Gentry (China)

The term "landed gentry," or "gentry," originally used for Britain, does not correspond to any single term in Chinese. One standard work remarks that under the Ming dynasty, the elite who held privileged status through passing the Imperial exams were called shenshi 紳士 or jinshen 縉紳. These degree-holders, literati, scholar-bureaucrats or officials, are "loosely known in English as the Chinese gentry." Through education this elite held a virtual monopoly on office holding, and overlapped with an unofficial elite of the wealthy. After the Tang dynasty, the Song Dynasty developed the civil service exam to replace the nine-rank system which favored nobles. Under the Song dynasty, their power and influence eclipsed that of the hereditary and largely military aristocrats. They are also called, 士紳 shishen "scholar gentry" or 、鄉紳 xiangshen "local gentry." Attempts have been made to define them as a social class who had passed the examinations and so were eligible to hold office, as well as retired mandarins or their families and descendants. Owning land was often their way of preserving wealth.

Scholar-officials, also known as Scholar-gentlemen, Scholar-bureaucrats or Scholar-gentry were civil servants appointed by the emperor of China to perform day-to-day governance from the Han dynasty to the end of the Qing dynasty in 1912, China's last imperial dynasty. After the Sui dynasty these officials mostly came from the scholar-gentry (绅士 shēnshì) who had earned academic degrees (such as xiucai, juren, or jinshi) by passing the  imperial examinations. The scholar-officials were schooled in calligraphy and Confucian texts. They dominated the government and local life of China until 1911.