Confucianism and East Asian Modernity

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Confucianism and East Asian Modernity

• HAHM Chaibong
• (Professor, Department of Political Science,
  Yonsei University)

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1. Different Responses to Modernity

• Protestantism
• Islam
• Hinduism
• Buddhism
• Confucianism

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2. Initial response Isolationism

• China isolationism until the Opium
  War 1840
• Tokugawa Japan isolationism until the Meiji
  Restoration 1868
• Choson Korea isolationism until the Kanghwa
  Treaty 1876

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3. Phase 2 Iconoclasm

• China May 4 iconoclasm
• Japan "Escape from Asia, Join Europe"
  
• Korea "modernization"

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4. By the end of the 20th Century, Japan,
Korea, China

• The three most successful cases
• of industrialization outside
• the Western/Christian civilization

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5. Why no "fundamentalist" backlash from
Confucians?

• Confucianism is a "secular" ideology "State" and
  "Family" centered institution but no "Church" or
  "priesthood/clergy"
• With the fall of Confucian States, Ching,
  Tokugawa Bakufu, Choson no other guardian of the
  ideology other than the "family"

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6. Why so successful at economic development?

• "Confucian work ethic" education, discipline
• Family the center of capital accumulation
• Confucian Capitalism?

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7. Confucian Democracy?

• rethinking the State, Family
• and Individual

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8. The Present

• Islamic World Islam functions as a bond that
  links otherwise disparate cultures and countries
  at different stages of economic and political
  development
• Confucian World the bond is economic Modernity
  is the only tie that binds Korea, China, and
  Japan together

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9. The Future

• Once the underlying common
• Confucian heritage still there
• can also be utilized once the
• historical and political conflicts
• are resolved.
• Confucian Capitalism Confucian
• Democracy East Asian Modernity