Confucianism draws its name from Confucius, a scholar that lived in eastern China between the 2-4th Centuries BCE.
His ideas were elaborated on by his disciples, most notable of which is Mencius, in the centuries following his passing, and were codified and re-oriented from the 8th century onwards, culminating in the work of Zhu Xi in the 11th century (Gardner 1989), at which time they acquired some of the flavor with-which they are mostly associated today.
The term itself eschews formal definition, but for the purpose of our inquiry we can summarize it as a "cross between religion, a way of life, system of belief about society, and state ideology" (Rozman 2002: 13) which emphasizes filial piety and the importance of hierarchy and respect for authority in light of maintaining social harmony.
In Zhu Xi's Neo-Confucian tradition, "the natural world and man's social world [are] seen as a unity and believed to be governed by the same moral principle..." and thus the natural order is used to "justify existing social norms and institutions" (Hane 1969: 357).
More broadly, the term Confucianism is frequently used to describe Chinese culture at large, often incorporating elements which are not part of the Confucian tradition per se.
Importantly, Confucianism associates nobility with government service and orthodox scholarship.
As such, it does not tend to encourage reformers and "prophets" (Taylor & Arbuckle 1995: 352) and Max Weber famously, and perhaps erroneously, described it as the least conducive of all "World Religions" to capitalist development (Hamilton 1985:70; Dubs 1953).
The idea of a uniquely Asian Development Model gained prominence in the early 1990s, following the rapid growth in the "Tiger" economies of South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong, as well as the "Tiger Cub" economies of Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines2. Interest in the theory subsided following the Asian crisis of 1997-8 but regained vigor in the mid and late 2000s in line with China's rise to international prominence.
Culture, in the context of Asian economic development, may affect development on the micro and macro levels.
On a microeconomic level, it has been suggested to serve as a foundation for an Asian model of management and has been used, for example, to explain the way in which Japan benefitted from a "more through exploitation of human resources" than would have been allowed by a purely Western development model (Sugihara 2003:116).
On a macro level, the "Asian Way" has been said to sustain a "benevolent, paternalistic form of governance" (Park & Shin 2006: 342).
The influence ascribed to culture, however, seems to change in line with economic trends - as Stiglitz points out, some of the unique "cultural aspects, such as Confucian heritage" that were used to explain Asian growth in the early 1990s were earlier "cited as an explanation for why these countries had not grown" (1996: 152).
Seeing Confucianism as an important factor in the economic development of Asia has also been promoted by and within countries in the region, most recently with China's rekindling of Confucianism as a unifying cultural heritage and putative aspiration towards a "Harmonious Society" (Zheng & Tok 2007).
Some, such as Singapore's autarch Lee Kuan Yew, have argued that the role of Confucianism in Asian development makes local societies incompatible with liberal democracy (in Zakaria 1994).
Such usage of Confucianism to justify, ex post facto, an existing political or economic order is not new; the rulers and business leaders of Japan, the region's largest economy, have long been adept at "manipulating the past for present purposes" (Smith 1992: 28).
As Wildman Nakai points out, the rising popularity of some aspects of Confucianism in Tokugawa Japan (17-19c) can be attributed to what "it had to offer the ruling stratum in the way of justification of a hierarchical social structure" given its "emphasis on the virtues of loyalty and obedience on the part of the ruled" (1980: 157).
When trying to gauge the importance of Confucianism to understanding the development of Japan, we are faced with a perplexing paradox: The country is the region's first and largest country to attain the status of a developed economy but it is also considered far less 'Confucian' than Korea, China, or Vietnam (Chung 1989:160-161).
The fact that Shinto, an assortment of Japanese and east asian traditions, has been Japan's official religion during the early period of industrialization, and that the country's prominent liberal thinkers at the time were opposed to the basic ideas of Confucian ideology (Hane 1969) does not the make the picture any clearer.
Hill (1995) lists seven attributes of the Japanese value system that evolved during the Tokugawa period: (1) group identification, often treated as more important than adherence to more "universal" causes; (2) collective responsibility, which nonetheless does not legitimate or condone transgression against society at large; (3) loyalty and filial piety, including ancestor worship and ascribing sanctity to the ruler; (4) reciprocal obligations, including the expectation of top-down "grace" in return for loyalty and effort; (5) harmony, the avoidance of conflict and attempt to reach consensus but also obedience once a decision is made; and (7) the importance of individual performance, mostly judged in light of collective goals (pp. 122).
These values and are echoed in modern descriptions of Japanese society and industry, but here too, it is difficult to ascribe them to a specific religion or ideology.
They seem to result from a fusion of Confucian, Buddhist, and Shinto religious and ethical beliefs combined with various agrarian traditions (Ibid).