We propose to compare the changing occupational and geographic origins of China’s examination elite for four sub-periods: the Self-Strengthening Movement 1865-1900, New Government 1900-1911, Republican 1912-1949, and Contemporary times 1949-2014. Preliminary analyses have already established that in each period, the geographic and social origins of the examination elite differed. Our project seeks to examine the implications of such diverse and fluid origins for our understanding of Chinese examination elites during the last century and a half, their distinctive mutability and heterogeneity relative to stable political as well as examination elites elsewhere, and the unexpected implications of this combination of open and silent political revolution and related social transformation for our understanding of stable state-society relations in China as opposed to elsewhere.