Academic literature on the topic 'Nepotism - China - History'

Hegel’s conception of a universal history of reason is usually interpreted as a Eurocentric project that is dismissive of the genuine contributions by other cultures. In contrast to this assumption, his views concerning Chinese philosophical traditions evolved significantly in his late Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. Hegel increasingly acknowledges a unique contribution of Confucianism and especially Daoism. While Confucianism is depicted as a natural religion of magic in which the emperor governs as the supreme magician, Daoism revolts against the emperor’s nepotism and turns to the Dao to elaborate a speculative philosophy of reason. The paper argues that the search for a rational form of mysticism is the basis for increasingly valuing the Chinese contributions to a conception of reason that incorporates mystical elements.

As Inspector General of the Maritime Customs Service, Robert Hart (1835–1911), born in County Armagh in Ireland, was a chief fiscal administrator of the Chinese Empire. Hart was a British citizen, yet he was employed by the Chinese government and was responsible for hundreds of Western (mostly British) and thousands of Chinese employees. His ability to straddle cultures has been noted by the historians Bruner, Fairbank and Smith who refer to a trait of cultural sensitivity that was unusual among the merchants of the treaty ports in China. The source of this cultural sensitivity is of interest and some insights can be gleaned from his Irish origins. The employment under Hart of many persons from Ireland, family and others, in the Chinese Maritime Customs (CMC) has also raised questions about nepotism and favouritism. We will see that Hart did not only favour his family but was generally well disposed to long-standing acquaintances, whether they were Irish or not. Furthermore, his Irish contacts in both Ireland and China were of advantage to him in his career and his attainment of higher social status. Our examination of Hart's network of Irish contacts and his ideas about Ireland also reveal his multi-national identity. This seemed to allow Hart to be both pro-British while also retaining a critical perspective, as might be expected by someone who by place of birth, social class and religion was not from the heart of the English establishment.

Prologue: Business Environment and Economic BehaviorFor more than two decades, sociologists, historians and economic geographers have produced many case studies on Chinese family businesses. A major consensus of these works suggests that ‘networking’, especially ethnic and familial, is extremely important to Chinese businesses. Various models and theories have been employed to explain this phenomenon. Notable among these explanations is the idea of Chinese entrepreneurship. According to this idea, such ethnicity-based groups as the Cantonese and the Fujianese (of the provinces of Guangdong and Fujian), are regarded to be culturally oriented towards business entrepreneurship and the cultivation of business networks. Before the outbreak of the Asian economic crisis in October 1997, many researchers believed that ‘Chinese entrepreneurship’ and the ‘business culture of networking’ contributed to the success of Chinese businesses in Asia (especially in the ‘Four Little Dragons’ of coastal Asia). For example, Confucian ethics and its emphasis on familial and ethnic networks is regarded as an asset for business expansion by Chinese international enterprises based in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore. After the outbreak of the crisis, more research on the nature of Chinese entrepreneurship and the culture of networking was carried out. This research started from a different angle. The reliance on politically secured economic privileges (i.e.; nepotism), was identified as a defect of networking and thus, one of the major underlying causes of the crisis. The claim that the culture of networking contributes to business success actually offers a readily available explanation for its failure as well (see for examples Redding, 1990; Yeung, 1997; Yeung, 1998).

The article analyzes current spiritual-political and socio-economic situation in postreform China with the emphasis on newest tendencies in the social feeling and conscience. Such a gigantic socio- cultural laboratory as China, with the processes of modernization and archaization proper to it, gives much material disproving conceptions of unilinear historical progress and brining to light the Chinese particularity. The content of China elite identity and the reasons of its stability and continuity are analyzed on the basis of a profound excursus into history of the evolution of the «Confucians way of governance», that quite differs from the European model. In consequence of thousands years of selective breeding through the examination system and the stratagem mentality there was created, in the author’s opinion, not the political culture, but some type of the specific Chinese administrative behavior mode, based on «the moral consensus» between different clans of elite, this time leaded by Xi Jinping, and composed by the «shanghai» and the «komsomol» factions. Contemporary partocracy regime of PRC inherited all the negative characteristics of soviet «nomenclature» such as hierarchy career based on loyalty, bureaucracy privileges, special rations and advantages, nepotism, corruption and so on, but has created specific Chinese system of «soft» succession of power from generation to generation. At the same time, the confluence of political and business elites is taking place and the state and society interests are more and more subordinated to their corporative Ames, that provoke so called «new leftist» movement against the irrational redistribution system. The CCP new leadership exploits the «Chinese dream» rhetoric and anticorruption assault to get the national consensus and conserve its monopoly on political power. However, the social-economic structures sophistication and the new social contradictions and conflicts intensification, the now days economic crisis evidences about, draw attention to the crucial importance of democratization and creation of the new nontraditional political system for up to date diagnosis, softening and salvation of such conflicts.