7 - Confucian Legal Culture and the Regional Response to the Criminalization of Cartel Conduct

Summary

Chapter 7 explores how the legal cultures in East Asia relate to criminal cartel sanctions. For context, the chapter retraces the incorporation of Confucian ethics in the criminal codes of ancient China. This exercise indicates the possibility of stigmatizing cartels on the moral ground that they constitute improper profit-making contrary to the principle of righteousness. The chapter submits that debates concerning the morality of and prohibition of cartels in East Asia are properly informed by an understanding of Confucian norms—including not only those that allow an actor to achieve virtue internally but also those associated with one’s status and the maintenance of harmonious social order externally. It is submitted that condemning cartel conduct and characterizing it as morally wrongful requires a conception that goes beyond individualist assumptions and calculations. In East Asia, the likely effectiveness of criminal sanctions targeting cartel behaviour can be enhanced if the moral wrongfulness of such behaviour is properly defined, and if its immoral character becomes widely recognized and internalized.