Big Business and the Ghost of Confucius

The documentary talked about how people living in east Asia used the ideas of Confucius for
the betterment of their economy. The countries of South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan were
known for the sudden success of their economy and this video highlighted how the ideology of
Confucius affected each of the primary leaders of these countries and applied them to their
government.

Authority springs from morality not force.

The family is the basic unit of society and the government should be its mirror image.

How is it that Asia's rapidly industrializing economics can mobilize their people for hard work
and individual sacrifices for the sake of economic growth, particularly in the early stages
plagued by mass unemployment and poverty? This video unit examines a view that the
Confucian ideology--consisting of fidelity and obedience to authority, a high respect for
education, self-discipline and a strong work ethic, and the submerging (relegation) of self-
interest for higher goals for society--is the spirit behind the successes of Asia's new brand of
capitalism. Apparently accepting this view, communist China is now resurrecting 2,000-year-old
ancient Confucian teachings, together with the temples and rituals once viciously attacked by
Red Guards.

South Korea's Park Chung Hee, Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew, and Taiwan's Chiang Ching-kuo all
purposely invoked the traditional Confucian codes of ethics to legitimatize governmental
authority (control and guidance) and to extract loyalty from their people--not so much to
subjugate and suppress the public as to mobilize their energies for modernization and
prosperity.

To illustrate, the video shows how a Korean company whose chairman is a devout follower of
Confucianism, is inculcating its workers with Confucian thoughts so that their devotion to the
company may be secured for its own business expansion, as well as the prosperity of Korean
society at large. Another scene zeros in on a successful bicycle producer, a small family business
in Taiwan with a network of sixty closely affiliated small parts suppliers--a paragon of the family
as a key social unit and efficacy of flexible cooperation among group-based business units. Not
only an organizational principle at the company level, the Confucian ideology is also
instrumental in facilitating the macroeconomic policy of catching up with the advanced West,
since it stresses the virtues of learning from superior teachers or models. It justifies a
hierarchical relationship in which benevolent leaders (employers) treat devoted workers as if
they were family members. Hence, the prevalence of industrial paternalism.

In addition, Asia's economic miracle is born from the close government guidance and
management of key strategic industries--the critical feature of state-guided capitalism, as seen
in South Korea and Taiwan. It is a "miracle by design," in Frank Gibney's words--or, more
specifically, a miracle by government design.

Yet the video points out an internally contradictory process in which the very success of an
economy of economic growth leads to rising expectations and desires for individual freedom,
and the Confucian values (many of which are egregiously undemocratic) become less
relevant,especially for the younger generations reared in an increasingly affluent society.