II6 SOCIAL REFORMpure meritocracy and absolute equality in the opportunities for advancement.
Instead his goal was to attempt the recreation of the classical model of social
and political organization that supposedly existed in the Chou dynasty of the
first millennium B.C., a system that was embedded in feudal modes of organi-
zation but contained officials or bureaucrats in the employ of the Chou king and
the various feudal lords. Even though Yu admired that ancient model, he har-
bored no hope of ever restoring it, but contented himself with adapting its prin-
ciples to the current centralized bureaucratic mode of government organization
in which the Choson state was irrevocably fixed. One might add that a perfect
system, either of pure feudal social and political hierarchy, or pure centralized
and bureaucratic hierarchy, was impossible under these circumstances. In fact,
Yu disliked many aspects of both extremes, the hereditary aspect of aristocracy,
and the impersonalized, routine, excessively concentrated methods of a central
bureaucracy.
These two model types of social organization were, in fact, fused together in
both Chinese and Korean society at certain times, but by different means and
with somewhat different consequences. In China the feudal elements of the Chou
dynasty were crushed by the Ch'in dynasty unification of China in 221 B.C.
Though the Former Han dynasty revived some feudal fiefs and inherited status
for nobles after 206 B.c., they were obliterated with the abolition of the Three
Feudatories. Even before the fall of the Later Han in A.D. 220, however, an aris-
tocratic elite began to form, and it reached full flower during the Northern and
Southern Dynasties period from the fall of the Han to the reunification under
the Sui dynasty in 589.
The institutions of centralized bureaucracy were developed and expanded under
the Sui and T'ang dynasties to the early ninth century, but those institutions did
not result in the destruction of an aristocratic elite. Powerful families made a
successful transition and continued to dominate society by adapting to new con-
ditions, particularly the introduction of the civil service examination in 606 by
Emperor Yang of the Sui dynasty. It was carried over into the T'ang (618-906)
and later dynasties as a means of establishing an impersonal and objective stan-
dard for the recruitment of officials independent of the aristocratic families. The
T'ang aristocrats, however, competed successfully in the examinations, winning
degrees that qualified them for high bureaucratic posts. Although historians of
Chinese history like to call the T'ang elite an aristocracy, it probably should be
called a aristocraticlbureaucratic hybrid since the perpetuation of status depended
on success in the examination system and officeholding, and not simply birth
into an aristocratic family and automatic qualification for office. I
After the fall of the T'ang dynasty in 906 the T'ang aristocracy suffered a mor-
tal blow to its social and political position, and under the Sung dynasty estab-
lished in 960, the aristocracy as a class began to be replaced by a new social and
political elite that owed its success to scholarship, examinations, and govern-
ment service. This class has become known as the gentry, and although some