Industrialization of the Confucian Regions

Abstract

The conception of time and space are important for revealing the complexity of the evolution of cultures. People perceive time differently, depending on knowledge, life experience, social position, ‘security of the future’, and other factors. For instance, people have different perceptions of time in calculating the benefits and losses of a given action. When we examine historical processes, time not only helps us to account for affairs and events, but also tells us how to value them. As time flows, affairs or events which appear to be historically important turn out to be internally trivial. Time stands for the state of mind of a culture. If one understands the intimate connection between time and the mind, it is not difficult to understand why the self-confident 17th-century Manchu were positive towards the Western cultures while the corrupt 19th-century Manchu made attempts to prevent the West from influencing China. The Chinese saying: ‘it is a great fortune to be born into an interesting time’, reflects the Chinese sense of timing for personal life as well as for a nation’s fate.

In the front of unprecedented forceful and vigorous challenges in military, political, economic as well as intellectual fields from the West in modern times, the greatness of Confucianism is displayed in its constant existence and silent adaptation rather than in a ‘club-like survival’ strategy of randomly disturbing men’s emotion in order to collect numerous mediocre believers who pray for its survival. Its intellectual power comes from its belief in rational knowledge, education, employment of men according to talent and merit differences, the family/group value, and differentiated degrees of human love as a moral and economic accounting basis. Its survival power is due to the fact that it is based on man’s nature and man’s actual capacity to adapt his own ideals as a morally decent existence.