Confucianism and Capitalist Development: From Max Weber and Orientalism to Lee Kuan Yew and New Confucianism

ABSTRACT

Using Said’s orientalism as an analytical framework, this article situates the contemporary Confucian revival within a longue durée of cultural discourse originating in the nineteenth century. From early European accounts such as Max Weber’s Religion of China to the contemporary New Confucian revival prominently championed by Lee Kuan Yew, this article highlights the historical persistence of culture as a catch-all explanation for the economic success or failure of societies. Such an analysis seems more relevant than ever with the growing popularity of Confucian-cultural explanations for China’s economic growth in the past decades.

用萨伊德的东方主义作为分析架构, 此文章把文化论述中长时段框架下讨论当代儒家复兴, 该框架在源自於19世纪东方主义的. 从早起的欧洲理论如马克斯·韦伯的 《中国宗教》 到李光耀的知名著作 《当代新儒家复兴》,  这篇文章突出了人们总爱以文化作为单一因素解释一个社会的经济成败, 这种历史惯性不但难以摆脱, 随着近几十年来中国经济的飞跃发展, 以儒家文化解释中国经济成功发展的学说也蓬勃发展, 因此此篇文章的分析相当应景。

KEYWORDS:

• Edward Said
• Max Weber
• Lee Kuan Yew
• Confucianism
• “Chinese” culture
• capitalism
• orientalism
• New Confucianism
• conservatism
• authoritarianism
• colonialism

Acknowledgments

I thank Professor Stephen Dobbs at the University of Western Australia for his supervision and mentorship during my honours thesis, on which much of this paper is based. I also thank Professor Christine Helliwell at the Australian National University for her ongoing supervision and support, as well as Professor Michael Barr for his unending patience in the review process. I am also thankful to the two anonymous reviewers and the regional editor of this journal for their constructive and detailed feedback. I have sought to take all their suggestions on board, and of course any errors or inaccuracies in the final version are entirely my own.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

The research for this paper was greatly supported by the Australian government’s Australian Postgraduate Award (APA) scholarship.