Among the lesser known factoids of history is that there was actually a guy named Confucius and he wasn't trapped inside a Fortune Cookie factory.
Now we could argue about specific principles (not much into the whole ancestor worship thing myself) but my main point is that you can make a very compelling case that he is the inventor of the Professional State Bureaucracy. In it's simplest form this seems like an obviously good idea. Instead of giving power to make stuff work to a big scary guy with a club because they are big and scary and have a club, why not give it to a guy who has demonstrated some competence making stuff work?
There is a problem with this concept in operation that China struggled with again and again. Instead of measuring actual competence and holding people accountable for their performance (which back in the day involved looking at your still twitching, blood gushing body from an unusual perspective) the Professional State Bureaucracy substituted rote memorization of approved texts in prestigious academies and nepotism.