Confucianism, as the typical Chinese thought, has influenced the people's attitude toward life, set the patterns of living and the standards of social values in China, Japan, Korea, and the other Oriental countries historically. Confucian ethical teachings include the traditional values such as benevolence & humaneness (Ren), righteousness (Yi), ritual & etiquette (Li), love within the family (Xiao), loyalty to the state (Zhong), honesty & trustworthiness (Xin) etc.
This paper presents the results of comparative analysis of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean values based on the East Asian values survey conducted with the face-to-face interview in the mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan from October 2002 to November 2003. Data analysis in this study was mainly focusing on some aspects of people's attitudes toward family, marriage, gender, traditional values using correspondence analysis. Except general pattern classification based on “Traditional-Modern” axis, the relationship between people's attitudes and their attribute variables such as gender and age have also been identified.
