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Confucian Philosophy
Riches and power are but gifts of blind fate, whereas
goodness is the result of one’s own merits. —HELOISE
DESPITE BEING KNOWN as the melting pot of the world, the modern U.S. culture has largely been shaped by Judeo-Christian religions and Western ideas passed down through the Enlightenment and dominated by the influences of Modernity. The democratic political system, the official holidays like Christmas, and the assumed importance of the notions of Freedom and Reason largely define modern Western civilization. Comparatively speaking, modern Americans know relatively little about Eastern religions and philosophies. While many factors define a nation’s identity, few would dispute that underlying cultural and religious beliefs shape and influence a nation’s character. One of the most visual examples of how cultural differences manifest themselves is the disparity between the way Americans and the Japanese conducted themselves in the aftermath of two devastating storms. The widespread looting after Hurricane Katrina stands in stark contrast to the stoic temperaments of the Japanese who stood in line for emergency help soon after the 2011 tsunami that destroyed Fukushima.
Perhaps surprisingly, American culture and Chinese culture do share a common heritage. When Ben Franklin re-edited his book, Poor Richard’s Almanac, he advocated Confucian values as the universal principle. Today, the United States and China still share some of the same characteristics, including the national knack for entrepreneurialism and a future-oriented focus. America’s immigrant population that continually keeps America in the forefront of innovation and technology has a counterpart in China that is just as curious and eager to make breakthroughs. These similarities have only been reinforced by the close economic ties between the two countries and their mutual recognition that they cannot become closed societies like Japan even if some domestic factions advocate protectionism.
There are, however, stark contrasts as well. Despite the thousands of protests in small towns across China, Chinese citizens have largely been very pacific and nonviolent. Police in the big cities, for example, do not carry guns. Violent crime is much lower per capita in China than in the United States despite China being a much poorer nation on a per capita basis as well as its overall GDP. According to data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reported in 2009, homicide rates for the United States registered 5 per 100,000 people. From 2003 to 2008 China’s homicide rate was 1.2 per 100,000, according to statistics from the UNODC. Compared to other major developing countries, China stands out further. Russia’s homicide rate is 14.9 per 100,000 and Brazil’s is 22 per 100,000.
China also churns out the most engineers in the world and has been leading the way among developing countries in catching up with the West from a post-colonial past. The question many ask is why Asians, and particularly the Chinese, are so hard working and productive. While it is extremely difficult or impossible to calibrate how much culture (as opposed to government policies) has played a role in China’s development, culture has undeniably been an influence in motivating over a billion people toward shared national goals. Obviously policies and other factors are also important, but culture does shape our unconscious behavior. David Brooks argues in his book The Social Animal that pervasive social influences that affect the unconscious processes in the mind will always trump conscious reasoning or rationality. So any meaningful change in society will require a complete cultural shift. After thousands of years of Confucian education and upbringing, it is safe to assume that China’s cultural fabric is heavily steeped in Confucian philosophy. Although Confucianism has come under critical attack multiple times throughout China’s history—including during Mao’s rise and rule because Confucius was blamed for anti-egalitarian ideas—Confucianism had already become embedded in the DNA of most Chinese and perhaps most Asians for that matter. As Amy Chua’s book, The Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mom, appears to confirm, these values and virtues have been transferred from generation to generation over centuries. No parental handbook, no state laws, and no media propaganda were required to indoctrinate over a billion people in these values. Just like an unspoken agreement, the Chinese citizens intuitively understand this social contract they have with their ancestors and with each other.
What is Confucian philosophy? Confucianism summarizes the philosophical teachings of a Chinese philosopher, Confucius, who lived in the 5th century BC. It refers to a set of beliefs that encompass ethical, social, political, and philosophical realms, and it has heavily influenced East Asian cultures and history for thousands of years. A central theme that runs through the Confucian message is that individuals should place as their highest priority the cultivation of a strong moral compass and a lifetime of self-improvement for the benefit of society. At its heart, Confucianism emphasizes that humaneness must be developed through the acts of everyday life and can be summarized by the Golden Rule of “Do unto others what you would have them do unto you.” Similar to ancient Greek philosophies, Confucianism urges everyone to strive to become a perfect person, defined as someone who is saintly, scholarly, and benevolent. This in turn has translated into the modern virtues of integrity, diligence, frugality, modesty, comity, honesty, generosity, trustworthiness, respectfulness, and studiousness.
We Are the World
One of the strongest tenets of Confucian philosophy is the need to create harmony in society because only when harmony exists can individuals shine. Without this collective determination to serve the greater good of the community, societies will fall apart. Community Confucianism in action can be seen through informal group cooperation such as credit communes in China that are similar to credit unions in the United States. In these credit communes, members in the community regularly contribute a set amount to a community fund. Then whoever needs the pot of cash for a specific purpose, like sending a son to college, can take the entire sum of cash without returning it if they are the winning bidder for the cash in that period. The only requirement is that the receiver of the cash continues to contribute to the community fund uninterrupted so that another person can benefit next time. There is no interest payment involved, no other strings attached. It is operated completely by the community members based solely on trust. This version of Chinese financing is most similar to venture capital by friends and family. In its purest sense, its Confucian roots are similar to the Christian philosophy of love thy neighbor as thyself. With this mindset of everyone pitching in to help for the long haul, it has spawned one of the largest entrepreneurial streaks in history.
The United States with its well-developed financial system will unlikely replicate China’s commune credit. However, the lesson here the United States can learn is that individual success can never be possible without the supporting infrastructure of the society. The Chinese recognize unquestioningly that one’s success is never individual but is the direct result of societal support and of existing institutions that enable individuals the opportunity to flourish.
The equivalent mindset in America would compel us to give generously back to the community in the form of philanthropy, volunteering, and other unselfish activities, recognizing that the wealth which comes from individual success is only possible through the help from others who may not have reaped direct benefits or the direct attribution, since many who play small roles often go unrecognized. But such a mindset may be in short supply. The percentage of individuals who donate charitably is difficult to measure, but total charitable donations recorded a decline across different types of recipients since the start of the 2008 recession, according to Giving USA Foundation.1 Rather than coming together in hardship, individuals and communities have pulled back from each other. An even more disappointing indicator of altruism in the United States is the way donations often come with strings attached so that the donation merely serves as another form of public relations. Steve Schwarzman, a multibillionaire cofounder of the Blackstone Group, donated millions to the New York Public Library on the condition that his name would appear on the building. Thus the renamed Stephen A. Schwarzman building is a perfect example of bastardized philanthropy.
Even though China’s Confucian culture comes from the ground up, it also spreads from the top down. Confucius-style harmony has been articulated in the CCP’s now official Twelfth Five-Year Plan, in which the government has made it a priority to rebalance the Chinese economy away from an export-driven model so that wealth inequality will become less pronounced. Specific measures such as creating more service industry jobs, raising labor wages, building larger social safety nets, and investing in newer industries like biotechnology signify the government’s carefully considered commitment to address social issues with a Confucian compass.
Wealth inequality has become as much a problem in the United States in recent years as it has been for China, but our government has not yet devised a long-term plan to address this. Instead, when a Republican majority was elected into Congress during the 2010 mid-term elections, none of the political rhetoric offered concrete plans for addressing wealth inequality, not even the most subversive kinds associated with corruption. Wealth that results in productive activity from exceptional talent and hard work is generally more palatable to society than wealth that arises from unfair advantages. The usual platitudes about reinstating Bush-era tax cuts for the rich and cutting spending for a variety of domestic programs characterized the debates between the two parties. Though addressing inequality in the United States would require different measures than the Chinese, since the inequality stems from different sources, there doesn’t appear to be an overriding national moral imperative to make it a priority. Rather, the political tenor emanating from Washington reflects a general disregard for others in society and a single-minded desire to maximize one’s own fortunes regardless of the long-term consequences. In his New York Times op-ed piece, “The Modesty Manifesto,” on March 10, 2011, David Brooks eloquently touches upon this national problem by writing, “I wonder if Americans are unwilling to support the sacrifices that will be required to avert fiscal catastrophe in part because they are less conscious of themselves as components of a national project.”
Education, Education, Education
One of the most prominent manifestations of Confucianism in Chinese culture is an obsession with education. Both primary and secondary school education demonstrate the power of Confucianism actively at work. In 2010, Chinese students outperformed the entire world while U.S. students continued to drop in K–12 educational rankings. As was widely reported, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test scores administered by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) were highest among students in Shanghai while the United States turned in results for math that were below 30 other countries.
The Chinese have long attached great importance to study and have regarded that the true foundation for conducting oneself in society is through genuine knowledge or competence. As to be expected, numerous Confucius proverbs that emphasize learning have been passed down throughout China’s long history, such as “To be fond of learning is to be near to wisdom,” “Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance,” and “Learning without thought is useless, but thought without learning is perilous.” Going back over 3000 years to the Zhou Dynasty, the Chinese government had already pioneered the idea that the state should offer education by having officials act as part-time teachers. But it was Confucius who put forth the idea that any person regardless of social status and wealth had the right to receive an education, an idea that he brought to life by opening a school in his hometown. Today, the Chinese government funds all primary and secondary school education, and student enrollment has reached 85 percent even in the poorest areas.2
As a result of the high regard placed on education, educators in China are quite uniformly held in high esteem. The Chinese often call teachers Honorable Masters and accord them respect and priority in life. China even designated September 10 as Teachers Day in order to honor the profession. Additionally, the government raised teachers’ pay and made Teachers’ Colleges free of tuition in an effort to attract more people to the teaching profession. Finally, continuing education for teachers has been established throughout the country in order to upgrade the quality of teaching continually to meet the needs of the rapidly changing economy.
But the Chinese officials know that unless they have world-class professors and teachers, the population will not receive a first-class education. So in an effort to ensure the best education for future generations, the CCP has created government programs that cover the major costs for Chinese students to study abroad and receive PhDs from other countries. The Institute of International Education reported in a study that nearly 128,000 Chinese students enrolled in United States universities during the 2009–2010 academic year.3 Chinese leaders believe that these students will return home one day to teach another generation. They hope that their investment will pay off.
Although the Chinese leadership encourages studies abroad, the formal education system within China is nonetheless very demanding. Most of the students engage in studies from morning until night seven days a week. Many students attend high school even throughout the summer, starting classes at 7 AM and ending the day around 11 PM. Almost all of the students aspire to go to college because of the high prestige it bestows on the family, and given the shortage of slots available for higher education, competition among students is fierce.
To encourage competition among students, teachers announce student rankings publicly and seat the highest-ranking students at the front of the classroom. Students who cannot keep up with the school curricula are forced to drop out simply because there are too many students for the educational resources available. Finally, parents cannot interfere in this highly structured environment. Teachers have total control over their classrooms.
The curriculum required much memorization in the past, but because of criticisms that the schools did not encourage enough creativity and dialogue, many schools have since revamped their teaching methods. Today, grade schools now incorporate more field trips, and high schools encourage more dialogue and essay writing. The universities also now promote a more multidisciplinary approach, where studies used to be more compartmentalized.
Reports suggest that the United States is losing its lead in science and technology because more engineers are graduating from Chinese universities than from American universities. Of course the quality of higher education is not necessarily comparable. As of this writing, the most sophisticated scientific research still comes from the United States and developed countries in Europe, and some Western scientists estimate that the lead is roughly twenty years. But China is catching up quickly.
Valuable research is being conducted in China. At Beijing Daxue (also known as Peking University or Beida) a professor shared with me her research on the shrinking fish population. She explained that male fish are becoming females due to the elevated estrogen levels caused by toxins in the environment. However, more basic research could be conducted if professors didn’t feel the need to make extra money on the side to keep up with the rapidly rising costs of inflation in China, a phenomenon often associated with high economic growth. Even this environmental professor had considered a proposal by a venture capital (VC) firm to commercialize her studies.
Finally, while most Chinese are literate, since the schools provide a basic classical education, the overall population does not have a wide variety of skills. For instance, classes for graphic arts, art conservation, or any number of courses that students can take here in the United States are often not available in China. As a result of this narrow knowledge, most Western companies looking to hire skilled Chinese workers will find that they must invest a lot in training for even the most rudimentary tasks.
But despite the shortcomings, the Chinese universities are headed in the right direction. While teaching at Peking University, I lived in the on-campus guesthouse, which was designed to facilitate an easy exchange of ideas among visiting faculty. The building was like a Holiday Inn with a formal restaurant downstairs where all the tenants were free to mix and mingle over meals. The number of visiting professors invited to stay there must have been in the hundreds, and the diversity of backgrounds and opinions that the Chinese welcomed was impressive to say the least. Providing access to top talent throughout the world certainly contributes to the richness of the educational environment. So perhaps it’s not surprising that Chinese universities have been ascending the list of top academic institutions in the world.
Most of the students at Peking University speak English as well as comprehend it. The exceptions are the older graduate students who didn’t have an opportunity to learn English growing up during more tumultuous times. While students at Peking may not be representative of all Chinese college graduates, many Chinese in the younger generation have become quite fluent since they started learning English in grade school. The lucky ones had teachers whose native language was English. The Chinese school system has had a formal national program to attract young foreigners who wish to teach English while learning Mandarin. The Chinese government pays for room, board, salary, and round-trip plane tickets for Americans who want such jobs. Through this program, the Chinese youths not only learn fluent English, but also hear about America and Europe firsthand.
Not only is the government making education a priority, but so are the parents. Xinran, the author of Chinese Witness, has documented some Chinese mothers who worked tirelessly behind the scenes in previous generations to create the workforce that now embodies China’s economic and political power. One of the stories she tells is about a woman who toiled for 28 years in backbreaking work in order to send her son to get a PhD and her daughter to Peking University. Neither child received government assistance. They were just one of millions of Chinese families who lived homeless in utter poverty and used public bathrooms to provide water for drinking and cooking every day.
The youths, likewise, understand the importance of education from an early age. Ma Yan, a 14-year-old girl who lived in western China, documented in her diary that it was like a death sentence not to be able to study in school because her parents were too poor to afford that luxury for her. Her mother in desperation handed Ma Yan’s diary to a French journalist, Pierre Hasky, begging him to help. Hasky was so moved by the diary that he arranged for excerpts of it to be printed in French newspapers. Those excerpts were subsequently reproduced in 19 languages and published as a book, The Diary of Ma Yan: The Struggles and Hopes of a Chinese Schoolgirl. Eventually Ma Yan was granted her dream of schooling through a fund that was raised in 2002 known as the Children of Ningxia.
Their work ethic is second to none. As a visiting professor at Beida, my responsibilities included lecturing to a class with over a hundred students that met twice a week, four hours a day for an entire semester. While it was grueling for me to prepare all the material to be covered in these lectures, I quickly realized that the students there had an even more intense academic load. The campus classrooms were occupied day and night, seven days a week by lectures. Both undergraduate and graduate students worked around the clock. Study breaks usually consisted of jogging around campus with a date or fellow classmates late at night. I never heard of a single frat party taking place anywhere on campus.
Not only are they hard working, the Chinese students are also incredibly curious. I was always doubly impressed with how much they already knew about U.S. history and current affairs, often surpassing the knowledge of most American students I have taught. Dozens of my graduate students often took me out to dinner simply because they wanted to continue to learn from me even after listening to one my lectures for four straight hours. (They also didn’t seem to understand the idea of taking a break whenever I gave them ten-minute breaks during these marathon lectures.) During these dinners, they came armed with so many questions that the dinners also became multi-hour affairs. I often wondered when they found time to sleep.
In Fault Lines, Professor Raghuram Rajan argues that the single most important cause of wealth inequality boils down to education. Most economists would agree with that statement, as would political and social scientists. The Chinese meanwhile have known this pearl of wisdom for almost their entire civilization. Except for the brief moment in history during the Cultural Revolution when Mao encouraged the Red Army to destroy all things intellectual and cultural in the country, the Chinese have long revered academic studies and have pursued intellectual activities with zeal. As documented by Joseph Needham, some of the world’s most important inventions unquestionably originated in China, such as the compass, paper, and gunpowder.
However, after a century of decline, the Chinese realized that they had a lot of catching up to do if they wanted to enjoy the developed world’s standard of living. This involved learning at every opportunity, including on the job from foreigners who had set up joint ventures with Chinese companies. By working together, the Chinese learned about new technologies and processes. Some less ethical Chinese companies stole the intellectual property from foreigners while others reverse-engineered components and machinery to duplicate what Westerners had invented. But in most cases, the Chinese saw the inpouring of foreign direct investment as an opportunity for apprenticeships. All the Chinese could offer at the time were people who were willing to work long and hard. The tradeoff, they believe, has been worth it. Their Confucian obsession with learning and improving themselves has in no small part enabled China to gain a competitive advantage globally across multiple disciplines in fairly short order.
Incredible love and sacrifice describe much of how human capital was built in China. The countless stories of overcoming great odds such as the ones I mentioned cannot be explained solely by economic or political policies. Though government rules and mandates are important in channeling productive energy, the Chinese understand that the root cause of their modern economic and political power was built by the blood, tears, and sweat of their parents who go unrecognized but who supplied the foundation for China’s current success. Because these parents held tightly to the Confucian notion that education for their children would be the surest route for them to escape a life of poverty, they sacrificed their own lives for that end and produced a generation of young Chinese with incredible motivation to learn and improve the world. Thus, to most Chinese, the Confucian precept to respect their elders becomes inextricably tied to the maxim to make education a priority. When seen in this context, it is easy for most Chinese who have grown up poor to respect a person based on scholarship and character rather than wealth.
Two Americas
The modern U.S. experience differs greatly from China’s in many regards. For one, the United States luckily never had to solve the conundrum of over a billion people living on less than two dollars a day. As the only major country to emerge from World War II unscathed, America became the undisputed superpower by default and has had the good fortune of enjoying great wealth for decades. Furthermore, thanks to the liberal attitudes that once shaped the creation of the New Deal and other domestic programs that followed World War II, the United States not only enjoyed phenomenal prosperity, it also was able to spread the wealth throughout its population. The great Western leaders, such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), embodied noblesse oblige and demonstrated foresight and humaneness by crafting U.S. policies that decreased wealth inequality and created a middle class that was the envy of the world.
But in the last thirty-plus years, beginning around the 1970s, our great system has started showing signs of atrophying. The span of wealth inequality is the widest it’s been in our nation’s post-war history.4 While an increasing number of Americans become impoverished, the desires of Americans in the top 5 percent grow increasingly frivolous.5 When American adults buy Wii systems to play air guitar for hours and spend hundreds of dollars on American Girl doll clothes, one can safely argue that either these people have too much time and money on their hands or have skewed priorities. When it was reported that 67-year-old Gail Posner bequeathed millions of dollars to her dogs, the news underscored the fact that today’s level of inequality is not so different from previous periods like the one just before the French Revolution.
Everywhere we look, the American middle class has steadily lost ground. Economics professors and analysts have documented that the middle class in America has been shrinking for several decades and that wealth inequality has shown no signs of stabilizing or reversing its trajectory. According to the Internal Revenue Service in 2005, the top 1 percent of income earners saw an increase of 14 percent or $139,000, and average incomes of the bottom 90 percent dropped 0.6 percent or $172 over the previous year.6 The share of total income that went to the top 1 percent was 8.9 percent in 1976, but increased to 23.5 percent by 2007 while the average inflation-adjusted hourly wage went down by more than 7 percent over the same time period.7 Jack Rasmus, author of The War at Home and The Trillion Dollar Income Shift, estimates that “well over $1 trillion in income is transferred annually from the roughly 90 million working-class families in America to corporations and the wealthiest non-working class households. While a hundred new billionaires were created since 2001, real weekly earnings for 100 million workers are less in 2007 than in 1980 when Ronald Reagan took office.” As the inequality in wealth distribution becomes more extreme, studies have suggested that it could be a precursor to political instability.8
At the same time, America’s postwar liberalism has substantially morphed into a postmodern value system that no longer extols the traditions of morality and social responsibility to the degree it did historically. For one, the notion of sacrifice doesn’t seem to have a place in our lexicon anymore. Certainly not all Americans share this view of the world, but the nation as a whole has largely viewed unemployment checks, social security, and home ownership as rights they deserve.9 Even many large corporations have come to view government subsidies as something to be counted upon.10 With an entitlement mentality, even the politicians recognize the electorate’s lack of willingness to shoulder greater responsibilities and to see beyond one’s immediate needs. This is apparent in their rhetoric, which no longer makes appeals to notions of shared sacrifice.
Rather, in this postmodern value system, many Americans have become conditioned to believe that being rich and powerful is all that matters. The movie, The Social Network, which documents Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s unethical ascent to wealth and stardom, epitomizes America’s cultural proclivity to tolerate business behavior that may be deemed immoral even if it is not technically illegal. The unfairness of America’s justice system allows Wall Street executives who have defrauded millions of people around the world to walk free while one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34 are incarcerated for minor infractions.11 Such hypocrisy further underscores America’s indiscriminate worship of people with money regardless of how it was earned.
How did these values come about? America’s postmodern values have been cultivated in part through the iconic images of Hollywood stars, sports celebrities, and Wall Street financiers who dominate American pop culture. Many American youths find school irrelevant and boring because they don’t see a connection between education and success. A record 8.9 million Americans watch the reality television show Jersey Shore that showcases youths getting drunk, fighting, and other controversial behavior.12 The fact that these reality show characters get paid millions of dollars to behave like deadbeats sends a clear message to Americans that education isn’t material to fame and wealth. When over 10,000 people line up to audition for American Idol in a single city, the trend is clear.13 Young Americans may have high aspirations, but many don’t invest in the skills and knowledge necessary to achieve those aspirations. Some of them have been led to believe by the prevailing culture that with a little bit of luck, talent, and networking, one can become a Hollywood celebrity overnight.
Standards may be lowered or ignored for student athletes since sports revenue is important to many academic institutions. The NBA and NFL further fuel the popularity of sports as potential careers, distorting youth priorities. Even among the elite college kids at Ivy League schools, getting educated is secondary to other concerns. When I spoke to my friend Sheldon Garon, professor of history at Princeton University, he said that in his lecture classes of 80 students, not one of them had heard of the term collective bargaining. “The students may be smart, but they are narrow-minded,” he said. “They only care about joining the most exclusive eating clubs in order to land the right Wall Street jobs.” As a result, probably far fewer Americans are pursuing the less glorified fields of scientific research, social work, and environmental preservation than if the cultural messaging and pay scales were different.
Not only do sports, entertainment, and Wall Street shape American values, but celebrity figures like Joel Osteen have also exerted a powerful influence. Preaching “prosperity theology” or “prosperity gospel,” Mr. Osteen has dismantled Christian values of thrift, hard work, and the Golden Rule and replaced them with notions that individual wealth and power are virtues. He has used the Jewish success in the United States as a model for Christians to emulate, completely reversing the anti-Semitism that used to be prevalent among Evangelical Christians. Desire for individual success and improvement has always been an American trademark, but such individual pursuits were once more balanced with religious teachings from Jesus to practice modesty and to Love Thy Neighbor. Some of these modernized versions of religion downplay or ignore the more humanistic and civic virtues and instead glorify selfishness and self-aggrandizement.
U.S. Education: D+?
Certainly, there is much about American culture to love and celebrate. But when it comes to prizing education, the messages our mass media send out to our citizens usually contradict our wiser national imperative to improve the talent base. Modern American culture that diminishes the role and importance of education in society often gets overlooked as a critical contributing factor to America’s deteriorating educational system. While policymakers and politicians have talked about improving the educational system for the last ten years, nothing has changed in part because the public has not built the necessary consensus to push the issue forward. The political will just has not been strong enough, so the education challenge still remains largely under the radar screen.
When such cultural attitudes and perceptions become collectively ingrained, they become reflected in our policies, which unfortunately have sacrificed education as a national priority. U.S. public school teachers, far from being elevated and respected, receive low pay and minimal administrative support. Average teacher salaries are roughly $40,000 a year, less than what some financiers get paid in an hour.14 A telling joke about our national priorities goes something like this: if you can’t get a real job, go be a teacher. Teachers’ unions block reform to weed out underperformers, and policymakers prioritize the military over our children when it comes to the budgeting process. Very few find it worth their while to champion the cause of public education. The ones who have money and influence often opt to send their children to elite private schools, again preferring to ignore the fate of the broader society.
The problem is that in a knowledge economy where ideas and other intangible assets drive future wealth creation, an educated labor force becomes the most important ingredient and key competitive advantage for a nation’s future. Without an educated workforce, the freedom for a society to develop economically is limited. Even if one assumes that only 1 percent of the U.S. population is necessary to run companies, cities, states, or the nation, those leaders will not be successful if they cannot hire skilled and educated employees. Because most new job openings are in information technology, healthcare, and education, the problem of matching skilled and educated American workers with these positions is already upon us. Indeed, the National Institute for Literacy concluded that at least 4 percent of the adult American population was illiterate because they couldn’t even perform the simplest literacy tasks on their survey. Not only are American corporations at risk, but even American democracy could be at risk when millions who are eligible to vote and thus influence the direction of the country’s future cannot read or write.
However, despite the millions allocated to the U.S. public educational system, numerous reports document that the educational system is still falling farther and farther behind other nations.15 America’s youth population, especially among minorities, has an elevated high school dropout rate. Studies warn that 7,000 students drop out of high school every day, amounting to 1.2 million youths every year. More disturbing, graduation rates have been continually dropping. In 1969, the high school graduation rate was 77 percent, but by 2007, the graduation rate was 68.8 percent.16 The reasons for the demise of public education are numerous, which documentary films like Waiting for Superman outline with compassion and detail. But that’s not the end of the story.
The United States has long taken solace that its higher educational system is the best in the world. However, of the 3,000 colleges and universities in the United States, most of them underperform those in other countries. According to Dr. Robert Mendenhall, President of Western Governors University, the United States dropped from first place to twelfth in the world university rankings. And while the number of Americans with college degrees has steadily increased since 1950, the degree may be less valuable than ones earned in the past.17 My friend Carol Irving, who teaches freshman English at the New School in New York City, asked me to help her find a teaching job in China because she was tired of babysitting her students. “These college students can’t even write a sentence!” she complained to me. So while these graduates may hold a degree, their abilities upon graduation won’t likely be uniform.
The repercussions of marginalizing education for the broader population can extend further. According to a Gallup poll conducted in 2009, only 40 percent of Americans believe in evolution while 91 percent of Chinese students believe in it. An overwhelming reliance on faith and lack of scientific curiosity among the majority of the population does not encourage the kind of experimentation that would lead to breakthrough innovations that can solve 21st-century problems. Worse, if antiscientific attitudes develop too far, we would not only lack a workforce that could function capably in a knowledge economy, we could even put the knowledge economy itself at risk of enormous setbacks. When religious fanatics sacked the Serapeum of Alexandria in the 4th century, some scholars believe that scientific inquiry was impeded for several centuries. So as long as the status quo prevails, the United States will gradually lose its historic attraction as a nation of opportunity and progress if its population is not motivated to pursue the knowledge, skills, and creativity to compete with an increasingly “flat world,” as Tom Friedman of the New York Times put it.
Proof Is in the Pudding
What can the United States learn from China in the way of elevating education in importance? The population, first and foremost, must believe that education is valuable for improving their future. Obviously to change values and belief systems can take generations, but sometimes small changes can have revolutionary effects, especially if they are sustained over a period of time. The fastest way to alter belief systems is to provide evidence. When the CCP reversed policies regarding education, millions of Chinese began to see evidence that the educated classes were rewarded regardless of family background. Likewise, the election of Barack Obama as the first black President of the United States has certainly sent a strong, positive message to minorities that America remains a nation where all dreams are still possible. He and other prominent minority figures serve as inspirational role models for those who have been impoverished to maintain hope and try harder.
However, despite the isolated successes of certain individuals, more can be done to encourage the next generation to embrace scholarly and civic-minded pursuits. For instance, perhaps the government could provide tax incentives for television producers to create programming that promotes innovation by seeking out America’s greatest new inventors, doctors, engineers, astronomers, teachers, social workers, and others in the same way American Idol discovers talented new singers through live competition. Another idea is to showcase the CEOs of high-tech and biotech companies. The television programs could tell their stories of how they created their products and show how they are changing the world for the better. People need exposure to professions that have traditionally lacked media attention in order to imagine their own lives unfolding in roles with which they may be unfamiliar.
If the FCC regulates sex and violence on television, why not have the government mandate that television stations allocate time for airing programming that enriches the mind and soul and encourages the pursuit of higher education? Such a mandate can be part of their civic duty in exchange for the privilege of having a broadcasting license. Insistence by the media that programming should be based only on market demand ignores the reflexive nature of human behavior. Like the chicken or the egg, it’s not clear what came first—media dictating pop culture or vice versa. But the relationship is inseparable, so changing one part of the equation will certainly influence the other.
Grassroots organizations can also help kick-start a counterculture in education. One group called CEOs for Cities engaged some innovative advisors and experts to develop new ideas for educating the public in the 21st century. Their report called “101 Wacky Ideas: Reclaiming a Nation of Pre-Graduates,” advocates pop-up classrooms, failure labs, and career discovery camps, among many other suggestions to reach a broad public that may not have the time or money to go back to school full-time.
The possibilities are limitless, but it begins with an awareness and willingness to influence the prevailing culture as part of a comprehensive strategy to reorient priorities. The Confucian values of scholarship, endurance, and tolerance can gain traction in American society if tastemakers and policymakers work together to make the benefits of embracing such values more obvious to the general public. Policies in isolation and working at cross-purposes with culture will likely fail, but policies that harness the power of the prevailing culture just might succeed. If people learn to value education again, then half the battle to make our workforce competitive will be won.
Moreover, America’s strength has always been its import of people from all races and nations who tend to be diligent and value higher education. Immigrants like Albert Einstein led much of the cutting-edge thinking that enabled the United States to catapult to superpower status. Others, such as Andy Grove of Intel Corporation, have helped create great companies that have not only employed many Americans but kept America competitive. Immigration is the part of American culture that has made us the best in the world because it brings together ideas from different parts of the world. The result is fresh thinking that can spur innovation. So we must always safeguard this policy for the greater good of the nation, despite pressure to close our doors. To close our doors to the world would risk closing our minds to the world, a risk not worth taking given our present educational challenges.
Honest Pay for an Honest Day’s Work
In addition to education, Confucian teachings promote thrift and plain living, which fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you see it) stand in stark contrast to America’s love affair with extravagance, consumerism, and money. Confucius thought highly of Yan Ying, prime minister of the state of Qi, who wore the same fur coat for 30 years. Fast-forward to modern day China and one will discover that the laboring Chinese have ingrained beliefs that diligence and frugality will eventually lead to prosperity while laziness and wastefulness can only lead to decline and destruction. The Chinese savings rate at over 50 percent is among the highest in the world.18 Extravagance and reckless wasting of natural resources are actively opposed by many Chinese to the point that even throwing away a grain of rice is considered bad form. Chinese superstitions also reinforce this value. One popular superstition is that living in a large, empty home is bad luck. Too many empty rooms that are not occupied with people for daily living supposedly invite bad spirits. With such superstitions, overbuilt communities of McMansions that were typical of the U.S. subprime crisis will unlikely materialize as a problem in China.
In contrast, Americans have been accustomed to consume beyond their means and sometimes without necessarily giving anything of value to society in return. Teenagers are given credit cards by banks before they even earn a penny.19 Introducing Confucian values of thrift and spending within one’s means to young adults may reduce the risk of young adults experimenting with drugs, dropping out of school, or doing jail time. Studies have shown that youths who suffer from low self-esteem tend to use drugs as a coping mechanism for pain and stress.20 They have not built confidence in themselves, confidence that can come from the responsibility of earning a living. Learning Confucianism can give them a life-changing opportunity to view the world in a new way that nourishes their desire to master something while delaying immediate gratification. Rather than medicating them for depression, hyperactivity, or some other disorder, it may be far safer and far less expensive to teach them a proven ancient philosophy for coping with the world. It could give people new reasons to accomplish something meaningful that is independent of monetary reward, a vital ingredient for human motivation and feelings of well-being.
The Confucian work ethic is also highly correlated with thrift and springs from its long-term orientation toward future rewards. The idea of perseverance and deferring gratification becomes second nature. The experience of a former head of Pfizer’s research is typical for many Western firms operating in China. He claimed he outsourced all his work to the Chinese in China because they could be depended upon to have conference calls at 2 AM if necessary. He was completely unapologetic about giving jobs to the Chinese over Americans because he said no American would ever work that hard. With such trends, eight-hour workdays may become a thing of the past. Job security that assures employment until retirement is increasingly rare, so keeping a job means working longer, harder, smarter. In a global world, the Confucian virtue of perseverance through the most difficult of conditions will likely be as accepted in the future as Mohamed El-Erian’s “new normal”—his assertion that slow U.S. economic growth will be the rule rather than the exception—is today.
Studies by MIT, University of Chicago, and Carnegie Mellon funded by the Federal Reserve have discovered that when offered significant rewards, people performed well only if the skills involved were largely repetitive. But when the same reward schemes were offered to people working on activities that involved more than rudimentary cognitive skills, such as those that involve creative or conceptual thinking, monetary incentives had the opposite effect on human performance and motivation. Study after study in psychology, sociology, and economics revealed that once people were paid enough not to make money an issue, the ones who performed the best in cognitive activity were more motivated by autonomy, mastery, and purpose.21
These studies lend support to the argument that innovation breakthroughs come from people who are motivated to work on a problem or an idea solely because the work is meaningful or fun for them. A desire for enormous wealth is usually not a motivating factor that comes up in biographies of inventors. The next Thomas Edison will not be discovered simply by promising millions in bonus money if he comes up with the next brilliant invention. Dr. Jonas Salk, who discovered the first safe polio vaccine, did not do his work for monetary awards.22 In fact, he refrained from owning a patent and shunned publicity despite being hailed as a national hero for his contribution to medical science. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs likewise led the charge in personal computer innovation because they were driven by curiosity and mastery of new frontiers.23
However, despite being an advanced economy, the vast majority in American society work in jobs that are repetitive and are rewarded for not rocking the boat. Even people who work in highly paid positions in financial services firms engage in largely routine tasks. Though many of these professionals like to pride themselves on being smart, the fact is that the information and analyses they act upon to earn their giant bonuses routinely come from outside sources. Financial firms pay millions of dollars to access “independent” research reports, data services, investment conferences, and speakers considered “experts,” but very few of them generate much original or creative thought. Television shows such as CNBC showcase daily portfolio managers who repeat the same ideas and concepts that they’ve heard from others in the industry. Momentum trading, a legitimate strategy followed by many money managers, is predicated on copying other traders. As a result of this herd mentality, multiple asset bubbles have been created and burst in just the last two decades alone, leaving much to be desired in the way of real human progress.
Whether it is to sell a product or trade financial instruments, most jobs in the United States that give big bonuses don’t award them for creating revolutionary breakthroughs. The ones who are tasked with doing such things are scientists and other researchers, who are not given the name recognition, money, or other benefits that would be commensurate with the value of their contributions to society. The logical conclusion one can draw from these observations is that the United States rewards repetitive work but discourages the true innovation and creative thought that could dramatically improve the quality of human existence. Unless we find a way to modify this incentive system, we would be hard-pressed to create a new catalyst that will drive the type of hiring that occurred during the Industrial Revolution. A lack of a new catalyst coupled with incremental improvements in existing technology can accelerate structural unemployment in the United States and around the globe. For instance, high-frequency trading software has replaced many Wall Street traders, and artificial intelligence software is beginning to replace secretaries and nurses. Once these jobs are replaced with incremental improvements in technology, they are never coming back. Radical inventions must be created in order to put people back to work.
With this in mind, the Confucian prescription for excellence, which is detached from material reward, would be consistent with scientific findings about human performance and more in harmony with human nature. The value of a person under Confucian doctrine always prizes the character and scholarly accomplishments of a person as opposed to his or her net financial worth. The importance of this shift in value cannot be understated.
Let’s imagine a Wall Street under a Confucian influence. The financial crisis may never happen again. Why? Confucian bankers would be more concerned about channeling their energies and capital toward people and ideas that contribute to society and do valuable things than with the sole purpose of getting wealthy. Confucian bankers would be better stewards of capital and the financial system because they would understand that even if they were the last ones standing in a world destroyed by greed and short-term behavior, it would not be a world worth living in. Perhaps there would be more wealthy Silicon Valley people as opposed to wealthy bankers from Goldman Sachs as a result. But for the most part, they would become wealthy because they created something useful and valuable to society, as opposed to causing enormous damage to others.
Inconsistencies?
Of course Confucianism is not a silver bullet. Some cynically believe that Confucianism was reintroduced by the CCP to control the masses while others point to the numerous unethical behaviors that are routinely reported by Westerners doing business in China. Stories about fake Apple stores and businessmen carrying briefcases full of cash seem uncharacteristically common for a society heavily under Confucian influence. However, whether it’s corruption from property developers or local government officials, Confucian values alone cannot eliminate all of society’s ills. Bad eggs exist in every society, and China is no exception. Obviously not all Americans behave like Good Samaritans either. Spiritual development in the world is unfortunately in short supply regardless of religious faith or philosophy, but it doesn’t mean that it’s useless. In approaching anything, the aphorism, “don’t throw the baby out with the bath water” applies to Confucianism as well.
What matters more is that a society and its government should strive to achieve more enlightened ways of being. Corruption still happens in China, but China’s leaders recognize the problem and are making substantive moves to address it, not because they have to but because of their Confucian beliefs about their own legitimacy. Course corrections in policy can happen smoothly as long as the society and government can work together with aligned values, whether they are Confucian or not. However, the best values usually withstand the test of time. Confucian values at least have that going for them.
Yes, Master
Americans may worry that Confucianism is too hierarchic and too deferential to elders to be appropriate for America’s heritage of being irreverent and questioning of authority. After all, the Founding Fathers rebelled against authority in order to create the United States, defining the American character for generations to come.
The hierarchical relationships that are defined by Confucian teachings are not taken as literally by modern, urban Chinese. In fact, most of them interpret hierarchy to mean respect for elders, not necessarily to obey their elders, which is not incompatible with American culture. Though there are examples of young chief executives and relatively young people occupying high office, as in the case of Presidents Barack Obama or John F. Kennedy, most American leaders in business or in politics that garner the deepest respect remain those who have been around long enough to develop wisdom.
Respecting the more experienced isn’t just a nice value but is good policy. Much wisdom can be learned from previous generations if they feel their opinions and thoughts are welcomed. The Chinese know this truth and therefore keep their elders in close quarters rather than send them off to nursing homes. Chinese adults who visit their elders when they live separately almost never even consider staying at a hotel when they return. To live at a hotel would be considered an insult to the parents no matter how small the living quarters are. It is just assumed that familial ties must be tight to ensure maximum communication between the generations. With much more frequent contact than the average American, the osmosis of knowledge between Chinese parent or grandparent and child can be more efficient and complete.
If Americans learned this one Confucian value, perhaps fewer Americans would fear growing old and becoming irrelevant in their old age. Rather than being seen as a burden on the younger generation, grandparents can act as wise and loving mentors to both their own children and grandchildren and valued as a source of history, companionship, and support.
Compassion Calling
Researchers have documented that humans instinctively experience another’s plights as if we are experiencing them ourselves. People need love, companionship, and belonging to a community; aggression, violence, or self-interest are not natural states of being.24 Furthermore, people naturally experience empathy, not hatred, for all life on earth. Confucian values and philosophy recognize this aspect of human nature and the human dependency on its ecosystem. If Confucianism were more widely embraced in the United States, there would be pressure to preserve more of our natural resources. We would likely reduce military arms and increase diplomacy. We also would probably empathize with immigrants and other minorities as if they were family. Finally, pursuing a more cohesive and egalitarian society might be more commonplace. Confucians’ holistic ways of viewing the world could be enough to change history and compel more Americans to extend our empathy beyond our immediate circles to the entire human race and even all the biosphere.
Throughout human history, civilizations have evolved by cooperating with greater numbers of people. Solidarity between blood ties were extended to tribal members, which eventually got extended to citizens of nations. There is no scientific law that states that people are not capable of seeing the human race as one family ultimately. The fact that technology already allows a person to inseminate an egg, have a separate surrogate mother carry the baby, and have a third person raise the child demonstrates that family is merely a construct that can have a wider definition. Scientific research has long established that everyone on earth is 99.5 percent similar in genetic makeup.25 Dominant theories about the origins of man also point to common ancestry from Africa. If this is true, the argument for universal human empathy—consistent with Confucianism—is even stronger.26
Reversing existing broad cultural trends in the United States may require many policy adjustments that could take lifetimes to implement. However, jumpstarting a renaissance in ethics and a realignment of priorities could conceivably be achieved through China’s example of reintroducing Confucian principles in the media and through government and corporate policies to accentuate what is already innate in all people. Most Americans are generous, thoughtful, and motivated to do the right thing. Confucian principles would be a welcome contrast to the me-oriented, money-oriented consumerist philosophy that dominates American culture today. Though the notion of introducing ancient Chinese teachings to American modern culture seems laughable, major swings in what is fashionable have happened in the past. When JFK famously said, “Ask not what the country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country,” America was ready to embrace moral rectitude and step up to challenges, behavior advocated in Confucian teachings. Confucian teachings in many ways would essentially represent reintroducing old American values back into U.S. culture rather than importing values and beliefs that are completely new and unfamiliar. Confucianism could help stop the slide in American education and serve as a counterweight to America’s overwhelming materialist culture. By broadening its understanding of Eastern philosophy, the United States can take advantage of wisdom that has been developed over thousands of years. Perhaps we can start by creating a national holiday where we can all be Confucian for a day.