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Economic development in East Asia and a critique of the post-Confucian thesis

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Abstract

Some scholars have put forward what they call a post-Confucian thesis to explain East Asia’s successful economic development. The thesis makes two important arguments: first, that Confucianism has enabled East Asian countries to take a different type of capitalism and a different path to modernity than did the West; second, that Confucianism has been the source of those ethics such as activism, hard work, thrift, and the like that have been conducive to economic development in East Asia. This article calls into question the first argument of the thesis by taking the example of the employment systems in Japan and Korea and showing that Confucianism has not been an important factor in defining their central features. In order to evaluate the second argument, this article investigates two major modernization campaigns in Japan and Korea, claiming that those supposedly Confucian virtues can be better seen as the products of the states’ social engineering for modernization and economic development.

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Notes

  1. Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese miracle: The growth of industrial policy, 1925–1975 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982); Alice Amsden, Asia’s next giant: South Korea and late industrialization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); and Robert Wade, Governing the market: Economic theory and the role of government in East Asian industrialization (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).

  2. Stephen Haggard, Pathways from the periphery: The politics of growth in the newly industrializing countries (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990); and Vivek Chibber, Locked in place: State-building and late industrialization in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).

  3. Peter Berger, The capitalist revolution: Fifty propositions about prosperity, equality, and liberty (New York: Basic, 1986) and “An East Asian Development Model?” In Peter Berger and Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao, (Eds.), In search of an East Asian developmental model (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1988), 3–11; Lawrence Harrison, Who prospers? How cultural values shape economic and political success (New York: Basic, 1992); Lawrence Harrison and Samuel Huntington, (Eds.), Culture matters: How values shape human progress (New York: Basic, 2000); Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao, “An East Asian development model: Empirical explorations,” In Peter Berger and Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao, (Eds.), In search of an East Asian developmental model, 12–23; Herman Kahn, World economic development: 1979 and beyond, (Boulder: Westview, 1979); Andrew Eungi Kim and Gil-sung Park, “Nationalism, Confucianism, work ethic and industrialization in South,” Journal of contemporary Asia 33/1 (2003): 37–49; David Landes, “Culture makes almost all the difference,” In Lawrence Harrison and Samuel Huntington, (Eds.), Culture matters, 2–13; Roderick MacFarquhar, “The post-Confucian challenge,” Economist (February 9, 1980): 67–72; Edwin Reischauer, “The sinic world in perspective,” Foreign Affairs 52/2 (1974):341–348; Wei-ming Tu, “Introduction,” Wei-ming Tu, (Ed.), Confucian traditions in East Asian modernity: Moral education and economic culture in Japan and the Four Mini-Dragons (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 1–10; and Wei-Bin Zhang, Confucianism and modernization: Industrialization and democratization of the Confucian regions (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999).

  4. Tu, “Introduction.”

  5. Lucian Pye, “The new Asian capitalism: A political portrait,” In Peter Berger and Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao, (Eds.), In search of an East Asian developmental model, 81–98.

  6. Robert Bellah, Tokugawa religion: The cultural roots of modern Japan (New York: Free, 1985). Bellah, however, partially revised his view on Japanese modernization in “Reflections on the Protestant ethic analogy in Asia,” In S. N. Eisenstadt, (Ed.), The Protestant ethic and modernization: A comparative view (New York and London: Basic, 1968), 243–251. He feels that his methodology in Tokugawa religion – of finding some motivational, institutional parallels between Japan and the West – is not sufficient. Instead, we have to trace how “structural” transformation in the basic social structures and social value systems occurred. What this article attempts to do is exactly to trace how basic value systems in Japan and Korea were structurally transformed.

  7. Johnson, MITI and the Japanese miracle, 9.

  8. Harrison, “Promoting progressive cultural change,” In Harrison and Huntington, (Eds.), Culture matters, 299–300.

  9. Harrison, Who prospers?, 112.

  10. Berger, The capitalist revolution, 166.

  11. Berger, “An East Asian development model,” 7–8.

  12. Ibid., 4.

  13. Tu, “Introduction.”

  14. Ibid., 7–9.

  15. There is another big issue: if the post-Confucian thesis is right, does this mean that Weber’s view of Confucianism as hindering capitalist development in China was wrong? The three scholars offer differing positions over this issue. While Berger sees Weber’s view in The religion of China as simply wrong and Tu seems to be suspicious of it, Harrison is more favorable to it. For Harrison, Weber’s arguments about Confucianism may be interpreted as stressing its negative aspects. In any case, this issue involves so many complicated other issues that it cannot be pursued in this article.

  16. Berger, “An East Asian development model” and Hsiao, “An East Asian development model: Empirical explorations” do mention corporate culture in East Asia, if only in passing.

  17. James Abegglen, The Japanese factory: Aspects of its social organization (Glencoe: Free, 1957).

  18. Takashi Nakano, Shōka dōzokudan no kenkyū (Tokyo: Miraisha, 1964); Chie Nakane, Japanese society (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970); Kanji Haitani, The Japanese economic system: An institutional overview (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1976); Ryūshi Iwata, Nihon-teki keiei no hensie genri (Organizing principles of Japanese-style management) (Tokyo: Bunshindō, 1977); Hiroshi Mito, ‘Ie’ toshite no Nihon shakai (Japanese society as ‘ie’) (Tokyo: Yuhikaku, 1994); Kunio Odaka, Nihon-teki keiei: sono shinwa to genjitsu (Japanese-style management: Myth and reality) (Tokyo: Chūōkōronsha, 1984); and Masumi Tsuda, Nihon no keiei bunka: 21-seiki no soshiki to hito (Manangement culture in Japan: People and organization of the 21st Century) (Kyoto: Minerva shobō, 1994).

  19. Hiroshi Mito, ‘Ie.’

  20. Odaka, Nihon-teki keiei.

  21. Iwata, Nihon-teki keiei no hensie genri.

  22. Tsuda, Nihon no keiei bunka, 161.

  23. Nakane, Japanese society, 114–15.

  24. Kōji Taira, Economic development and the labor market in Japan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970).

  25. Yukio Noguchi, “The 1940 System: Japan under the wartime economy,” The American Economic Review 88/2 (1998): 404–407.

  26. Robert Cole, “Functional alternatives and economic development: An empirical example of permanent employment in Japan,” American Sociological Review 38/4 (1973): 424–438, and “The late-developer hypothesis: An evaluation of its relevance for Japanese employment practices,” Journal of Japanese Studies 4/2 (1978): 247–265; Ronald Dore, British factory Japanese factory: The origins of national diversity in industrial relations (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973), and “More about late development,” Journal of Japanese Studies 5/1 (1979): 137–151; Hiroshi Hazama and Jacqueline Kaminski, “Japanese labor-management relations and Uno Riemon,” Journal of Japanese Studies 5/1 (1979): 71–106; and Hazama, Nihon no shiyōsha dantai to rōshi kankei (Tokyo: Nihon Rōdō Kyōkai, 1981).

  27. Hazama, Nihon, 63.

  28. Andrew Gordon, The evolution of labor relations in Japan: Heavy industry, 1853–1955 (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1985).

  29. Nakane, Japanese society, 63.

  30. Walter Galenson and Konosuke Odaka, “The Japanese labor market,” In Hugh Patrick and Henry Rosovsky, (Eds.), Asia’s new giant: How the Japanese economy works (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1976), 619.

  31. Cole, “Functional alternatives and economic development,” 432–433.

  32. Masahiko Aoki, “Toward an economic model of the Japanese firm,” Journal of Economic Literature 28/1 (1990): 1–27, and “The Japanese firm as a system of attributes: A survey and research agenda,” In Masahiko Aoki and Ronald Dore, (Eds.), The Japanese firm: The sources of competitive strength (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 11–40.

  33. Gordon, The evolution of labor relations in Japan, 25.

  34. Dore, too, notes in British factory Japanese factory, 389 that the formation of the JES involved taming “some well-entrenched oyakata bosses” or routing “the feudal barons.” Surpirsingly, Haitani and Nakane themselves claim that skilled-labor shortage and high labor turnover was quite responsible for the establishment of the JES. See Haitani, The Japanese economic system, 99, and Nakane, Japanese society, 14–18. It is difficult to understand why then they should still argue that it is a simple carryover of Tokugawa legacies. In any case, their economic-rational explanation is overshadowed by their mystifying explanation when they ascribe the strong emotional ties between employers and employees to the JES and rejects it any contractual basis. For this, see also Morishima, Why has Japan ‘succeeded’?, 120–121.

  35. Dore, British factory Japanese factory, 416. This sharp dualism points to another critical problem of the structural approach, for the JES, observed only in large companies, should be ubiquitous in all firms including small companies, if deep structures were really the prime mover of the JES.

  36. Hazama, Nihon-teki keiei no keifu (Origins and development of Japanese-style management) (Tokyo: Nihon Noritsu Kyokai, 1963), 80–88.

  37. Ibid., 103–106.

  38. Gordon, The evolution of labor relations in Japan.

  39. K. Matsuura, M. Pollitt, R. Takada, and S. Tanaka, “Institutional restructuring in the Japanese economy since 1985,” Journal of Economic Issues 37(4): 999–1022; and S. Baba, “Remodeling employment for competitive advantage: What will follow Japan’s ‘lifetime employment’?,” Asian Business & Management3(2) (2004), 221–40.

  40. See James Lincoln and Yoshifumi Nakata, “The transformation of the Japanese employment system: Nature, depth, and origins,” Work and Occupations 24/1 (1997); Ronald Dore, Stock market captalism: Welfare capitalism: Japan and Germany versus the Anglo-Saxons (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Takeshi Inagami and Hugh Whittaker, The new community firm: Employment, governance and management reform in Japan (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005); and Sanford Jacoby, The embedded corporation: Corporate governance and employment relations in Japan and the United States (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005).

  41. Jacoby, The embedded corporation, 158.

  42. Ibid., 179.

  43. Kahn, World economic development; and Byong-ik Koh, “Confucianism in contemporary Korea,” In Tu, (Ed.), Confucian traditions in East Asian modernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 191–201.

  44. Ezra Vogel, The four little dragons: The spread of industrialization in East Asia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991); Kyu Han Bae and William Form, “Pay strategy in South Korea’s advanced industrial sector,” American Sociological Review 51/1 (1986): 120–31; William Form and Kyuhan Bae, “Convergence theory and the Korean connection,” Social Forces 66/3 (1988): 618–644; Kyu Han Bae, “Labor strategy for industrialization in South Korea,” Pacific Affairs 62/3 (1989): 353–363; and Hee Park, “Organizational operation and labor relations in big corporations: A study of the effects of familism in Korea” (in Korean) (PhD Dissertation, Department of Sociology of Yeonsei University [Seoul, Korea], 1993).

  45. Form and Bae, “Convergence theory and the Korean connection,” 624.

  46. Gary Hamilton and Nicole Biggart, “Market, culture and authority: A comparative analysis of management and organization in the Far East,” American Journal of Sociology 94/Supplement (1988): S52–S94.

  47. Bae, “Labor strategy,” 359.

  48. Bae and Form, “Pay strategy,” 130.

  49. Byung-Joo Lee and Mary Lee, “Quantile regression analysis of wage determinants in the Korean labor market,” Korean Labor Institute Working Paper 6, retrieved December 6, 2003 (http://www.kli.re.kr/30_labp/22_work_p/upfile/2002–3.pdf).

  50. Chosun Ilbo (Chosun Daily), “Nojo ŭi ‘iljari chikigi’ wa ‘iljari nanugi” (“Job protecting” and “job sharing” of labor unions), February 7, 2005.

  51. Quoted in Park, “Organizational operation,” 99.

  52. Joon-shik Park, “A study on the industrial relation patterns in heavy industry companies: The cases of steel, automobile, and ship building corporations” (in Korean) (PhD Dissertation, Department of Sociology of Yeonsei University [Seoul, Korea], 1991); and Sang-ŏn Park, “A study on the historical change of labor control strategies among large Korean firms: 1970–1990” (in Korean) (PhD Dissertation, Department of Sociology of Yeonsei University, 1992). Also see Hagan Koo, “From farm to factory: Proletarianization in Korea,” American Sociological Review 55/5 (1990): 669–681.

  53. The Kuomintang government in Taiwan, too, carried out the New Life Movement that originated in the 1930s in mainland China. As a matter of fact, Japan’s New Life Movement borrowed the name from the Chinese version. The same name was also used for the small campaigns that aimed to rationalize people’s everyday lives in 1960s Korea.

  54. Shimin: Chūō Hōtokukai kikanshi (Tokyo: Ryūkie Shosha [Reprinted in 1984]) 1/1 (1906): 3.

  55. Kenneth Pyle, “The technology of Japanese nationalism: The local improvement movement, 1900–1918,” Journal of Asian Studies 33/1 (1973): 51–65, 65.

  56. Naemubu (Ministry of Home Affairs), Samaŭl undong shib nyŏn sa (The ten-year history of the new community movement) (Seoul: Naemubu, 1980), 678.

  57. Naemubu, Samaŭl undong shib nyŏn sa (charyop’yŏn) (Seoul: Naemubu, 1980), 17.

  58. Naemubu, Samaŭl undong shib nyŏn sa, 687.

  59. Chosun Ilbo, “Chŏngbu surip 50nyŏn taehanminguk 50nyŏn ŭi 20tae ŏpchŏk” (The twenty greatest achievements of the Republic of Korea for fifty years since the establishment of the government), July 16, 1998.

  60. Max Weber, The religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism (Glencoe: Free, 1951).

  61. Thomas Metzger, Escape from predicament: Neo-Confucianism and China’s evolving political culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977); Theodore de Bary, The trouble with Confucianism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991); and Hao Chang, “The intellectual heritage of the Confucian ideal of Ching-shih,” In Tu, (Ed.), Confucian traditions, 72–91.

  62. Bellah, Tokugawa religion.

  63. Eiko Ikegami, The taming of the Samurai: Honorific individualism and the making of modern Japan (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1995).

  64. Shimin 1/1 (1906), 1.

  65. Hisanobu Kanō, “Chōson no keiei,” (The management of villages) In Naimushō, (Ed.), Daiichikai chihō kairyō kōenshū vol. 2 (Tokyo: Hakubunkan, 1909), 1–19, 3.

  66. Rikizō Nakashima, “Sengo no kakugo,” (Preparation for the Post-War) Shimin 11/10 (1916): 34–40, 26.

  67. Ibid., 686.

  68. Ibid., 139–147.

  69. Chung-Hee Park, Our nation’s path: ideology of social reconstruction (Seoul: Dong-A, 1962), and Minjok ui Choryok (The potential power of our nation) (Seoul: K’wangmyong Ch’ulp’ansa, 1971).

  70. Park, Our nation’s path, 69–82.

  71. Ibid., 15.

  72. Ibid., 14.

  73. For example, Ibid., 74.

  74. Nam-Shik Choi, “Sobakhan kwahak chŏk sago pangshik ŭi kyŏlshil,” (A fruit of a simple, scientific way of thinking) Saemaŭl undong 3 (1975): 54–63, 62.

  75. Yong-T’ae Kim, “Maŭm ŭi kamum ŭl yigyŏ nagaja,” (Let us overcome the drought of our mind) Saemaŭl undong 13 (1978):64–66, 64.

  76. Ibid., 65.

  77. Yun-Han Ch’u, “49 nyŏn tong’an ŭi ‘na’ wa chigŭm ŭi ‘na’,” (Forty nine years of what I was and what I am) Saemaŭl undong 12 (1978): 153.

  78. Chae-Ryŏng Song, “Saemaŭl namu e mich’in chidoja,” (A leader obsessed with the Saemaŭl trees) Saemaŭl undong 4 (1975): 114–120.

  79. Alexander Gerschenkron, “Economic backwardness in historical perspective,” In Economic backwardness in historical perspective: A book of essays (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1966), 5–29, 24–25.

  80. John Locke, Two treaties of government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 287–288.

  81. Jacques Le Goff, Time, work, and culture in the Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 44.

  82. E. P. Thompson, “Time, work-discipline, and industrial capitalism,” Past and present 38/Dec. (1967): 56–97.

  83. Naimushō, “Kokumin no kinrōshugi,” (People’s laborism) In Naimushō, (Ed.), Chihō kairyō unōshi shiryō shūsei (Tokyo: Kashiwa Shobō, 1986), 312–316, 314.

  84. Tomoichi Inoue, “Jichi kunren no hōhō,” (The methods of training self-government) In Naimushō, (Ed.), Daiichikai chihō kairyō kōenshū vol. 1 (Tokyo: Hakubunkan, 1909), 33–166, 154.

  85. Yasue Fukuzawa, “Jissaika no tachiba yori mite,” (From the perspective of a practical man) Shimin 11/4 (1916):19–21, 19.

  86. Tokiyoshi Yokoi, “Nōson seikatsu to rōdō mondai,” (Life in farm villages and the problem of labor) Shimin 16/6 (1921): 11–14, 11–12.

  87. Eizō Yahagi, “Kokuminsei no kaizō,” (rebuilding of the national character) Shimin 11/7 (1916): 26–31, 31.

  88. Takehir Shigeta, “Kōkyūbi,” (Holidays) Shimin 16/7 (1921): 31–32, 31.

  89. Fukuzawa, “Jissaika no tachiba yori mite,” 20. See also Chōji Iguchi, “Tōzai kokon hōtoku senwa” (The thousand stories of Hōtoku in the East and West in ancient and present times) Shimin 15/2 (1920): 56–58, 56.

  90. Thompson, “Time.”

  91. Kenkan Imai, “Toki ni kansuru kokumin teki kunren to sono shisetsu,” (National training of time and training facilities) Shimin 15/5 (1920): 33–37, 33.

  92. Shimin 16/7 (1921): 70–1.

  93. Park, Kukka wa hyokmyong kwa na (The nation, revolution, and I) (Seoul: Chiguch’on, 1997), 275.

  94. Pyŏng-Yŏp Kwon, no title, Saemaŭl undong 4 (1975): 169–171, 171.

  95. In-Hwa Lee, “Saemaŭl moksa,” (A new community pastor) Saemaŭl undong 2 (1974): 15–21, 16.

  96. Naemubu, Samaŭl undong shib nyŏn sa, 465.

  97. Shimin 17/11 (1922): 35.

  98. Naoyoshi Amaoka, “Chokin to setsuyaku,” (Savings and thrift) Shimin 17/11 (1922): 22–23, 23.

  99. Amaoka, “Yūbin chokin to kan’i hoken,” (Postal savings and postal insurance) Shimin 14/9 (1919): 33–35, 34.

  100. Kinyū kenkyūkai, Kokumin chochiku no genzyō (Tokyo: Kinyū kenkyūkai, 1928), 11–12.

  101. Ibid., 5.

  102. Shimin 15/12 (1920): 65–66.

  103. See Sheldon Garon, Molding Japanese minds: the state in everyday life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).

  104. Kyŏng-Wŏn Kim, “Saemaŭl undong kwa uri ŭi chase,” (The new community movement and our attitude) Saemaŭl undong 5 (1976): 5–12, 6.

  105. Naemubu, Samaŭl undong shib nyŏn sa, 414.

  106. But see Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The social virtues and the creation of prosperity (New York: Free, 1995) for an opposing view.

  107. Gordon, The evolution of labor relations in Japan.

  108. Also see Sheldon Garon, The state and labor in modern Japan (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987).

  109. Max Weber, “The social psychology of the world religions,” In H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, (Eds.), From Max Weber: Essays in sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 267–301, 284–285; The religion of India: The sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism (Glencoe: Free, 1958), 337–338; and Economy and society. Vol. 1 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 481–484.

  110. Ping-ti Ho, “The significance of the Ch’ing Period in Chinese history,” Journal of Asian Studies 26/2 (1967): 189–195; and Jack Goldstone, Revolution and rebellion in the early modern world (Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford: University of California Press, 1991), chap. 5.

  111. Benjamin Schwartz, In search of wealth and power: Yen Fu and the West (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), 81.

  112. Cultural frames are “the taken-for-granted, background set of values, meanings, and symbols that are embodied in the dominant social, economic, religious, and political habits and institutions of a society,” while ideologies are “values, meanings, and symbols that are self-consciously offered in contest with other sets of values, meanings, and symbols.” Goldstone, Revolution and rebellion, 445.

  113. Ann Swidler, “Culture in action: Symbols and strategies,” American Sociological Review 51/2 (1986): 273–286, 278.

  114. Swidler, “Culture in action.” See also William Sewell, Jr., “The concept(s) of culture,” In Victoria Bonnell and Lynn Hunt, (Eds.), Beyond the cultural turn: New directions in the study of society and culture (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1999), 35–61.

  115. John Wong, “Promoting Confucianism for socioeconomic development: The Singapore experience,” In Tu, (Ed.), Confucian traditions, 277–293, 281.

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I thank Erik Wright, Pamela Oliver, and the Editors of Theory and Society for their valuable comments.

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    Keedon Kwon

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Kwon, K. Economic development in East Asia and a critique of the post-Confucian thesis. Theor Soc 36, 55–83 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-007-9021-5

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