On the whole Wen Ti’s period of rule passed in comparative peace.  For the first time since the beginning of Chinese history, great areas of continuous territory were under unified rule, without unending internal warfare such as had existed under Shih Huang-ti and Kao Tsu.  The creation of so extensive a region of peace produced great economic advance.  The burdens that had lain on the peasant population were reduced, especially since under Wen Ti the court was very frugal.  The population grew and cultivated fresh land, so that production increased and with it the exchange of goods.  The most outstanding sign of this was the abandonment of restrictions on the minting of copper coin, in order to prevent deflation through insufficiency of payment media.  As a consequence more taxes were brought in, partly in kind, partly in coin, and this increased the power of the central government.  The new gentry streamed into the towns, their standard of living rose, and they made themselves more and more into a class apart from the general population.  As people free from material cares, they were able to devote themselves to scholarship.  They went back to the old writings and studied them once more.  They even began to identify themselves with the nobles of feudal times, to adopt the rules of good behaviour and the ceremonial described in the Confucianist books, and very gradually, as time went on, to make these their textbooks of good form.  From this point the Confucianist ideals first began to penetrate the official class recruited from the gentry, and then the state organization itself.  It was expected that an official should be versed in Confucianism, and schools were set up for Confucianist education.  Around 100 B.C. this led to the introduction of the examination system, which gradually became the one method of selection of new officials.  The system underwent many changes, but remained in operation in principle until 1904.  The object of the examinations was not to test job efficiency but command of the ideals of the gentry and knowledge of the literature inculcating them:  this was regarded as sufficient qualification for any position in the service of the state.

In theory this path to training of character and to admission to the state service was open to every “respectable” citizen.  Of the traditional four “classes” of Chinese society, only the first two, officials (shih) and farmers (nung) were always regarded as fully “respectable” (liang-min).  Members of the other two classes, artisans (kung) and merchants (shang), were under numerous restrictions.  Below these were classes of “lowly people” (ch’ien-min) and below these the slaves which were not part of society proper.  The privileges and obligations of these categories were soon legally fixed.  In practice, during the first thousand years of the existence of the examination system no peasant had a chance to become an official by means