I think what the grandparent was implying is that only landowner families would have had the means to take the exam and become a government official, so it wasn

I think what the grandparent was implying is that only landowner families would have had the means to take the exam and become a government official, so it wasn't a fully meritocratic society. Of course, these things are all relative and there was probably more social mobility in this system than other contemporary nations.