Zhang Zhidong's Thoughts Of Business Ethics

Zhang Zhidong enjoyed an eminent fame and was influential in the modern history of China. He played many roles in the late Qing Dynasty, such as a courageous adviser, the main force of Westernization Movement, influential political figure and so on. He, who was from traditional Confucian culture into China social modernization, swayed between traditional moral principles defense and innovation, and he had comprehensive and complicated thoughts. From the perspective of business ethics, combined the times when Zhang Zhidong lived and with westernization movement activities he did in social reproduction as a clue, the paper analyses the ethic basis on which his pursuit for prosperousness and powerfulness and nation saving with traditional Chinese values aided with modern Western as philosophical basis.Zhang Zhidong's business ethics lies mainly in his values of justice above material gains, his industrial structure values of equality between the incidental and fundamental, his values of victory through cooperation, his business values bases on good faith, and his financial values of "the application of money must be used" and other aspects. His vision into economic ethics mainly derived from his reflection into the valid facts in his times and the influence by his political and class stand and his knowledge. Therefore, these thoughts correspond to modernization, for they were in consistent with the law of social and history development while other which were inconsistent with the law of social and history development should be abandoned.