On April 23, James Lee, Professor and Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Science at HKUST, delivered an engaging lecture about “The Origins and Changes of Elite Education in China.” 

Professor Lee is a major proponent of research on social science history and a pioneer in applying quantitative research methods to analyze data regarding history. As part of that, Professor Lee has worked with the Lee Campbell Research Group to develop many large-scale, individualized, quantitative databases with data ranging from the 18^th century to present. Focusing on these big data sets, they have made many important findings on population behavior and social mobility.

During the lecture, Professor Lee introduced how China’s imperial examination system influenced the distribution of the elite of the Chinese population. By doing quantitative analysis on a wide range of elite education databases since the late Qing dynasty and the period of the Republic of China, he concluded that the social classes and geographic origins of China’s elite are multiple and changeable in the historical process, which shows the distinctive features of Chinese history.