Core Socialist Values

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If our 1.3 billion citizens and 82 million Party members as well as overseas Chinese can achieve consensus, we will constitute a powerful force [...]  We must realize that people from different localities and social strata who have different backgrounds and occupations think differently. We must therefore consider: where can we find consensus? Where can we allow differences to persist? [4]

List of Values

The twelve Core Socialist Values are:

Core Socialist Values
Jian Guo Men Biao Yu .jpg
Statue listing the twelve Core Socialist Values of the Chinese Communist Party

Program

A poster in Dalian promoting the twelve Core Socialist Values. She Hui Zhu Yi He Xin Jie Zhi Guan .jpg
A poster in Dalian promoting the twelve Core Socialist Values.
Giant poster listing the twelve Core Socialist Values of the Chinese Communist Party (2017). She Hui Zhu Yi He Xin Jia Zhi Guan .jpg
Giant poster listing the twelve Core Socialist Values of the Chinese Communist Party (2017).

The program called for the local governments to "organize moral education campaigns", and for media organizations to "practice self-discipline". In addition, artists were asked to promote the values, while party members and state officials are expected to put these new values in practice. [3] It also called on schools to incorporate them, with the Ministry of Education issuing a document in 2014 requesting all educational institutions promote them. [3] Xi Jinping expressed in a high-level meeting that promotional campaigns for 'Core Socialist Values' should be thorough, to the extent that public support for Chinese-style socialism will be "as ubiquitous as the air". [5] Another quote from 2014 further elaborates his position:

We need to energetically foster and promote core socialist values; promptly establish a value system that fully reflects Chinese characteristics, our national identity, and the features of the times; and strive to occupy the leading position on this issue. Ethical values play a very important role among core values. Without morals, a country cannot thrive, and its people cannot stand upright. Whether or not a nation or an individual has a strong sense of identity largely depends on their morals. If our people cannot uphold the moral values that have been formed and developed on our own soil, and instead indiscriminately and blindly parrot Western moral values, then it will be necessary to genuinely question whether we will lose our independent ethos as a country and a people. Without this independent ethos, our political, intellectual, cultural and institutional independence will have the rug pulled out from under it. [4]

The 2015 National Security Law's article on cultural security requires the state to uphold socialist core values. [6]

In 2016, Hunan Province officials responded to the campaign by organizing a series of dance routines to "spread the values" and express their support for the CCP. [7]

In June 2017, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television issued several notices that intended to further restrict freedom of the press. One of the notices, with a patriotic bent, demanded broadcasters promote core values in their programs and "forcefully oppose" content that celebrates "money worship, hedonism, radical individualism and feudal thought." [8]

Reception

Blank pieces of paper stuck to the characters "Zi You " ("Freedom"), part of the Core Socialist Values, on the slogan board at Xidian University, in a November 2022 protest Blank Paper Stuck on "Freedom" the Slogan Board in Xidian University as Protest, Nov 27 2022 (cropped).jpg
Blank pieces of paper stuck to the characters "自由" ("Freedom"), part of the Core Socialist Values, on the slogan board at Xidian University, in a November 2022 protest

Shiyuan Hao considers the program of "great significance" for a "multi-national country like China", and for the creation of both a "harmonious culture" and a "creative breeding ground" for cultural diversity. [9]

Michael Gow considers that, compelled to align its interests with the "broader interests of the Chinese people and different groups", the program for Core Socialist Values might best be analyzed as a shift from a focus on the economy to cultural power; or, if one wished to extrapolate, an attempt to cement legitimacy through the creation of a new cultural order, consent to which might be regarded as "essential for long-term social stability". [10]

Liu Ruisheng, a researcher of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences School of Journalism, criticizes the governments attempts more generally as simply lacking the same depth of value promotion in the west, which is "concealed" in the social sciences, education, religion, and entertainment, whereas the CCP presents ideology ad hoc. He is still pro-CCP however. [11]

Frank N. Pieke refers to the values as Confucian and as otherwise lacking any specifically socialist content, [2] but then as Michael Gow points out most Chinese do share a "broadly accepted, common-sense understanding of Confucian values." [10]

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 "Friendship", which in the Chinese original is 友善 , is more closely translated as "friendliness" or "amicability". In other words, the word normally refers to a personal attitude, not a type of interpersonal relationship.

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References

  1. 1 2 Zhao, Kiki (1 September 2016). "China's 'Core Socialist Values,' the Song-and-Dance Version". The New York Times . ISSN   0362-4331. Archived from the original on 30 July 2017. Retrieved 23 May 2020.
  2. 1 2 Pieke, Frank N. (28 July 2016). Knowing China. Cambridge University Press. p. 24. ISBN   978-1-107-13274-0.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Zhao, Xu (29 April 2016). Competition and Compassion in Chinese Secondary Education. Springer. doi:10.1007/978-1-137-47941-9. ISBN   978-1-137-47941-9.
  4. 1 2 Xi Jinping, How to Deepen Reform Comprehensively, Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2014.
  5. ↑ Lam, Willy Wo-Lap (12 March 2015). Chinese Politics in the Era of Xi Jinping: Renaissance, Reform, or Retrogression? (1st ed.). Routledge. p. 283. doi:10.4324/9781315719368. ISBN   978-1-315-71936-8.
  6. ↑ Yi, Guolin (2024). "From "Seven Speak-Nots" to "Media Surnamed Party": Media in China from 2012 to 2022". In Fang, Qiang; Li, Xiaobing (eds.). China under Xi Jinping: A New Assessment. Leiden University Press. p. 83. ISBN   9789087284411.
  7. ↑ Chen, Te-Ping (2 September 2016). "Dancing Tool: China Uses Dance to Promote 'Socialist Values'" . The Wall Street Journal . Archived from the original on 7 November 2016. Retrieved 23 May 2020.
  8. ↑ Miller, Matthew; Zhang, Min (3 June 2017). "China's broadcast regulator, tightening control of content, promotes 'core socialist values'". Reuters . Archived from the original on 7 June 2017. Retrieved 23 May 2020.
  9. ↑ Hao, Shiyuan (30 November 2015). How the Communist Party of China Manages the Issue of Nationality: An Evolving Topic. China Academic Library. Springer. pp. 241, 247. doi:10.1007/978-3-662-48462-3. ISBN   978-3-662-48462-3.
  10. 1 2 Gow, Michael (2 January 2017). "The Core Socialist Values of the Chinese Dream: towards a Chinese integral state" (PDF). Critical Asian Studies . 49 (1): 92–116. doi:10.1080/14672715.2016.1263803. ISSN   1467-2715. S2CID   157324954.
  11. ↑ Lynch, Daniel C. (11 March 2015). China's Futures: PRC Elites Debate Economics, Politics, and Foreign Policy. Stanford University Press. p. 143. ISBN   978-0-8047-9437-4.

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