Assistant Professor
New York University (NYU)
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Erik H. Wang
New York University
English translation of: 从唐代士族衰亡看史学量化范式的科学使用, 《历史研究》2025年第6期, 第165-187, 192页.
New quantitative finding: This 2025 study, published in the flagship journal of history in China, finds that the net bureaucratic-career advantage associated with aristocratic pedigree declined rapidly after the early Tang, while the imperial examination system (Keju) became increasingly important for social mobility. Both trends were underway more than two centuries before the Huang Chao Rebellion. The aristocracy’s decline therefore cannot be understood primarily as the sudden physical destruction of elite clans during that rebellion.
This study builds on our award-winning 2024 article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Social mobility in the Tang Dynasty as the Imperial Examination rose and aristocratic family pedigree declined, 618–907 CE, by Fangqi Wen, Erik H. Wang, and Michael Hout. That article finds that aristocratic pedigree became less important for bureaucratic careers during the Tang as the role of keju increased. It therefore demonstrates that the end-of-Tang violence and destruction were not the primary reason for the fall of the aristocracy. It also affirms the fundamental role of the Tang civil service exams in the aristocracy’s eventual downfall.
Media coverage of the 2024 PNAS article: Business Insider, Yahoo! News, Archaeology, Phys.org (2024), Phys.org (2025), Broadstreet, South China Morning Post, Asia Times, NYU News, Ohio State News, Futurity, SciTechDaily, MSN (SCMP), MSN (Business Insider), DNYUZ, CIKAVOSTI, Mirage News, EurekAlert!, Newswise, ScienceBlog, BrightSurf, AcademicGates, The Conversation, Today Headline, inkl, Political理论志（澎湃号·湃客）, 集智俱乐部（智源社区）, 神秘的地球
Read the English translation of the 2025 study here
When and how did the medieval Chinese aristocracy decline? Generations of historians have argued that the political power of the aristocracy was gradually displaced by the imperial examination system, or Keju, during the Tang dynasty. Some historians, on the other hand, have tried to challenge this long-established consensus by alleging that aristocratic political dominance persisted until the Huang Chao Rebellion at the end of the Tang, pointing to the ostensibly stable share of aristocrats among high-ranking officials across the dynasty.
This article identifies several fundamental flaws in the statistical reasoning underlying claims of aristocratic persistence, including conceptual ambiguity, definitional tautology, misinterpretation of conditional probabilities, and the absence of control variables in existing quantitative analyses. Using multivariate statistical models applied to a large sample of Tang tomb epitaphs, drawn from essentially the same epitaph-based evidence used in prior quantitative studies but analyzed with more adequate methods, I show that the political advantage associated with aristocratic pedigree declined rapidly after the early Tang, while the net premium associated with Keju credentials increased steadily over time, even after controlling for aristocratic influence.
Both trends, the erosion of pedigree-based advantage and the rising importance of Keju, were already underway more than two centuries before the Huang Chao Rebellion and other violent upheavals marking the end of the Tang and its immediate successor polities. These new findings leave the social and political dimensions of the Tang-Song Transition thesis on shaky ground.
Keju; imperial examination system; medieval Chinese aristocracy; Tang dynasty; Huang Chao Rebellion; Tang-Song Transition; aristocratic decline; quantitative history.
Wang, Erik H. 2025. “从唐代士族衰亡看史学量化范式的科学使用.” 历史研究 2025(6): 165-187, 192. English translation: “Keju, Not Violence: How the Medieval Chinese Aristocracy Declined in the Tang Long Before the Huang Chao Rebellion.”
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