Abstract: Being the foundational ethics in China, Confucianism is a civilizing system, not a religion. Confucianism has no church, a fact that determines some significant characters of traditional Chinese politics and government. In China, government and civilizing system are synthesized into a coherent body of governance which plays a dual role of governing and cultivating as an authority. The relationship between government and society is one of both competition and cooperation.
Keywords:civilizing system, civilizing government, shared body and separate functions between cultivative system and state