Professor Sijie Hu (The University of Hong Kong)
Sijie Hu is an Assistant Professor at the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences and the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Hong Kong. She received her Ph.D. (2021) in Economic History from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Prior to joining HKU, she was an Assistant Professor of Economic History at the School of Economics, Renmin University of China. Her research lies at the intersection of economic history and demography. She is currently working on projects that aim to understand micro-demographic dynamics in traditional Chinese society using genealogies.

Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, The University of Hong Kong

This paper examines the transition from limited to open-access societies, focusing on early and high-Tang China (618–906). Using a dataset of 1,200 marriages from 618 to 755, we find that Empress Wu’s rise to power in 674—the first and only female emperor in Chinese history—positively impacted upward mobility. After 674, men from common and poor clans were more likely to marry into elite clans. This increase in inter-class marriages was primarily driven by Empress Wu’s expansion of national civil examinations, which strengthened her legitimacy and created new opportunities for social advancement.