Confucianism, Capitalism and Finance in China

Catalog description

This travel course is designed to allow students to examine the symbiosis between Confucian- Communist ethics and economic and financial development in a variety of urban settings. This course looks at how Confucian ethics and social structure interact with a Chinese Communist political structure resulting in an intricate combination of a top-down partially market-oriented economic structure, which is nevertheless characterized by centralized control of financial resources. We will see how this plays out in different Chinese cities - some organized completely in terms of state capitalism, others fueled primarily by relatively free capital markets integrated globally, while yet others represent a mixture of private enterprise operating with private financial resources in the shadow of the official financial system.