71Research Trends
From Economic Man to Ecological Man:
Discourse on Confucian Entrepreneurs 2019*2019 marked the beginning of a new era in Japan. This year, the country
not only ushered in the new Reiwa era with a new emperor, but alsoannounced a new design for its latest banknotes, to be issued by 2024.
Japan’s new 10,000-yen note will feature the famous Confucian businessman
Shibusawa Eiichi (1840-1931) 渋沢栄一, a choice which has sparked fierce
debates in Japan. Shibusawa’s The Analects and the Abacus (Rongo toSoroban) 論語と算盤 organically combines business and morality, laying thefoundation for modern Japanese industry and economic growth. The
following questions remain relevant in the Internet age: How has the spirit ofConfucian entrepreneurship changed since Shibusawa’s time?

On October 20th 2019, the 7th Discourse on Confucian Entrepreneurs
2019 (儒商論域 2019), jointly sponsored by CKGSB (Cheung Kong Graduate
School of Business) and WEIB (World Ethics Institute Beijing), focused on
the modern transformation of the Confucian business tradition: Spiritual
Humanism and the practice of Confucian business. The goal of the conversation series is to explore the spiritual roots of Confucian business ethics aswell as the universal human dimension of local Confucian traditions. The first* By Yuan Lulu and Li Nian, reporters of Shanghai’s Wenhuibao Newspaper. First appearedin the newspaper on October 22, 2019. Edited and translated by Dr. Liang Zisu,lecturer at Jianghan University, Wuhan, China.

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six annual sessions had discussed theories of Confucian business identity andglobal ethics; the 2019 edition, attended by around 100 scholars and entrepreneurs from China and abroad, focused on the practice of Confucian business. The role of Spiritual Humanism in business practice was discussed froma range of perspectives, including panels on corporate governance and legal
constraints, Artificial Intelligence and business ethics, Spiritual Humanism and“Big Business”.

1. Shibusawa Eiichi: The Godfather of Modern Confucian Business

Shibusawa Eiichi is regarded as the father of modern Japanese industry. He
founded more than 500 companies across his lifetime, and there are as manyas 1500 related contemporary offshoots of these endeavours. Japanese business models, and even the Japanese economic system as a whole, have beensignificantly influenced by Shibusawa’s forward-looking vision. Shibusawa
regarded Confucianism as the central pillar of his management philosophy;
his book The Analects and the Abacus sums up his own successful experience, which not only stresses the skill of making money by careful calculation, but also the importance of the Confucian Way, and of such values asloyalty and forgiveness.

In his morning Keynote Speech ‘A Tribute to Shibusawa Eiichi’, Kansai
University Visiting Professor Kimura Masato 木村昌人 explored the characteristics of Shibusawa’s view of business morality. He argued that Shibusawa
placed particular importance on the concept of Gapponshugi, focusing onbanks in particular. His idea was that the introduction of Gapponshugi would
be essential for achieving his lifetime goal of breaking the system of kansonminpi (官尊民卑), a doctrine which affirmed that officials are superior to thepeople. As a theory of harmonious union between morality and economics,

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Gapponshugi implies that the goal of business should be to gather the best
people together, and then work together to achieve a concrete goal, thereby
improving social well-being. In the contemporary era, what is the practicalsignificance of studying the spirit of Shibusawa Eiichi? Kimura argued that
Shibusawa’s Gapponshugi calls for improvements to the existing monetarysystem, and even for a reform of the entire financial industry. At that time,
Shibusawa also introduced traditional morality into investment and banking
leadership circles by invoking Confucian categories. Gapponshugi can also beused as a reference for emerging countries, preventing corruption, reducing
the gap between rich and poor, and halting the predatory expansion of financecapitalism.
Tu Weiming 杜維明, Dean of Peking University’s Institute for Advanced
Humanistic Studies, Honorary Professor at the Cheung Kong Graduate
School of Business and Chair of the CKGSB Humanities Committee, first
introduced Shibusawa Eiichi to entrepreneurs 15 years ago: “As modernsociety has advanced, finance capitalism has caused many cyclical problems,
including financial recessions. But in Shibusawa’s Gapponshugi, every market
participant is unique. We need to integrate the moral sense of business into
the existing capitalist model to better balance finance capitalism,” Tu addedin his Opening Speech. Against a backdrop of increasing global trade friction,
the world, Tu argued, needs a new business civilization rooted in non-zerosum thinking. In other words, although Gapponshugi is a Japanese concept, itrepresents a profound and universal reflection on contemporary capitalism.

Inoue Jun 井上潤, Executive Director of the Shibusawa Eiichi Memorial
Foundation and Director of the Shibusawa Memorial Museum, also spoke on
his own recent work. The announcement that Shibusawa’s face would appear

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on the ¥10,000 note had led more Japanese people than ever before to study
his legacy: visits to the Shibusawa Memorial Museum had doubled or tripled
in 2019. Furthermore, in 2021, the NHK drama Seiten wo Tsuke (青天を衝け),
an annual TV series based on various Japanese historical figures, will focus
on a young (and charming) Shibusawa. This popular TV show is sure toattract even more popular attention to Shibusawa’s character and legacy.

Moriya Atsushi 守屋淳, Visiting Professor at GLOBIS University’s
Graduate School of Management, pointed out that Shibusawa Eiichi believedthat the economic rationality of abandoning the weak, as dictated by an overreliance on the abacus, would collide with the values of “loyalty, forgivenessand righteousness” in the Analects of Confucius. In his view, the Analects andthe abacus were both means to achieve the goal of Japan’s overall prosperity:“In the tension between the Analects and the abacus, we can achieve social
prosperity and moral life, and ultimately achieve the prosperity of society asa whole,” Moriya said.
Wang Jianbao 王建宝, Director of CKGSB Center for the Humanities andBusiness Ethics, also argued that the development of modern society andfinancial capitalism had brought many cyclical problems along with it. In
Shibusawa’s Gapponshugi, however, Wang saw an opportunity to ‘integrate
the moral sense of business into the existing capitalist model’.

2. The ‘New Mission’ of Confucian Businesspeople

In the eyes of Tu Weiming and Cui Baoguo 崔保国, Professor of Journalism
and Communication at Tsinghua University, Shibusawa Eiichi is undoubtedly
a model of the practice of modern Confucian business. In the Information
Age, and especially with the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, what
will change in the spiritual orientation of Confucian businesspeople, and what

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will remain constant? According to Tu Weiming, Confucian entrepreneurs
need to have deep cultural understanding, broad humanistic concerns, respect
for foreign civilizations and religious beliefs, and a sense of responsibility forsocial welfare. Thanks to its policy of Reform and Opening Up, China’s
economy has accumulated well, and entrepreneurs have begun to pay attention to the significance of the moral life, which is not only a pursuit ofmaterial success but also an extension of social capital, a cultivation ofcultural sensitivity, and an overall advancement in ethical wisdom and spiritual value. As a new field of study, in short, Confucian entrepreneurship isripe for further exploration and development.

“The spiritual tradition of Confucian merchants has a long history, but its
spiritual connotation needs to be reconfirmed,” Cui agreed, arguing further
that Confucianism is a platform for cultural integration and a holistic educational system; Confucian businessmen are not representatives ofConfucianism in the abstract, but rather an embodied synthesis of the best ofChinese culture. ‘Confucianism’ thus understood is the internal integration ofdiverse Chinese traditions, including the philosophy of the Book of Changes,Taoism, Buddhism, Legalism, military philosophy, and even medicine.

3. “Big Business” Thinking: Entrepreneurs Plant Trees,Businesspeople Trade Wood.

What does “Big Business” really mean? Tu Weiming’s speech raised a seriesof important questions for scholars and practitioners alike. In the Dialogue on
Spiritual Humanism and Big Business, meanwhile, Chen Shaofeng 陳少峰,Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Peking
University, defined the difference between entrepreneurs and ordinary busi-

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nesspeople as the difference between ‘treegrowers’ and ‘woodtraders’.
Entrepreneurs are people who create intrinsic value, while businessmen arepeople who use leverage to further enlarge this value.
Tea industry expert Deng Zengyong 鄧増永 offered his own views on themeaning of “Big Business”: “There are no particularly large enterprises in thetea industry, but the scope and influence of tea are very large. Tea originatedin China, but it has taken different cultural forms around the world. Tea
culture as a whole can be described as “Big Business”: from planting andcultivation to tea drinking, the whole process is an example of the need toaddress the challenge of harmony with the environment. Tea planting, forexample, is beneficial to soil and water conservation and climate regulation inhilly areas.”

A man who can do “big business” must be a hero; Zeng Guofan, themilitary leader responsible for suppressing the Taiping Rebellion, believedthat such a hero must be smart and wise, that is to say, he must stand tall,look far, look deep and look more carefully than others. Liang Zisu, 梁紫蘇Lecturer at Jianghan University’s School of Foreign Languages, cited
Shibusawa Eiichi as an example of such leadership, not least with his lifelongcommitment to non-governmental diplomacy with the United States. Part of“Big Business”, Liang argued, is inseparable from engagement with international affairs. Ming Xu 明旭, Lecturer at Zhejiang Media College, also offered
the example of Zhang Jian (張謇), a leading social reformer and industrial
entrepreneur in early 20th-century China, as an argument for a broader definition of the modern stakeholder.
Zhou Li 周立, Assistant Dean at the Cheung Kong Graduate School ofBusiness, believes that CKGSB has built on the four dimensions ofConfucian Spiritual Humanism advocated by Tu Weiming to offer a “thirdFrom Economic Man to Ecological Man

77stage” of global entrepreneurial vision. The first stage was to learn from
Western books; the second stage was to introduce Western experience; now
human dilemmas must be solved together with the West. Business offers thegreatest platform for social change, and has a huge impact on the world
situation as a whole.
From economic man to cultural man and ecological man, Shibusawa Eiichi
provides a model of the modern Confucian businessperson. The mission
statement of the Discourse on Confucian Entrepreneurs states the challenge asfollows: “For modern ‘economic man’, wealth can be as much a prison-house
as a blessing. The Confucian Great Learning, however, distinguishes clearly
between money (‘the lubricant of individual households’) and virtue (‘thelubricant of individual character’). Such a conception of the relationshipbetween the economic and moral dimensions of human life offers a path
towards the horizon of a new business civilization in which wealth is anenabler of character development rather than a source of alienation.” Cheung
Kong Graduate School of Business, developing busily towards a holistic
vision of Industry 4.0, provides a powerful platform for cultivating Confucian
entrepreneurs, not least with its emphasis on a “new business civilization”
with spiritual roots in Confucian business ethics.