China's oldest and greatest philosopher, Kong Zi, known in the West by his Latinized name Confucius , was an obscure and unsuccessful scholar. Born in 551 BC, during the so-called Warring States Period, he lived in an age of petty kingdoms where life was blighted by constant war, feuding and social disharmony. Confucius simply saw that society was something that could be improved if individuals behaved properly. Harking back to an earlier, mythic age of peace and social virtues, he preached adherence to ritual and propriety as the supreme answer to the horrifying disorder of the world as he found it. During his lifetime he wandered from court to court attempting to teach rulers a better way to rule, though, like his contemporary Socrates far away in Greece, he was largely ignored by men in power. In the centuries after his death, however, Confucianism, as reflected in the Analects , a collection of writings on his life and sayings compiled by disciples, became the most influential and fundamental of Chinese philosophies.

Never a religion in the sense of postulating a higher deity, Confucianism is rather a set of moral and social values designed to bring the ways of citizens and governments into harmony with each other, and with their ancestors. Through proper training in the scholarly classics and rigid adherence to the rules of propriety, including ancestor-worship, the superior man could attain a level of moral righteousness which would, in turn, assure a stable and righteous social order. As a political theory Confucianism called for the "wisest sage" , the one whose moral sense was most refined, to be ruler. With a good ruler, one who practised the virtuous ways of his ancestors and was exemplary in terms of the five Confucian virtues (benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom and trustworthiness), the world and society would naturally be in order. Force, the ultimate sanction, would be unnecessary. As Confucius said:

Just as the ruler genuinely desires the good, the people will be good. The virtue of the ruler may be compared to the wind and that of the common people to the grass. The grass under the force of the wind cannot but bend.

Gods play no part in this structure - man is capable of perfection in his own right, given a superior ruler whose virtues are mirrored in the behaviour of his subjects. Instead of God, five hierarchical relationships are the prerequisites for a well-ordered society, and given proper performance of the duties entailed in these, society should be "at ease with itself". The five relationships outline a strict structure of duty and obedience to authority: ruler to ruled; son to father; younger brother to older, wife to husband and, the only equal relationship, friend to friend. The intention is to create order and stability through rule by a moral elite, though in practice adherence to the unbending hierarchy of these relationships as well as to the precepts of filial piety has justified a form of totalitarian rule throughout Chinese history. The supreme virtue of the well-cultivated man and woman was always obedience .

From the time of the Han dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) onwards, Confucianism became institutionalized as a system of government which was to prevail in China for two thousand years. With it, and with the notion of the scholar-official as the ideal administrator, came the notorious Chinese bureaucracy . Men would study half their lives in order to pass the imperial examinations and attain a government commission. These examinations were rigid tests of the scholar's knowledge of the Confucian classics. Right up until the beginning of the twentieth century, power in China was wielded through a bureaucracy steeped in the classics of rites and rituals written five hundred years before Christ.

The Confucian ideal ruler, of course, never quite emerged (the emperor was not expected to sit the exams) and the scholar-officials often deteriorated into corrupt bureaucrats and exploitative landlords. Furthermore, the Confucian ideals of submission to authority would not seem to have much of a shelf-life at the end of the twentieth century. On the other hand, with its emphasis on community and social cohesion , Confucianism has played an enormous role in keeping China free of the bigotry and religious fanaticism that have been bringing war to Europe for two thousand years. And today it is clear that Confucius does still have a role to play, not least in his new encarnation as the embodiment of the much trumpeted "Asian values" , namely, the non-confrontational (and undemocratic) system of government. On the grass-roots level, too, old practices such as ancestor-worship within the family are making a comeback. Now that the latest foreign religion of Marxism has been thoroughly discredited, it appears that Confucianism is simply reoccupying its rightful position.