The Chinese were not thrashed by the British in the early 19th C. - they were thrashed by the East India Company who had embraced meritocracy long before then (

The Chinese were not thrashed by the British in the early 19th C. - they were thrashed by the East India Company who had embraced meritocracy long before then (they actually copied the Chinese system). Napoleon is a classic example of the success of meritocracy - it took the combined effort of the whole European nobility to defeat France and even then it was a close run thing.