Editing Wu Zetian (section)

===Reform of the imperial examination system===
One apparatus of government that fell into Wu's power was the [[imperial examination]] system, the basic theory and practice of which was to recruit into government service those men who were the best educated, most talented, and had the best potential to perform their duties, and to do so by testing a pool of candidates to determine this. This pool was male only, and the qualified pool of candidates and resulting placements into official positions was on a relatively small scale at the time Wu took control of government. The official tests examined things considered important for functionaries of the highly developed, bureaucratic government structure of the imperial government, such as level of literacy in terms of reading and writing and possession of the specific knowledge considered necessary and desirable for a governmental official, such as [[Confucianism|Confucian]] precepts on the nature of virtue and theory on the proper ordering of and relationships within society. Wu continued to use the imperial examination system to recruit civil servants, and introduced major changes to the system she inherited, including increasing the pool of candidates permitted to take the test by allowing commoners and gentry, previously disqualified by their background, to take it. In 693, she expanded the governmental examination system and greatly increased the importance of this method of recruiting government officials.<ref name="Paludan, 97" /> Wu provided increased opportunity for the representation within government to people of the [[North China Plain]] versus people of the northwestern aristocratic families, and the successful candidates recruited through the examination system became an elite group within her government.<ref name="Fairbank, 82">{{harvp|Fairbank|1992|p= 82}}</ref> The historical details of the consequences of Wu's promoting a new group of people from previously disenfranchised backgrounds into prominence as powerful governmental officials, and the examination system's role, remain debated by scholars of this subject.