The ethical and social tradition rooted in the teachings of Confucius that became the moral grammar, statecraft, and family ethic of China and much of East Asia -- made the doctrine of one of history’s longest-running examination-based bureaucracies, attacked in the 20th century as the dead hand of the past, and invoked again today.
For roughly thirteen centuries, the surest path to power in China ran through a single set of books. For many ambitious men, office meant mastering the Confucian classics and passing examinations on them. No tradition has shaped more human lives by sheer reach: Confucianism became the moral grammar of China, Korea, Vietnam, and Japan, the ethic taught in families and the standard demanded of rulers. Then, in the 20th century, reformers turned on it as the cage of a backward society, and one campaign tried to burn it out of memory. It survived all of them. Today China's leaders invoke Confucius again, which is exactly why the old arguments about him have not stopped.