There is a strong Eurocentric belief that Western civilisation represents the pinnacle of success that all other cultures ought to emulate.
Even a cursory glance at most texts in the history of economic thought would erroneously suggest that China had little to contribute. An anti-Eastern bias is found in Weber's (1951) argument that Confucianism and Taoism, while not antithetical to wealth accumulation, lacked the work ethic and the drive to innovate of Protestantism.
This is all the more curious when one considers that China had the most advanced economy on the planet prior to the Industrial Revolution, and thus must have had something positive to contribute.In Beijing today, we find evidence of Western ‘cultural imperialism' with children eating McDonald's for lunch, going to watch the latest Disney film, and listening to Chinese popular music with new lyrics superimposed on American melodies. Yet if we reversed our cultural lens, we would see Western culture has long been influenced by China: moveable type, paper money, gunpowder, the crossbow, the decimal system, vaccination and the suspension bridge all trace their origins to China (Temple, 1998). Chinese martial arts through the Hong Kong studios are seen widely around the world and their stars (Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Michelle Yeoh) have entered the global mainstream. Chinese cuisine is found in every middle-American town and the extent of Chinese cultural influence ranks with only Japanese, French and Indian culture as being able to compete on the world stage with the American variety.
Yet culture has a profound influence on economies and many problems we see in imposing supposedly superior Western solutions onto other regions lie in a failure to understand this basic principle. Capitalism in the United States has been shaped by culture just as capitalism in Europe and Asia are different because of cultural differences, and it is to the Chinese business culture we now turn.