Prevailing schools of thought in the PR China and their effects on economic and social acting of humans today (ePub)

One of the most discussed topics of the past years in the economy-related press was the economic and political development of the People's Republic of China. A daily paper without reference to China is hardly conceivable today. Average economic growth rates within the two digit range over the past 30 years, an enormous market with more than 1.3 billion people and economically backward areas woke the pioneer spirit of western gold diggers. The Chinese population is by far bigger than those of the European Union, the United States, Australia and Canada together. In addition to this it comes that China was up to 30 years ago not only ruled by communism, but also robbed of its thousands of years-old traditions by the maoistic Cultural Revolution. The question is how it was possible that this country could ascend in such a short time to one of the most successful economies in the world. That a certain cultural value system or ethics is a fundamental basis for the economic acting of a nation was already determined by Adam Smith in his work "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations".1 Max Weber also built up on this realization (see chapter two). The following work would like to approach this phenomenom from the cultural point of view and follow the question, which cultural bases rule in the Chinese society. This should be tried by a short representation of the most important schools of thought in China, which cannot happen finally because of the compendiousness of the work. Rather it should be understood as a suggestion for thinking about Chinese culture and its differences. Also this work will not take culture-theoretical factors as a basis for analysis. Rather it is to be tried to represent the most important differences between the European and the Chinese culture and to sensitize for this. It is not an aim of this resignment to set up regularities of the Chinese character but to refer to possible differences.