Confucian philosophy in the twentieth century has undergone significant changes which concerned its actual position in society and more evident fragmentation of understanding Confucianism by scholars. At the same time as the countries of East Asia, especially China, more opening up to the world and had to cope with what brought this strange world, also Confucian philosophical tradition must opened itself to this strange world and coped with him.
Confucianism had thus respond to the Western philosophical "tradition" and also had to take a attitude toward it for the relatively new phenomenon of democracy.