Here’s a piece from China Daily, discussing how Chinese who have left China to study and work in the US are now returning to China (and Taiwan – the story is clearly treating Taiwan as a part of China) in pursuit of new job opportunities.  These returnees are referred to as "turtles" (a pun on "return" in Chinese") or "sea turtles" since they are returning from across the sea. 

     What is especially interesting about the piece is that some significant number of returnees leave a spouse (usually a wife) and children behind in the US, mostly for reasons of better educational opportunities here.  As one mother reports:

 "Our main reason for not going back [to Taiwan] together is our child. We want
her to go school here," says Diana Huang of her 15-year-old, American-born
daughter.

    This tells us something about what globalization has become, not only a world-wide division of labor, but also an international division of economic life from social life: jobs and career advancement in China/Taiwan; school and child-rearing in the US.  This obviously puts a lot of strain on marital fidelity (which is already under siege in China, as seen by the new social phenomenon of  written "fidelity agreements" among Chinese couples).  Global separation, as the "sea turtle" article suggests, seems to increase the risk of divorce.  And all of this, of course, puts a great deal of stain on children:

 Besides the high risk of divorce, children are often already suffering the
family’s separation. Though the parents are living across the globe so their
children can have a better education, "many such children are like living in
single-parent families," Huang says. 

   Overall, this also shows us how contemporary China is no more Confucian than any other part of the globe.  Even though the government keeps trying to invoke the Confucian tradition, as if it was somehow an unbroken practice from antiquity to today, political and economic forces have fundamentally undermined the social basis for living in a manner that even comes close to a Confucian standard.   

    The "sea turtle" separation problem really comes down to a contradiction between what is best economically and what is best socially.  I imagine that if faced with this kind of choice, a modern Confucian would resist splitting up a family.  Yes, in traditional China, a man could leave and find work in places other than his home town or province.  Confucius himself moved from place to place to work.  But the culture then was constructed to support such male mobility: an extended family would maintain a sense of continuity for children.  And, whatever his work situation, a father was still responsible for the correct moral education of his children (though the father himself should not, according to Confucius, be the direct teacher of his children, he must behave in a manner that reinforces the moral education the child is receiving from competent teachers).

    Modern, global separation is rather unlike the peripatetic Confucius.  While the impulse to keep children in the US for their education seems to be fulfilling a Confucian impulse, the social dynamics of the separation appear to work against instilling the values of Duty and Humanity that are the primary goals of a Confucian education.  If well-paid, China-based fathers are being unfaithful to their American-based wives, and the children become aware of that dereliction of familial Duty, then the economic gain of the separation is overwhelmed by social-moral loss. 

    Now, I am sure that there are many good and hard-working and faithful Chinese husbands and wives who can manage the rigors of global separation.  But, as the story suggests, the culturally significant number of cases of divorce and marital breakdown would likely lead a modern-day Confucian to counsel against risking the disintegration of family ties in the pursuit of economic gain.  Better to be somewhat less well off materially if that means greater ease in nurturing family roots.

    It is hard to live up to what Confucius taught.  It was hard in his time (he, himself, felt that he never achieved full Humanity) and it is hard now.  But, given the ebbs and flows of globalization, I do not see that people in China, or people of Chinese descent, are any more successful at working toward Confucian ideals than any other set of people who take their social duties seriously.  The sad tale of the "sea turtles" shows how remote those ideals are.