Political Selection After Regime Change: Elite Recruitment in Early Qing China

Peiyuan Li is an Assistant Professor of Political Economy at Duke Kunshan University. His research spans economic history, political economy, and development economics. His work has been published in journals such as  Asia-Pacific Economic History Review and Economics of Transition and Institutional Change. His doctoral dissertation, Collective Action in State and Society: China in the 19th and 20th Centuries, was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and won the Best Paper Award at the 2021 Annual International Symposium on Quantitative History. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Colorado Boulder.

This study examines the process of political selection following regime change, focusing on the transition from the Ming to the Qing dynasty in China. Using a dataset of 4,537 Ming-era Jinshidegree holders, the research explores how the Qing selectively recruited former officials to consolidate power. The findings reveal that senior officials were more likely to be selected to serve the Qing despite facing high moral costs and limited career returns. This pattern was driven by two key mechanisms: legitimacy through elite endorsement, where the Qing sought respected figures to signal stability, and social networks and influence, leveraging the connections of senior officials to encourage broader compliance. Additionally, the Qing employed recruitment through the imperial examination system to integrate new loyalists while minimizing reliance on lower-tier Ming officials. The study contributes to broader discussions on regime consolidation, state-building, and political transitions in autocratic contexts by highlighting strategic elite co-optation as a tool for governance stabilization.