Chinese President Announces List of Virtues: Good Start, But He's Missing a Few

The Associated Press reports that China's president President Hu Jintao has unveiled a list of virtues during a meeting of Parliament that ended this week.

On Wednesday, the aphorisms were issued on a $1 poster with plain, black Chinese characters above a photo of the Great Wall. 

Here's the complete list which I found at (of all places) Al Jazeera's English-language website (so take it with a small grain of salt until it's been confirmed by another source).      

Hu Jintao's List of Virtues

• Love, do not harm the motherland.
• Serve, don't disserve the people.
• Uphold science; don't be ignorant & unenlightened.
• Work hard; don't be lazy and hate work.
• Be united and help each other; don't gain benefits at the expense of others.
• Be honest and trustworthy, not profit-mongering at the expense of your values.
• Be disciplined and law-abiding instead of chaotic and lawless.
• Know plain living and hard struggle, do not wallow in luxuries and pleasures.

As a list of generalized civic and business virtues, I have no problem with this list.  Most of the listed virtues are, indeed, worthwhile virtues.

Of course, reasonable minds can differ on what it means to "love" and "not harm" the "motherland."  In the case of China, I can think of more than a few governmental, political, and economic reforms that would greatly help the "motherland," but I suspect that the leadership in China would not be on the same page.

I have a little problem with the last virtue:  "Know plain living and hard struggle, do not wallow in luxuries and pleasures."

"Hard struggle" is overrated.  And while "wallowing" in "luxuries and pleasures" is overrated too, it is not necessarily a vice. 

The beauty of the free market system -- capitalism if you will, President Jintao -- is that people are powerfully motivated to provide things their fellow human beings want and need, not only by their own "hard struggle" to feed, clothe and house themselves and their families, but also by the hope that with hard work and diligence they may someday "wallow" in a few "luxuries and pleasures" of their own.

Take away someone's hope of eventually being able to "wallow" in "luxuries and pleasures" and you kill part of their joy and their motivation to work.

Jintao's virtues are secular and read almost like a business code of ethics.  The list of virtues is obviously an attempt to compensate for the lack of any religious code of ethics in a communist society:

"In our socialist society we must not allow the boundaries to be blurred when it comes to right and wrong, evil and kindness, beauty and ugliness," Hu told a March 4 parliamentary seminar, according to the Communist Party newspaper.

Of course, a more complete set of rules for living can be found in the Bible's Ten Commandments:

1. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.
2. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord, thy God, in vain.
3. Thou shalt keep the Sabbath day holy.
4. Thou shalt honor thy father and mother that thou mayest live long upon the earth.
5. Thou shalt not kill.
6. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
7. Thou shalt not steal.
8. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house.
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his cattle nor anything that is his.

Or the Ten Commandments can be condensed down into two major commandments (Mark 12:30-31):

1.  "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength."

2.  "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." 

Using this moral code as a standard, what is missing from President Jintao's list of virtues?

1.  Reverence for God, or acknowledgment of any higher power.

2.  Specific admonitions to honor one's parents and not to kill, steal, commit adultery, bear false witness, or covet others' things.  (However, in fairness to President Jintao, these specifics may be covered by the broader virtues like "serve, don't disserve the people," "be united and help each other; don't gain benefits at the expense of others," and "be honest and trustworthy, not profit-mongering at the expense of your values.")

Also missing from Jintao's list of virtues is anything as powerful as the New Testament's Golden Rule ("You shall love your neighbor as yourself.")  Although Jintao uses words like "serve" and "help each other,"), the Golden Rule sets the bar higher. 

In the final analysis, I am glad that anyone in China's leadership is encouraging positive virtues, particularly minus the more strident "virtues" of former communist leader Mao Zedong, such as "Political power comes out of the barrel of a gun."

There are many troubling, shallow, horrifying, and aberrant things that dominate the daily news cycle.  For a discussion of positive virtues to dominate the news from China for a day, or even for an hour, is good news indeed.

Comments

[reliapundit]

"Do not do unto others what you would not have others do unto you."

everything else is allowed.

the rest is commentary.

[David F. Diamond]

How about Geo. Washington's Rules of Civility?