Confucius' immediate objective: Xiaokang society

Though Confucius is honored in China as a saint of the teaching profession, yet it has been his political ideas, rather than his pedagogy, that produced the deepest influence upon Chinese society. His most famous political idea is xiaokang(comfortably off) society and datong world (a world of perfection), which signify two stages of social development.

Xiaokang society embodies Confucius's lower-end ideal. In one of his works, The Book of Rites, he pictured such a society as a society of private individuals where the people only cared for their own relatives, feeding their offspring and investing wealth and energy in their families; and where hereditary officialdom is practiced. This society is not “perfect" so much as orderly. It was merely Confucius' immediate objective.