Economic Thought, Confidence of Way and Historical Evolution (Symposium)

Ma Tao proposes that the closed geographic environment has determined the characteristics of the traditional Chinese economic thought for the total political system and state-as-standard, and determined an economic structure of mixed ownership and the historical-cultural foundation with Confucian ethics as the stem. Zhong Xiangcai puts forward that, with the establishment of the feudal state, there are both individualism and holism in methodology of traditional Chinese economic thought. It is the key to truly step into modern current for the Chinese civilization to realize a scientific combination of holism and individualism in economic methodology under the historical condition of a fast development of social economy. Song Bingtao and Zhang Ting probe the historical gene of East-West civilization division from Greece-Hebrew confluence and China’s change from Shang to Zhou Dynasties, and believe that the difference of the routes of East-West evolution of civilization can be expounded by the difference of success or failure of the construction of public economic system, thus to criticize the wrong idea of the West-centralism and to probe the modernization transformation of Chinese civilization. Zhou Jianbo holds that, because of the difference of geographical environment and soil composition which formed different cultural styles and roads of development in the East and the West, the most important character of Chinese culture formed a cultural tradition of attaching importance to ties of blood and the state because of the early disintegration of meta-blood countryside communes and, at the same time, demonstrates the special cultural gene of Chinese road of development through the influence of dissemination of Buddhism into Chinese society in middle-ancient period.