It is precisely in this area that the Hui merchants scored the highest in beating the system. For long, scholars have long been mystified by the passion for Confucian learning in Huizhou, which took pride in its numerous academies, schools, and literary associations. The emergence of a particular Huizhou school for the study ofConfuciusthat upheld the social status of merchants has led some to question the old adage that that Confucian ethics were anti-commerce. Indeed, Confucian values supplied ethical standards and moral motivation for the Hui's commercial success.
By investing in Huizhou's education, Hui merchants were able to field many candidates forImperial Examinationsand thus influence the Imperial bureaucracy. Between 960-1911 as many as 2,018 people from Huizhou achieved the highest level in the Imperial Government. In this way, these artful traders conspired to maintain such commercial advantages as their valuable salt monopolies.
But beneath all this passion lied hard economic rationality: Huizhou had a proven track record in turning out successful candidates for the Civil Service Examination and Huizhou natives claimed a disproportionate share in Chinese bureaucracy.
Chinese society overall also responded to incentives. Passion for studying Confucius, as others have argued, was not a distinctively Huizhou phenomenon. Rather, it was a common trait of all major merchant groups. The bureaucrat-merchant nexus is important in accounting for the dominant position of the Shanxi and Huizhou merchants in salt trade under government monopoly and later Shanxi bankers' role as Qing's official agents of money remittance.
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