The discourse of Confucian Capitalism has been crucial in shaping our understanding of the brilliant economic successes of the Chinese diaspora all over the world. From this perspective, hard work, family values, and communal cohesion, as well as business practices based on sentiment, trust, and social networks, are the legendary means of explaining the wealth and commercial talent of these remarkable people. The book examines the subject of Chinese business' by exposing the enduring myth about the determining effects of these values and practices supposedly derived from Confucianism. Such myth relies on an ahistorical and essentialised notion of Chinese Culture', and brings into focus three sites of controversy: the economically driven Chinese subject, work-place relations characterised by consensus and cultural sharing, and an operating ethos of collectivist, pre-capitalist sociality. In its interrogation of the discourse of Confucian capitalism, it is the aim of this book to arrive at a critically informed and socially realistic understanding of Chinese business. The author combines abstract analysis with examples from anthropological fieldwork among Chinese traders in Sarawak, East Malaysia. By anchoring theoretical discussion to real case-studies, the multi-disciplinary approach of this book offers a useful insight into Chinese business activities, and contributes to current debates in cultural studies, economic anthropology, the economic performance of overseas Chinese, and neo-Confucian societies more generally.

With the life story of Shibusawa Eiichi (1840–1931), one of the most important financiers and industrialists in modern Japanese history, as its narrative focal point, this book explores the challenges of importing modern business enterprises to Japan, where the pursuit of profit was considered beneath the dignity of the samurai elite. Seeking to overturn the Tokugawa samurai-dominated political economy after the Meiji Restoration, Shibusawa was a pioneer in introducing joint-stock corporations to Japan as institutions of economic development. As the entrepreneurial head of Tokyo’s Dai-Ichi Bank, he helped launch modern enterprises in such diverse industries as banking, shipping, textiles, paper, beer, and railroads. Believing businesses should be both successful and serve the national interest, Shibusawa regularly cautioned against the pursuit of profit alone. He insisted instead on the ‘unity of morality and economy’ following business ethics derived from the Confucian Analects. A top leader in Japan’s business community for decades, Shibusawa contributed to founding the Tokyo Stock Exchange, the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce, and numerous educational and philanthropic organizations to promote his vision of Confucian capitalism. This volume marks an important contribution to the international debate on the extent to which capitalist enterprises have a responsibility to serve and benefit the societies in which they do business. Shibusawa's story demonstrates that business, government, trade associations, and educational institutions all have valuable roles to play in establishing a political economy that is both productive and humane.

Seventeen scholars from varying fields here consider the implications of Confucian concerns--self-cultivation, regulation of the family, social civility, moral education, well-being of the people, governance of the state, and universal peace--in industrial East Asia.

Confucian political philosophy has recently emerged as a vibrant area of thought both in China and around the globe. This book provides an accessible introduction to the main perspectives and topics being debated today, and shows why Progressive Confucianism is a particularly promising approach. Students of political theory or contemporary politics will learn that far from being confined to a museum, contemporary Confucianism is both responding to current challenges and offering insights from which we can all learn. The Progressive Confucianism defended here takes key ideas of the twentieth-century Confucian philosopher Mou Zongsan (1909-1995) as its point of departure for exploring issues like political authority and legitimacy, the rule of law, human rights, civility, and social justice. The result is anti-authoritarian without abandoning the ideas of virtue and harmony; it preserves the key values Confucians find in ritual and hierarchy without giving in to oppression or domination. A central goal of the book is to present Progressive Confucianism in such a way as to make its insights manifest to non-Confucians, be they philosophers or simply citizens interested in the potential contributions of Chinese thinking to our emerging, shared world.

In a single generation, the rise of Asia has precipitated a dramatic sea change in the world’s economic and political orders. This reconfiguration is taking place amidst a host of deepening global predicaments, including climate change, migration, increasing inequalities of wealth and opportunity, that cannot be resolved by purely technical means or by seeking recourse in a liberalism that has of late proven to be less than effective. The present work critically explores how the pan-Asian phenomenon of Confucianism offers alternative values and depths of ethical commitment that cross national and cultural boundaries to provide a new response to these challenges. When searching for resources to respond to the world’s problems, we tend to look to those that are most familiar: Single actors pursuing their own self-interests in competition or collaboration with other players. As is now widely appreciated, Confucian culture celebrates the relational values of deference and interdependence—that is, relationally constituted persons are understood as embedded in and nurtured by unique, transactional patterns of relations. This is a concept of person that contrasts starkly with the discrete, self-determining individual, an artifact of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Western European approaches to modernization that has become closely associated with liberal democracy. Examining the meaning and value of Confucianism in the twenty-first century, the contributors—leading scholars from universities around the world—wrestle with several key questions: What are Confucian values within the context of the disparate cultures of China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam? What is their current significance? What are the limits and historical failings of Confucianism and how are these to be critically addressed? How must Confucian culture be reformed if it is to become relevant as an international resource for positive change? Their answers vary, but all agree that only a vital and critical Confucianism will have relevance for an emerging world cultural order.

Why did modern capitalism not arise in late imperial China? One famous answer comes from Max Weber, whose The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism gave a canonical analysis of religious and cultural factors in early modern European economic development. In The Religions of China, Weber contended that China lacked the crucial religious impetus to capitalist growth that Protestantism gave Europe. The preeminent historian Ying-shih Yü offers a magisterial examination of religious and cultural influences in the development of China’s early modern economy, both complement and counterpoint to Weber’s inquiry. The Religious Ethic and Mercantile Spirit in Early Modern China investigates how evolving forms of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism created and promulgated their own concepts of the work ethic from the late seventh century into the Qing dynasty. The book traces how religious leaders developed the spiritual significance of labor and how merchants adopted this religious work ethic, raising their status in Chinese society. However, Yü argues, China’s early modern mercantile spirit was restricted by the imperial bureaucratic priority on social order. He challenges Marxists who championed China’s “sprouts of capitalism” during the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries as well as other modern scholars who credit Confucianism with producing dramatic economic growth in East Asian countries. Yü rejects the premise that China needed an early capitalist stage of development; moreover, the East Asian capitalism that flourished in the later half of the twentieth century was essentially part of the spread of global capitalism. Now available in English translation, this landmark work has been greatly influential among scholars in East Asia since its publication in Chinese in 1987.

This book argues that we are undergoing a transition from industrial capitalism to a new form of capitalism - what the author calls & lsquo; cognitive capitalism & rsquo;

While Confucian ideals continue to inspire thinkers and political actors, discussions of concrete Confucian practices and institutions appropriate for the modern era have been conspicuously absent from the literature thus far. This volume represents the most cutting edge effort to spell out in meticulous detail the relevance of Confucianism for the contemporary world. The contributors to this book--internationally renowned philosophers, lawyers, historians, and social scientists--argue for feasible and desirable Confucian policies and institutions as they attempt to draw out the political, economic, and legal implications of Confucianism for the modern world.

In The Confucian-Legalist State, Dingxin Zhao offers a radically new analysis of Chinese imperial history from the eleventh century BCE to the fall of the Qing dynasty. This study first uncovers the factors that explain how, and why, China developed into a bureaucratic empire under the Qin dynasty in 221 BCE. It then examines the political system that crystallized during the Western Han dynasty, a system that drew on China's philosophical traditions of Confucianism and Legalism. Despite great changes in China's demography, religion, technology, and socioeconomic structures, this Confucian-Legalist political system survived for over two millennia. Yet, it was precisely because of the system's resilience that China, for better or worse, did not develop industrial capitalism as Western Europe did, notwithstanding China's economic prosperity and technological sophistication beginning with the Northern Song dynasty. In examining the nature of this political system, Zhao offers a new way of viewing Chinese history, one that emphasizes the importance of structural forces and social mechanisms in shaping historical dynamics. As a work of historical sociology, The Confucian-Legalist State aims to show how the patterns of Chinese history were not shaped by any single force, but instead by meaningful activities of social actors which were greatly constrained by, and at the same time reproduced and modified, the constellations of political, economic, military, and ideological forces. This book thus offers a startling new understanding of long-term patterns of Chinese history, one that should trigger debates for years to come among historians, political scientists, and sociologists.