China and the West

Chen, Qineng. Recent studies of Max Weber in the People's republic of China. [Referat Symposium in Bad Homburg].
Chen schreibt über Webers 'Konfuzianismus und Taoismus' : As a comparative study of religion, the books was aimed at analysing why that capitalism 'did not take place' in China. However, Weber examined mostly orthodox confucian political thoughts, which were not comprehensive confucianism. Recent cultural interpretations of the economic miracles in East Asia show that, to analyse the confucian capitalism in East Asia, one must start with pritivie confucian thoughts (before the Qin dynasty) in order to expose the intrinsic links between confucian ethic and Oriental capitalism. Surely this opinion is not final. Many problems need more discussion. For example, did Weber really treat confucian ethic as the fundamental reason that inhibited capitalism to take place in China ? Some scholars think that, the conclusion of the 'Confucianims and taoism' is that on the special sociological foundation in China, the confucian ethic was not agreeable with capitalist spirit. This is one of the reasons that modern capitalism in the western style did not develop in China. Only one of the reasons. The most important is, that Weber did not intend to explain why that capitalism did not develop in China, but to verify his proposition on the protestant ethic from the angel of China.