The thought of social criticism in East Han Dynasty was a large-scale ideological movement in the ancient history of China. Because it was the intellectuals’ critique to the system with reason and consciousness for the first-time since the establishment of the absolutely centralized Qin and Han Dynasties, this movement had an obviously rational and constructive color in contrast with the unruliness and destruction of the spontaneous revolts of the lower masses. It struck the closed official ideology of research of Confucian writings and animadvert on the social crises, not only providing the impetus and the foundation to the unborn reform of the new dynasties, but also influencing the history of thoughts and therefore. It became a transitional stage from the research of Confucian writings in Han Dynasties to Xuan Xue (dark learning) in Wei-Jin period, having an important significance for our cognition.
The rapid development of East Asia’s economy during the past decades challenges Max Weber’s thesis, and causes wide discussions in our academic circles. However, scholars pays too much attention to the Confucian ethics when they explain the reasons of the development. Even by this way, they don’t surpass Weber’s and fall into serious logic contradictions. They can’t explain why it is today that Confucianism plays a role in economy in its history of thousands of years. Based on the analysis of Singapore model, This paper believes that the fundamental motive force is the objective historic development of capitalist productive relation and its spread in the whole world though the Confucian tradition brought some characteristics to the modernization of some countries in the area.
