Confucianism is on every side in Taiwan. The enormous level of support for Chen Shui-bian once he was elected President, despite the fact that most of the electorate didn't vote for him, is Confucian respect for authority perceived as legitimately constituted. The power of the father in Taiwanese domestic life is a product of Confucian filial piety.
Whether or not these are entirely desirable characteristics in the modern age is another matter. Hardly a week goes by without foreigners in Taipei having to listen to tearful tales of paternal tyranny. Rote learning, and a disinclination to question what you are taught, are also Confucian characteristics. And traditional Confucianism has real problems with the ideals of women's rights, and the claims of feminism generally.
On the other hand, as Xinzhong Yao points out, many people claim that the East Asian economic miracle of the 1970s was a direct product of the Confucian virtues of self-sacrificing hard work and inter-personal trust and cooperation. Japan and Korea, after all, are other places where Confucianism is strong. Opponents dispute this, insisting that the arrival of western ideas and business methods has always resulted in a surge of interest and highly successful imitation in the Orient. They point out that Confucianism was held responsible for the decline of China in the nineteenth century by many of Sun Yat-sen's followers in the years leading up to the foundation of the republic in 1911 on the grounds that it suppressed individual initiative.
Either way, Confucius's teachings have always stressed humanity's control over its own destiny. It was not Confucianism, but a misunderstanding of Buddhism, that was responsible for the old western view that the East is characterized by a resigned and submissive fatalism.
Perhaps Confucianism will gain new adherents in the years to come. It is an ideal philosophical system for a secular world in search of stability, ecological sanity, and peace, and one that doesn't rely on doubtful religious concepts to sustain its credibility.
Ezra Pound, using apricot blossom in its traditional function in Chinese poetry as an emblem of learning, certainly believed that the creed would continue to live, and extend its influence from the Orient to the Occident. Pound has Confucius say in the closing lines of his poem,
"The blossoms of the apricot blow from the east to the west, And I have tried to keep them from falling."
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