Cirrus@Austlit

'Once accused for the inertia of Chinese feudalism in responding to Western modernity, Confucianism has been attributed to the resurgence of East Asian economies a century later. From the proposition of ‘Asian Values’ by then Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew in the 1990s to the establishment of Confucius Institutes globally since 2004 by ironically the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the notions of deference to paternal authority, educational emphasis and family values, have been coined under the umbrella of Confucianism. Within the mediascapes, such notions are often used casually to explain the differences between ‘Asian’ and ‘Western’ media. This topic has been receiving scattered scholarly attention with discussions on the ideological relevance and presence of the discourses of Confucianism within the dramatic television texts (Zhu 2008; Kang and Kim 2011; Liew 2011; Dissanayake 2012). Such culturalist explanations still pervade despite the evolution of more complex media industries, communicative technologies and diverse audiences.' (Jocelyn Yi-Hsuan Lai and Liew Kai Khiun, Introduction)