Confucianism in Qing China and Tokugawa Japan: The Value System of the Two Rice Economies

Wei-Bin Zhang

Chapter 1 in Japan versus China in the Industrial Race, 1998, pp 7-36 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Civilisation is a process of man’s rise from a near-animal state to a human society featuring the exercise of reasoning, the creation and adoption of civilised values, and the cultivation of the arts. History shows that the movement of a society towards a civilised state depends on two factors: the intellectual power of outstanding men to conceive sound socio-economic ideas and theories, and the ability of the majority to properly apply these ideologies. If the leaders of common men have a taste for bad ideas, nothing can prevent social disasters. In modern times, China’s prolonged engagement with the process of economic rise is closely related to its choice of Marxism instead of Confucianism or Capitalism as the state ideology. In contrast, Japan’s swift adaptation to modern civilisation owes much to its taste for Confucianism and rational Western ideas.

Keywords: Modern Time; Qing Dynasty; Human Relation; Chinese Philosophy; Moral Code (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1998
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-349-26813-9_2

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DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-26813-9_2

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