Confucianism
Confucianism
is the ancient Chinese philosophy created by Confucius. This philosophy had
affected the culture of numerous other civilizations in Asia. These countries
include India, Vietnam, Korea, Japan and many more. Recently, numerous companies
have tried to expand into China and many Chinese companies into the West.
Numerous amounts of them have failed. Knowledge of this philosophy will
definitely help in understanding the reason behind these failures.
Confucianism
believes in ‘ren’, in other words, benevolence. For
me, this is very significant. This reminds me that moral education was a huge
part of Confucianism. They believed that character was important. This is
relevant for companies that want to do business in China. One company that did
not have a successful expansion into China because of this was Google. They had
been charged by the Chinese government for taken information from Chinese users
and giving it to the Americans. They had crossed the line and had exploited the
benevolence. This is very interesting as
they are apparently being accused of doing the same thing overseas. Although
Mao had done away with these ideas as they were deemed as ideologies of an
imperial era, it can still be seen in China’s education system where respect
and honestly are taught from a young age through stories. Have the Chinese
violated its own principle? Or has this become a political issue?
Previously, I
had thought that these companies fail only because they are unwilling to adapt
to its surroundings. Turns out, this
could actually be due to the fact that the West adopts a different belief to
that of the East and vice versa. American companies like Google are seen as
dishonest and doing unethical things. Same goes for the Chinese. The reason Confucianism
does not promote innovation could be because it was created in the
imperialistic times and different psychology was commonly seen as a rebellion. Without
innovation, the capacity for improvement is quite limited in a short period of
time. This can be seen when the ancient China took thousands of years to come
up with a more democratic system where people with skills were used rather than
descendants of current officials.
In a
nutshell, what the Chinese need to start improving on the original ideology of
Confucianism. They need to learn to improvise and adapt to conditions. They are
currently at a bottleneck. If they can bypass this problem, I believe, together
with their hard work, that they can become a powerful economy once again. For
American companies, they need to start to understand what the Chinese
psychology is all about so that they can remain one step ahead of the Chinese.
After
analyzing about what Confucianism is all about, I believe that it is the glue
that holds China together. This loyalty that it instilled means that the
Chinese will listen to its leaders and work towards a common goal. Through
this, I have also developed the ability to go deep into a topic.
