Abstract

Chinese religion is deeply wedded with the economy and reflects the historical completion of the Chinese market economy in the Qing dynasty. This is where the distinction between market economy and capitalism comes into full significance. Weber already recognized that China had developed a strong commercial culture and markets. Hence, implicitly he distinguished between markets and capitalism. Yet his focus on European history undermined this analytical distinction. But it is essential to explain the apparent contradiction between the two narratives about Confucianism and markets: the Confucian failure story and the Confucian capitalism story. Weber failed both to adequately recognize the nature of Chinese religion and the nature of the Chinese market economy as ritual economy because he projected his grand narrative on capitalist rationalization on China. Chinese religion, in conjunction with the philosophy of Confucianism, may be reinvented today as a way of expressing beliefs about the sacredness of certain pivotal human relations to the world, which enable humans to conduct good life in a way of acting reasonably and responsibly.