In Chinese capitalism in search of an ethics, the ancient figure of the Confucian merchant is reinvented by entrepreneurs.
China has replaced Japan as an economic locomotive in East Asia, itself become the avant-garde of global economic growth. This upheaval induces a phenomenon of civilization that the simple statistics of its growth could not translate. But if many works deal with the new geopolitical status of China, little is addressed to cultural, or even civilizational aspects, of its transition to capitalism and its new economic status. This is what this work intends to do through the question of the place of Confucianism in contemporary Chinese companies.
Religion in the company
Treating the place of religion in a capitalist company, however, is not self -evident. Maurice Godelier writes in Ideal and material About the employment relationship in a capitalist system:
Apart from this dependence and this material and impersonal submission within the production process, the worker owes nothing to the capitalist: he has no direct, religious, political, family obligation. Apart from production, capitalists and workers are in principle equal, and this equality of principle is recognized by law.
In a modern capitalist society, the economic function would therefore take place in an institution (the company) separated from the political function, the family function and the religious function. But as Michel Lallement also expresses, the founding hypothesis of economic sociology “ is based on the idea that action and economic competition form a sub-assembly embedded in a societal context made of values, powers and social relations ». Thus falling under this economic sociology, but also of religious sociology, the author shows the massive presence of discourse and religious and philanthropic practices on the part of employers who claim to be Confucianism in contemporary Chinese companies of small and medium sizes.
From Japan to China
This question of the cultural dimension of business life and labor relations was dealt with for Japan, especially when it experienced the summit of its economic glory in the 1980s and 1990s, and appeared as a model for other Asian countries, in particular the emergence of “ dragons “(Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea) who helped feed the idea of a” Asian capitalism model ». And clean confugee dynamics have been highlighted for these countries. Gilles Guiheux has thus shown in his book on the great Taiwanese entrepreneurs that an ethics of labor, the sense of savings and frugality, the condemnation of leisure and idleness, respect for the family, the importance of education associated with the social rise, the proclamation of the collective responsibilities of entrepreneurs who must contribute to increase the well-being of the whole of the national community in Taiwan. Japanese intellectuals and Japanologists have reversed Max Weber’s thesis in his Sociology of religions And have argued that the religions and cultures of Asia, and Confucianism in particular, far from having been an obstacle to modernization, favored the latter. The most emblematic example is the work of economist Michio Morishima, Capitalism and Confucianism. More recently, a work treated Japanese entrepreneur and philanthropist Shibusawa Eiichi (1840-1931), undoubtedly the first in East Asia to have raised the question of ethics in business, notably via its most famous work Confucius’ interviews and the Boulier (Rongo to Soroban). Today, what the book of Lan Jiang Fu shows is that China, which did not seem yet 30 years ago to have taken part in this process of reinvention of a Confucian economic ethics, seems to have taken over by what the author calls the “ Rushang fever ».
The entrepreneur “ rushang »»
The term “ rushang (儒商), who in contemporary China refers to an entrepreneur who anchors his entrepreneurial mission in Confucian values, finds his roots in the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), where he designated a merchant close to literate environments and permeated by Confucian principles. The author explores the different dimensions of this phenomenon in three main parts. First, how this concept has evolved and was used from the Ming and what type of people it has appointed. Second, what it designates in current Chinese companies, whether it is the education practices provided or entrepreneurial ethics, whether in the field of commercial relations, commercial practices, public health or ecology. Third, the author shows that this phenomenon does not confine itself to the borders of the company, but has a political dimension which comes into relation to nationalism, playing a role in the animation of the links between political, economic and intellectual elites. One of the great forces of the work is that it explores the different dimensions of the phenomenon based on a considerable work of field survey which makes it possible to present a large number of concrete cases and thus to show its extreme diversity.
Confucian ethics and economic rationality
The richness of the surveys carried out also makes it possible to avoid the pitfall of a recovery and transformation of this managerial discourse into culturalist interpretation of the Chinese economy and enterprise. It shows in particular, through these concrete cases, that economic rationality is rarely absent from the practices of these entrepreneurs “ rushang ». If an entrepreneur quoted in the book insists on the predominant role of virtue in the personality of the manager, it is because he “ consider that command of a company is similar to the governance of a country, and that the two must rely on the virtue of the manager, because a virtuous man attracts more easily “ talented men »(Rencai 人才), formula resulting from Confucius interviews“ Which governs by virtue is comparable to the polar star, unchanging on its axis, but center of attraction of any planet (P. 157). And if it is a question for the entrepreneur to acquire a set of qualities defined by Confucianism as essential to the training of the “ good man “(Junzi 君子): The meaning of the human (Ren 仁), the sense of the just (yi 义), decorum (li 礼), moral discernment (zhi 智), sincerity (xin 信), integrity (lian 廉), modesty (chi 耻), diligence (qin 勤), courage (yong 勇) and rigor (yan 严) that they are the basis of the authority of the boss on his workers. Employees are not as present in the book as entrepreneurs, main subjects of the study, but they are not absent. The passages relaying their speech or relating their reaction to practices that may appear intrusive show passivity or ambivalence which betrays a particularly unbalanced balance of power. None of the companies studied has a union.
Very original work in sociology of religions, this book is also a major contribution to the understanding of the contemporary Chinese economy. If it does not always arise explicitly as a contribution to these fields of study and these issues, this book is also an important contribution to the study of the diversity of capitalisms, and to the circulation of ideas in East Asia. From an easy reading, it is aimed at both researchers and a wider audience interested in the societal and ethical issues encountered by Chinese companies.