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Essay on Influence Of Confucian Ideology On The Common Business Practices
Introduction
Three years is a long time in modern China. The economy has continued its upward rise. Personal prosperity is now much more evident, especially in the big cities and the eastern coastal zone. Beijing, where once it was a struggle to get a decent meal in the evening, now boasts streets full of smart restaurants and its youth wear leather jackets and have trendy haircuts.
The mayor of Shanghai, visiting Beijing in the autumn of 2002 for the Sixteenth Congress of the Communist Party, was reportedly shocked by the high standard of living he found there, and asked his Beijing counterpart for advice on how Shanghai could catch up (but as this was reported in the local Beijing media, perhaps the story should be taken with a very large pinch of salt - the rivalry between Beijing and Shanghai in such matters is legendary).
And in Shanghai itself, though construction on the high-rises stuttered to a halt during the Asia crisis, down at street level in the shopping malls along the Nanjing Road the spending boom went on and on, like the crisis wasn’t even happening (Becker, 1996).
In 2001, after years of wrangling, China joined the World Trade Organization. The event was largely overshadowed by events post 9/11, with world attention focused on Afghanistan and the Middle East; but its significance as a symbol of China’s reintegration into the world-system can hardly be doubted. In 2002, according to the Financial Times,
China took in more than $52 billion in foreign investment, overtaking the USA as the country with the largest foreign capital inflows in the world. China’s trade surplus that year reached $100 billion, while the US trade deficit with China reached $83 billion. The pundits who describe China as a coming international economic power should perhaps think again....
