鴉片戰爭以後，沒落的儒家被視為與現代化根本不相容。但是，二次大戰後，儒家在工業東亞又有一些新發展、新契機。本文主旨在於探討工業東亞現在這個模式將來對中國大陸、甚至歐美可能產生那種類型的挑戰或提供的借鏡。本文指出工業東亞發展的模式和西方最大的不同是，它是在以前受儒家文化或儒教影響非常大的社會出現。從歷史上來看，十三世紀的中國、十五世紀的韓國朝鮮朝、十七世紀德川幕府的日本，在西方文化撞擊東方以前，都是受儒家文化的影響，特別是在政治文化方面。當然，中國除儒家外，還有佛教、道教等民間信仰，日本有神道教、佛教，韓國有巫教、佛教的影響，但是他們政治文化、家庭制度，以及社會文化精英（知識份子）所受的正式教育等多半是儒家的薰陶。本文說明工業東亞興起的儒家因素及其涵義。

　　　　　The rise of Confucian East Asia suggests that traditions are present as active agents in modernity and, by implication, the modernizing process can assume different culture forms. Notwithstanding the established fact that modernization as the most dynamic economical, political and social force for transforming the world in human history originated in Western Europe, it was in its inception a mixture of conflictual and even contradictory orientations. If we have conceptual difficulty generalizing about British, French and German modernities, American modernity must be treated as a separate case. We can, therefore, characterize the story of modernization as a master narrative containing a variety of globally significant local knowledge. Precisely because an overwhelming majority of cases of local knowledge that are globally significant are Western (Western European and North American) in origin, the phenomenon of East Asian modernity is particularly intriguing. With a view toward the future, it seems reasonable to expect an increasing number of cases of normal or even exemplary modernity will come from the non-Western world.