Sixth Century BCE to Seventeenth Century

by Ying-shih Yü

  Confucian phi

  los

  o

  pher of the

  Ming Period. In a tomb inscription for a scholar- turned- merchant named Fang

  Lin

  , written in 1525, he said:

  In olden times, the four categories of people were engaged in diff er ent

  occupations but followed the same Dao; they were at one in giving full

  realization to their minds. Scholars maintained government ser vices,

  farmers provided for subsistence needs, artisans prepared tools and im-

  plements, and merchants facilitated commodity fl ow. Each person chose

  his vocation according to the inclination of his talent and the level of his

  capacity, seeking to give full realization to his mind.21

  For the fi rst time in the history of Confucianism, a phi los o pher of Wang Yang-

  ming’s eminence openly recognized the right of the merchants to their share of

  Dao. Elsewhere he also said, “Engagement in trade all day long will not stand

  in one’s way of becoming a sage or worthy,”22 which further confi rms that Wang

  Yangming’s conception of the Confucian Dao had indeed been recognized to ac-

  commodate the new social real ity centering around a massive scholar- turned-

  merchant movement.

  c on f uc i a n e t h ic s a nd c a p i ta l is m 215

  It is highly signifi cant to note that from the sixteenth century on, Chinese

  merchants began to take an active interest in Neo- Confucian philosophy. The

  ethical and ritual teachings of Zhu Xi were generally promoted in the communi-

  ties of Xin-an merchants in big cities all over China because Xin-an (in modern

  Anhui Province) happened to be this great Neo- Confucian master’s birthplace.

  Zhan Ruoshui

  (1446–1560), whose philosophical message consisted in

  “experiencing and realizing Heavenly Princi ples anywhere in this world,” at-

  tracted many rich salt merchants of Yangzhou of his day.23 They not only sought

  his enlightenment on the Neo- Confucian Way ( Dao) but also made generous con-

  tributions to the founding of his Ganquan Acad emy in Yangzhou. One widow of

  a wealthy merchant in Nanjing, for example, sent one of her sons to study Neo-

  Confucianism with Zhan Ruoshui and donated several hundred silver taels to

  Zhan’s private acad emy.24 In the early years of the seventeenth century, a Zheji-

  ang merchant by the name of Zhuo You was a true believer in Wang Yangming’s

  theory of “the unity of knowledge and action.” His biographer even suggested

  that his great success in business owed very much to his Confucian education:

  cardinal Confucian virtues such as wisdom ( zhi

  ), humanity ( ren

  ), courage

  ( yong ), and strength ( qiang ) were also essential to the establishment, man-

  agement, and expansion of large- scale commercial enterprises.

  Limited by time here, let me briefl y discuss two aspects of the complicated

  relationships between Confucian ethics and Ming- Qing market economy: the

  work ethic in the Chinese market and what Weber referred to as “Confucian

  rationalism.” It is hoped that this discussion may shed some light on the pos-

  sibility of continuing relevance of Confucian ethics to the development of mod-

  ern capitalism.

  As mentioned earlier, central to Confucian asceticism are such precepts as

  industry, frugality, and preciousness of time, which, it is in ter est ing to note,

  also happen to be among the core virtues of the Protestant ethic. Using Benja-

  min Franklin to illustrate his case, Weber said: “Now, all Franklin’s moral atti-

  tudes are colored with utilitarianism. Honesty is useful, because it assures

  credit; so are punctility, industry and frugality, and that is the reason they are

  virtues.”25 According to Weber, however, while Protestant utilitarianism was to

  serve a higher otherworldly purpose, the Confucian sense of economic utility

  was utterly this- worldly without a corresponding dimension of transcendence.

  Again, I believe, Weber’s distinction between Confucian asceticism and Protes-

  tant asceticism is overdrawn. Weber defi ned the Protestant ethic in terms of a

  commitment to proving one’s moral worth in and through the practice of one’s

  worldly calling, which, in turn, arose from one’s salvation anxiety induced by

  the dogma of predestination. It was this par tic u lar version of worldly asceti-

  cism that turned, under certain circumstances, into “the spirit of capitalism.”26

  Let us leave aside the diffi

  culties involved in this complicated causal chain (as

  analyzed by Gianfranco Poggi)27 and assume that Weber’s inference is valid.

  Then there can be no question that this peculiar sort of “salvation anxiety” was

  216 c on f uc i a n e t h ic s a nd c a p i ta l is m

  indeed absent from Confucianism. But it is obviously untrue to say that Confu-

  cian ethics completely lacks an otherworldly dimension. Let me illustrate my

  point by giving some concrete examples. In sixteenth- century biographical lit-

  er a ture, ethical concepts such as “sincerity” ( cheng ), “trustworthiness” ( xin ),

  and “nondeception” ( buqi

  ) are always emphasized as the quin tes sen tial

  qualities of the merchant. These qualities may well be regarded as the Chinese

  counterpart of the Western notion of “honesty.” Like “honesty,” “sincerity,”

  “trustworthiness,” and “nondeception” are also useful because they can guar-

  antee the reputation of credibility of a merchant’s enterprise. Both the Xin-an

  merchants and Shanxi merchants— the two most famous merchant groups in

  Ming- Qing China— have been particularly known in history for their practice

  of these ethical qualities. Yet when the merchants spoke of such virtues, they

  never regarded them as purely human. Instead, they always associated them

  with the “Way of Heaven” or “Heavenly Princi ples.” For example, a Xin-an mer-

  chant named Huang Jifang (1499–1559) practiced “sincerity” in business trans-

  actions throughout his entire life. He was fi rst attracted to this idea through

  reading a story about Sima Guang in a Neo- Confucian text entitled Xiaoxue

  (Primer of Confucian Learning) edited by Zhu Xi and his disciples. The

  story runs as follows: A ju nior scholar who had worked with Sima Guang for

  fi ve years later confi ded in his friends that he only learned the single word “sin-

  cerity” from this famous statesman- historian. Sima Guang explained to him,

  “Sincerity is the Way of Heaven, while aspiring to embody sincerity is the way

  of man.” One also earnestly exhorted his descendants saying, “All my life, I

  have only held to Heavenly Princi ples; the constant way of human relations and

  the boundless good are all derived from them.”28 Thus, we see that Confucian

  ethics does have its religious or metaphysical foundation.

  Now I wish to further suggest that although the Calvinist “salvation anxiety”

  was wholly alien to the Confucian tradition, we can nevertheless fi nd a func-

  tional equivalent to it under lying the work ethic of Chinese merchants from the

  sixteenth century on. For reasons to be explained later, I shall call it “immortal-

  ity anxiety.” By the sixteenth century, the merchants had grown fully confi
dent

  of the social worth of their calling and they often compared their big business

  enterprises to the establishment of dynastic empires. Biographers often de-

  scribed the business activities of successful merchants in a language heretofore

  reserved exclusively for dynastic found ers. “Imperial power base” or “imperial

  capital” was frequently used to refer to the headquarters of business operations

  of a merchant. In a more extreme case, even the expression “starting an im-

  perial enterprise and leaving a dynastic tradition to be carried on” ( chuangye

  chuitong

  ) was usurped to praise the founder of a “business empire.”29

  One Xin-an merchant named Xu Zhi

  (1494–1554) spoke of his own social

  ambition in these words: “Although I am but a merchant, do I not cherish the

  aspirations of Duanmu, who wherever he went, stood up to the prince as an

  equal?”30 Duanmu Ci (Zigong

  ), it may be noted, was a leading disciple of

  c on f uc i a n e t h ic s a nd c a p i ta l is m 217

  Confucius who was famous for being at the same time a wise scholar and a

  wealthy merchant. When he visited the royal court of a state, he was always

  honored by the prince as his equal.

  This “immortality anxiety” was also shown in the merchants’ great enthusi-

  asm for their biographies being written by famous scholars and writers. The

  above- quoted biography of a merchant named Fang Lin by Wang Yangming

  was one among thousands of cases in Ming- Qing China. Merchants in the late

  imperial age were generally very anxious to have their lifetime accomplish-

  ments recorded to be passed on to posterity. This anxiety was by no means

  confi ned to the rich and power ful merchants, however. It was equally shared by

  the commonest of the market people. Writing in 1550, the famous scholar Tang

  Shunzhi

  (1506–1560) said:

  During my leisure, I often refl ect on one or two things in our world to

  which we have long been accustomed but which are nonetheless absolutely

  ridicu lous. One is that a man of lowly social standing such as a butcher or

  restaurateur, as long as he is able to earn a living, would be sure to have an

  epitaph in his honor after death. . . . This is something that was unheard

  of not only in high antiquity but even before Han or Tang.31

  Yet it is a great irony that Tang himself also did the very thing he ridiculed by

  composing several biographies for merchants.

  Zhang Han

  (1511–1593), a scholar- offi

  cial with fi rsthand familiarity with

  the merchant network in sixteenth- century China, also complained about too

  many “epitaphs” being produced in his own day. “In ancient times,” he said,

  “only those who had great accomplishments in moral virtue and deeds deserved

  such epitaphs.”32 Zhang’s statement is a clear reference to the Confucian idea

  of immortality, which calls for a word of explanation.

  In 548 b.c.e., when Confucius was only a child of three, a wise man of the

  state of Lu made the remarkable statement that there are three kinds of immor-

  tality. The best course is to establish virtue or character, the next best is to es-

  tablish achievement, and still the next best is to establish words. When these do

  not perish with the passing of time, it may be called immortality. This Chinese

  belief in immortality has satisfi ed many educated Chinese over the last twenty-

  fi ve centuries. As Hu Shih (1891–1962) rightly pointed out: “It has taken the place

  of human survival after death. It has given the Chinese gentleman a sense of as-

  surance that although death doth end his toil, the eff ect of his individual worth,

  his work, and his thoughts and words will long remain after he is gone.”33 This

  Confucian notion of immortality was always the source of anxiety for the Chi-

  nese po liti cal and intellectual elite, but in the sixteenth century, many a Chinese

  merchant also began to succumb to its pressure. As a result, the merchants not

  only had their share of Confucian Dao but also their share of the “immortality

  anxiety,” which was part and parcel of the Dao.

  218 c on f uc i a n e t h ic s a nd c a p i ta l is m

  Fi nally, I shall conclude by briefl y commenting on the question of Confucian

  rationalism. Weber insisted that Confucianism developed the most rational

  form of adjustment, but this rationalism was not linked to a “transcendental

  goal.” However, I believe that the above discussion of the “immortality anxiety”

  raises a serious question about this view. Particularly problematic is the follow-

  ing statement in The Religion of China:

  A well- adjusted man, rationalizing his conduct only to the degree requi-

  site for adjustment, does not constitute a systematic unity but rather a

  complex of useful and par tic u lar traits. Such a way of life could not allow

  man an inward aspiration toward a “unifi ed personality,” a striving which

  we associate with the idea of personality. Life remained a series of occur-

  rences. It did not become a whole placed methodically under a transcen-

  dental goal.34

  This is tantamount to saying that the Chinese are not “capable of a complete

  and inwardly motivated personal devotion to a cause that transcends individu-

  ality.”35 I don’t think any serious scholar today can take such an extreme

  position.

  Closely related to rationalism is the prob lem of rationalization. In the Protes-

  tant Ethic, Weber used two examples to illustrate what he called “the pro cess of

  rationalization” in the West. The fi rst was “the princi ple of low prices and large

  turnover” and the second “rational bookkeeping.”36 It is in ter est ing to note that

  it happened that both features were also pres ent in the Chinese market economy

  between 1500 and 1800. The famous writer Kang Hai

  (1475–1541) recorded

  the following criticism his merchant- uncle once made of another merchant who

  waited for prices to go up before selling his commodities: “This merchant does

  not understand the way of business. To wait for a fi xed price before selling is

  the way of the mediocre trader who seeks to avoid loss, but who can pass a

  whole year without making a single transaction. Those who do as I do can ef-

  fect more than ten transactions a year, and so can make more than ten times

  the profi t the mediocre merchant can manage.”37 There cannot be a slightest

  doubt that the way of business enunciated here is exactly “the princi ple of low

  prices and large turnover.” He Xinyin

  (1517–1579), a radical phi los o pher

  of the Wang Yangming school, is also reported to have given wise counsel to a

  young merchant in two diff er ent formulas: “buy a bit: sell a bit” and “buy

  wholesale: sell retail.”38 As a result, the latter made a fast fortune in the market.

  Again both formulas, but especially the fi rst one, are identical with Weber’s

  princi ple. In the eigh teenth century, a book dealer in Beijing once revealed the

  secret of his success to a friend as follows: “Since I like profi t, I shall also let the

  purchasers of my books get their share of profi t. After all, who does not desire

  p
rofi t as much as I do? If I try to monopolize the profi t so that the goods remain

  stagnant rather than circulating, this means losing the profi t altogether.”39

  c on f uc i a n e t h ic s a nd c a p i ta l is m 219

  Thus, we see that from the sixteenth century to the eigh teenth, the same princi-

  ple was consistently followed in the Chinese market.

  The application of arithmetic to commerce also began in the sixteenth century

  at the latest. As the famous spokesman for the merchants, Wang Daokun, pointed

  out, in the Huizhou region, the hometown of Xin-an merchants, arithmetic was

  studied with a much greater enthusiasm than Confucian classics. In fact, com-

  mercial arithmetic was so popu lar in this region that house wives often learned

  it to help with their husbands’ business bookkeeping. Recent studies indicate

  that as early as the Ming Period, the Chinese already developed “The Three-

  Legged Account Book,” which is a single- entry system with some features of

  double- entry. This was then followed by an improved system known as the

  “Four- Legged Account Book” in the Qing Period, which a recent writer calls

  “an indigenous Chinese double- entry methodology, without the infl uence from

  Western double- entry bookkeeping techniques.” Even if we grant that Western

  double- entry did infl uence Chinese bookkeeping, the Chinese case of rational-

  ization prob ably would not be weakened to any signifi cant degree. As well ar-

  gued by Jack Goody, “When the Chinese adopted ‘rational’ or ‘scientifi c’ book-

  keeping, they surely must have already had the ‘rationality’ or ‘science’ to do

  so.” At any rate, Wang Daokun once described a typically “fi ne merchant” as

  someone whose calculations were so precise that he neither made a slightest

  error nor missed a single business opportunity.40 This is indeed market ratio-

  nality idealized to its highest pos si ble degree.

  Taking the above two central features together, it may not be too far- fetched

  to suggest that the Chinese market did undergo a “pro cess of rationalization”

  between 1500 and 1800 even though it did not lead to the rise of capitalism.

  not e s

  1.

  The material in this chapter arose from a 1998 Symposium on “Confucian Ethics and

  Capitalism.” Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London: Unwin