Evolution of China’s State Governance Model: Institutional and Cultural-Value Determinants

From an institutional perspective, this paper studies the evolution of China’s state governance model and explores how age-old cultural traditions shape governance efficiency. Centralized bureaucracy, Confucian values and the Mandate of Heaven doctrine established performance-based political legitimacy built on socioeconomic stability. Special attention is paid to the imperial Keju civil service exam: its rigorous screening unified administrators’ outlooks and cultivated educated talents for grassroots governance. Drawing on macroeconomic statistics, the paper reviews 20th-century governance shifts. Mid-century mobilization-centered policies triggered economic structural distortions and fiscal deficits, while later reforms focused on institutional improvement, moderate decentralization and civil service professionalism. The core finding highlights institutional memory as a continuous thread. Modern personnel recruitment and supervision systems carry forward traditional talent-selection mechanisms, enabling China’s governance framework to sustain flexibility, adaptability and strong resilience amid political upheavals.

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