contingent upon political connections rather than economic need, crony capitalism arose. Politically, it strengthened the party’s hold on power by controlling capital access as a lever for political loyalty, promoting state dependence and discouraging independent economic challengers. Economically, the concentration of power worsened macro imbalances, labor’s income shares declined, and consumption-to-GDP ratios were weak, which led to general growth decline. Nonetheless, this helped to instil continued authoritarian rule.
Reasons for Stability
Huang notes that the stability of the Chinese autocratic regime originated from the lack of independent power centres challenging the state. A second reason for the stability was the modernization of China’s economy without loosening political control. Unlike many autocracies, where economic liberalization sparked demands for political freedom, China combines market reforms with state control. Huang describes this phenomenon as “market authoritarianism,” in which economic growth and political control fuel each other (p. 170). The CCP’s economic success solidified its legitimacy and stabilized the regime.
Confucianism also played a significant role in China’s stability. Confucian values reflect societal harmony and acceptance of authority, aligning perfectly with the goals of an autocratic regime. The CCP astutely incorporated these values into its nationalist narrative after the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. A third reason why Chinese autocracy is stable compared to other autocracies lies in how China historically managed its leadership succession. The CCP relied on term limits and retirement policies to control risk, but the author notes that the removal of these limitations by President Xi Jinping raises concerns for stability rather than reinforcing it.
Technology: Hibernation to Hyperactivity
China’s technological hibernation has been subject to many theories and causations. Huang has worked meticulously to decipher the causation between the lack of technological advancements in China and its isolation from world politics. The question Huang asks is—why was China inventive during certain periods and not during others? (p. 217) Tracing China throughout history, he devises a unique formulation where inventiveness equals the number of inventions divided by the total population. He states even though most inventions took place in a political vacuum, China has still given the world three of its most crucial inventions: gunpowder, paper, and the compass.
The reasons for China’s decline are explored in Huang’s book. The Keju enforced political, social, and economic uniformity in Chinese society which suppressed the inventive capacities of the Chinese people. The imperial state did not encourage inventiveness, it was purely incidental. Keju brought an ideological as well as technological contraction. In recent times, China has made substantial investments in basic sciences like Quantum Communications and has established multiple collaborations with foreign universities. This has positioned China as a leader in scientific research and commercialization.
China was expected to modernize in step with its growing economic liberalization, commercialization, and marketization as seen in East Asia. The technological advancements and modernization that occurred in Chinese society were not accompanied by political liberalization and democracy. Since technological innovation can be used as a disruptor, or a reinforcement of the status quo, China used it to deepen its autocratic values. China simply lacked the basis for the opening of political society because of the cognitive repercussions of the Keju that manufactured psychology by shaping individuals’ cognitive frameworks to internalize state ideology, under the guidance of the autocracy. As a result, it promoted loyalty, conformity, and obedience, while stifling independent thought and dissent.
In conclusion, Huang explicitly states that the reasons that made the autocratic Chinese state extremely powerful—such as its capacity for large-scale mobilization, centralized control, and the ability to quickly implement top-down policies—could also be the reason for its possible decline. By “decline,” the author suggests a gradual erosion of the state’s economic vitality, social cohesion, and political legitimacy when confronted with complex, multidimensional crises, particularly those it produces (p. 210). The CCP’s crisis response is stellar, however Huang notes that most crises were created by the party’s own decisions in the first place, such as the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962), the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), the Tiananmen Square protests (1989), and recently the COVID-19 pandemic (2020).
The recurring cycle of crisis creation and resolution draws attention to a more fundamental systemic weakness: the autocratic structure cannot self-correct without major internal conflict or outside pressure. Huang argues that the Chinese state might decline in the coming years if the CCP does not allow certain reflexivity, differences in opinion or thought, and some form of democratization within the party space. One possible limitation of this book, identified by the author himself, is his departure from traditional detail-oriented narratives of China’s history, opting instead for a high-level analysis through the lens of ‘scale’ and ‘scope’ which, while expansive and data-driven, might attract criticism from scholars for its breadth over depth.
Farheen Yousuf is a Policy and Trust Analyst at the Advanced Study Institute of Asia (ASIA), a think tank affiliated with SGT University, Delhi NCR. Her previous roles include working with the Telangana State Government, Punjab State Government, nonprofit organizations, and startups. With a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce from Osmania University, and an MA in Economics from Indira Gandhi National Open University, she specializes in behaviour and experimental economics and political economy.
Priyanka Garodia is an MPhil graduate in International Relations and Political Science from Jadavpur University, specializing in international affairs, gender politics, and feminist international relations. With a BA and MA from Presidency University, and having studied at Sciences Po, Paris, she currently works as a research analyst at the Advanced Study Institute of Asia (ASIA) of the SGT University, Gurugram, India. Priyanka specializes in providing in-depth analysis and insights into South Asian political trends.
