The passion and enthusiasm of Confucian Asia

It is to be hoped that the Confucian Institutes, supported by Chinese Government jointly with local educational interests, will become a focus of interest for more than simply Chinese language training.

This is acutely important for Australia, trying to find its way in a world shaped by two centuries of Anglo-American authority where, rightly or wrongly, few will prosper in the future without some emulation of Confucian passion and enthusiasm. Increasingly, it will need to master Chinese classics like The Analects, Daodejing, Yijing and Neijing, as well as the West’s abstract ideologies like capitalism, communism, socialism and neo-liberalism.

The passion and enthusiasm of Confucius, as manifested in contemporary China, may also be picked up as a model in parts of the developing world. Free of the evangelical assertions of Western Christianity and focused on practical challenges and outcomes it draws upon an extensive history of endeavour and achievement. Contributing to this is the fact that Confucianism is concerned above all with the welfare of the community.

It has developed over several millennia an ethos and practices designed to nurture this through the robust education of each generation. It entrusts the community to the humanist inclinations inherent in that education and in those who have excelled in the competitive mastering of the teachings of the tradition.

Today, President Hu Jintao, a water engineer, is described as brought up in a Confucian family. Moreover, this tradition has found expression in “Socialism with Chinese characteristics”, an ideal that challenges much in the neo-liberal West.

It is not insignificant that Confucianism has long been focused on producing a highly educated and disciplined administrative or bureaucratic class of a standard never aspired to or achieved in the West. This class is widely and popularly perceived to manifest standards of excellence, quite apart from power. Over recent decades, East Asian products of this tradition have a remarkable track record, much superior to neo-liberal communities of the democratic West, where elected politicians too often seem beholden to the funding that flows from serving narrow corporate priorities.

Future historians, probably of Confucian persuasion, may conclude the West lost its innocence and much of its potential when it allowed its brilliant institutional innovation, the corporation, to turn from conquering other peoples’ lands to taking over domestic political systems. Corporations marshalled the energies and resources, took the risks and incurred the costs necessary to build and maintain a nascent global order.

The drive for profit seems, however, to have left the West’s corporate leaders vulnerable before the superior strategies and subtleties of Confucian administrators.