Neo-Confucianism provided the basic ideology for China’s admiring neighbors – Japan, Korea, and Vietnam – until the advent of the West. Its tenets were highly appropriate to the settled, sophisticated agrarian civilizations of pre-nineteenth-century East Asia, for they knitted together society and polity in a manner calculated to promote stability and harmony.
在西方介入之前，新儒教为中国那些诚服的邻邦—日本、朝鲜和越南—提供了基本的意识形态。其原则在19世纪以前稳定、世故的东亚农业文明中备受推崇。因为它们精当地将社会和政治组织结合起来以促进稳定与和谐。