Word: confucianism
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...foundation. Careers had a kind of narrative line. It began with something like apprenticeship and then, in the ideal model, proceeded through hard work and merit to raises, promotions, success and eventual retirement with pension. Seniority and experience meant something: work was as close as Americans came to the Confucian. Getting fired was a disgrace, the scarlet letter...
...Singapore be cloned? Not without a Lee Kuan Yew, say many citizens. Moreover, their city-state possesses special advantages: small size that makes control easy and infrastructure cheap, no job-seeking rural poor to overwhelm the city with slums, an ambitious immigrant population, a Confucian ethic stressing education and respect for authority, location on a major trade route in the heart of a dynamic region. The country's perpetual siege mentality -- it feels threatened by bigger neighbors and fears its own ethnic mix is volatile -- also encourages economic and political sacrifice...
...adjust to meet new challenges, insists Yeo, without adopting the West's "hard liberalism." But neither can Singapore be a model for many other countries. Setting aside democracy to concentrate on economic development can work for a while. But the resulting affluence breeds more demands for democracy, even in Confucian societies, and autocracy can rarely remain enlightened and uncorrupt for long. Just as Singapore's leaders have made the most of its small size and unusual cultural mix, so too leaders of other countries will have to find their own formulas for success...
Part of the explanation is the dominant role in China's history played by the bureaucracy, which was intensely conservative, and by Confucian philosophy, which emphasized order, continuity and stability. Ricci noted that the Chinese word for their country, Thienhia, meant "everything under the heavens." Believing that China was superior to other nations, officials of the imperial court were leery of innovation and humiliated to learn that something had been done better elsewhere. Like its artists, historian J.M. Roberts notes, China's governing elite "strove to imitate and emulate the best, but the best was always past...
...elite diving schools. Students are supervised virtually nonstop, cut off from families unless relatives happen to live nearby, forbidden to date until their 20s and expected to train so hard that most wind up unfit for work outside athletics. Some are left virtually illiterate in a land where, by Confucian tradition, intellectual pursuits are prized over physical ones. In exchange, athletes (and often their families) enjoy better jobs and housing. They wear imported athletic clothing. If they make the 20-or-so-member national team, from age 14 on they earn an average worker's salary, with bonuses for major...