The Chinese Imperial Examinations system determined who could hold which rank of government office based on grueling study and testing on Chinese literature.

The Chinese Imperial Examinations system determined who could hold which rank of government office based on grueling study and testing on Chinese literature. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination The comparison the article is making is that the selection process is entirely orthagonal to the job, and the hoops that needed to be jumped through precluded any actual study of the things that mattered. This was regarded at the time of the article as a really bad idea both within and outside China, and ended two years later after 1,700 years of use.