A Template for the Asian Values Debate: Reactions to Weber on Confucianism

If orthodoxy is a European phenomenon and orthopraxy an East Asian one, then value debates are originally a western preoccupation, turned into a principle of sociological method by Max Weber. The paper argues that the debate concerning the significance of Asian values is refracted through Weber’s account of Confucianism in his work The Religion of China (RoC). In RoC Weber presents Confucianism as a ‘mentality’ that is inherently traditional which bears an antithetical relation to the possibility of capitalist development. This understanding of ‘Asian values’ parallels the outlook of early modernizers in China in particular and East Asia in general, who regarded traditional and especially Confucian values as barriers to the advancement of Asian societies, especially in their struggle against the colonial and imperial encroachments of Western powers. Since the economic growth of Japan and the four ‘Little Dragons’ – Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore – and more recently mainland China, the possibility of a positive role for Confucian culture and Asian values has arisen, and ‘Asian values’ are advocated by political elites in support and legitimation of state economic development strategies. Coincidentally, Weber’s account of the relationship between Confucianism and capitalism is widely criticized from this time in scholarly circles in both the US and East Asia. The paper shall consider both Weber’s argument and that of his detractors and also the cases of Singapore, South Korea and China in their alternating treatment of Asian values from the onset of capitalist development to the present time.