Knowing Honor and Shame, Manifesting Virtue for the World - Graduate Education Reader on the Socialist Concept of Honor and Shame

Author: Yu Xinhui
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-05-01
Features: Building a well-off society in an all-round way and accelerating the modernization of socialism require us to place the development of advanced socialist culture in a prominent position. We must focus on improving people's quality and promoting their all-round development, strengthen ideological and moral construction, develop education, science, and culture, and cultivate socialist citizens with ideals, morality, culture, and discipline.
First, we must improve the quality of the entire nation. The competition of comprehensive national strength in today's world is, at its core, a competition of national quality. We must fully leverage the foundational role of education in improving people's quality, adhere to prioritizing education, comprehensively promote quality-oriented education, increase efforts to coordinate urban-rural education development, and increase investment in compulsory education, especially in rural areas, so that every school-aged youth can receive quality education. We must strive to build a learning society, establish the concept of lifelong learning in the whole society, and enable everyone to continuously acquire new knowledge and enhance their skills through various forms and channels of learning and training, keeping pace with the march of progress. We must vigorously promote the spirit of science, popularize scientific knowledge, establish scientific concepts, and advocate scientific methods, striving to create a positive atmosphere in the whole society where people learn science, believe in science, and rely on science, thereby promoting the improvement of the scientific quality of the entire nation. We must firmly grasp the correct direction of cultural development, actively promote cultural innovation, vigorously develop cultural undertakings and industries, and provide the public with more and better spiritual and cultural products, fully playing the positive role of culture in enlightening minds, cultivating sentiments, imparting knowledge, and inspiring people.
Second, we must cultivate a large number of outstanding talents. The prosperity of a nation depends on its talent. We must comprehensively implement the strategy of building a talent-powered nation, vigorously strengthen the capacity-building of human resources, increase investment, improve work measures, focus on cultivating people's learning ability and practical ability, and strive to enhance their innovative ability, so as to train a large number of outstanding talents. We must further optimize the environment for talent development, select talent without discrimination, establish and improve systems and mechanisms for nurturing, attracting, gathering, and utilizing talent, and create a social atmosphere that encourages talent to pursue their careers, supports them in achieving success, and helps them excel, opening up a situation where people are fully utilized, talents are fully leveraged, the right people are in the right positions, and outstanding talent emerges in abundance.
Third, we must foster a sound social atmosphere. The social atmosphere is a key indicator of the level of social civilization and a concentrated reflection of social value orientation. Establishing a sound social atmosphere is a strong desire of the broad masses of the people and also an inevitable requirement for the smooth development of the economy and society. In our socialist society, the boundaries between right and wrong, good and evil, and beauty and ugliness must absolutely not be blurred. What to uphold and what to oppose, what to advocate and what to resist, must be clear and distinct. We must vigorously promote patriotism, collectivism, and socialist thought in the whole society, advocate the basic moral norms of socialism, uphold justice and combat injustice, promote virtue and punish evil, and foster the formation and development of a sound social atmosphere. We must educate the broad masses of cadres and the people, especially the youth, to establish a socialist sense of honor and shame: taking love for the motherland as honor and harming the motherland as shame, taking serving the people as honor and turning away from the people as shame, taking the pursuit of science as honor and ignorance as shame, taking hard work as honor and laziness as shame, taking unity and mutual assistance as honor and harming others for personal gain as shame, taking honesty and integrity as honor and forgetting principles for personal gain as shame, taking adherence to the law as honor and breaking the law as shame, and taking hard struggle as honor and extravagance and debauchery as shame. (This is part of a speech by Comrade Hu Jintao when he participated in a joint group discussion of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference at the fourth session of the tenth term among members of the Democratic League and the China Association for Promoting Democracy. Originally published in the "Qiushi" magazine, September 2006, pp. 3-5.)