Confucian Values in the Contemporary Geoeconomic Context

Under diversification processes in contemporary geopolitics and geoeconomics, one may be more likely to expect an expansion of China’s economic, financial, and soft power rather than military or direct political one. Beijing’s diplomacy places emphasis on harmonizing relations among states based on Confucian wisdom and morality, while, compared to Western diplomacy, attaches relatively less importance to a rule-based normative order. China is likely to try to reassert in the foreseeable future its central, Sino-centric role in the Confucian-tradition space while globally spreading Confucian values through such projects and institutions of global leadership as the SCO, BRICS, AIIB, Confucius Institutes, etc. In particular, the Confucian Doctrine of the Mean, which implies a reasonable balance of interests and a “community of common destiny,” is effectively applied by Beijing to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank which represents a new global paradigm of international financial cooperation. At present, the Confucian-tradition holistic consciousness proves to be more friendly to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, associated with the widespread adoption of AI, than a typical Western mentality. The phenomenal success of Confucian-tradition economies modernization may, due to the synergy of national and borrowed value-motivational factors, trigger in new localized conditions, e.g., under the post-war realities of Ukraine.