Abstract

After being introduced to the USA and the UK, Confucianism and Taoism are more and more popular and have more influence, which are reflected in the rising trend of the keywords related to Confucianism and Taoism in the Google English books from 1800s to 2000s. Based on corpora GBAE and GBBE, the author studies the diachronic spreading of Confucianism and Taoism in the UK and the USA. It is found that: (1) Confucianism and Taoism are more welcomed in the UK than in the USA; (2) compared with Taoism, Confucianism is more popular in the UK and the USA; (3) Confucius is more popular both in the UK and in the USA than Lao Tzu; and (4) the general spreading trend of Confucianism and Taoism is rising in 1810s–2000s in the UK and the USA. The author quantitatively answers the frequently asked questions related to the spreading of Confucianism and Taoism.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.