From Justin Yifu Lin's "Needham Puzzle, Weber Question and China’s Miracle":
The contents that had to be memorized included 431286 Chinese characters, not to mention the annotations which were several times longer, and other related historical, literary classics (Miyazaki, 1976, p.16). But memorization was not the most difficult part of this examination. The real difficulties lied in the ability to write creatively, this constituted the intellectual contest element of the exam. Only those with outstanding talents and devoted most of their efforts into the Confucian study could stand out in the rounds and rounds of competition. The coverage of the tests was limited only to the teaching of the Confucian school, basically its most fundamental readings: the Four Books and the Five Classics. Generally, twenty years were needed simply to participate in all these examinations.
It would appear that China had attained high levels of human capital. But human capital takes many forms.
In summary, because the civil-service examination system focused only on the Confucianism and the literary skills, most of the talented people in China were fully devoted to either the civil-service examination or the research of humanities. They lacked the incentives to learn and accumulate skills in mathematics and controlled experiment, not to mention the ability to combine the two, formalize the knowledge in mathematical forms and test through experiments. As a result, scientific revolution could not spontaneously take place in China, even though Chinahad satisfied many of the crucial conditions for the industrial revolution and capitalism had sprouted as early as in the 14th century.
The incentives placed to great an emphasis on the humanities and not enough on the scientific inquiry. No one ever heard of the Humanities Revolution as a source of modern economic growth.