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In a report at the Party Congress last month, the Party vowed "to strengthen citizenship education and establish the ideas of socialist democracy and the rule of law, freedom and equality, fairness and justice."
This is undoubtedly a sign of progress. But having lived under autocratic rule for so long, the Chinese people no longer know what the term "citizen" means, let alone what rights it entails. The Chinese people are thus poorly equipped to pursue a civil society. There is still a long way to go.
Under Chinese law, anyone who is a national of the People's Republic of China is considered a citizen. Chinese citizens are all equal before the law, enjoying the rights as well as the obligations stipulated by the Constitution.
It is necessary to clarify this premise before implementing civic education and attempting to instill civic virtues. The failure to put this premise into practice is the fundamental reason that previous efforts to educate the public in citizenship have not yielded the expected results.
There are many factors resulting in a poor understanding of citizenship in China. The most fundamental is the lack of a democratic tradition. People have been treated as serfs, with no sense of ownership; rather they have lived under the obligation of obedience.
With no sense of civil rights, civil obligations and responsibilities are nonsense. The former and the latter are actually mutually dependent and complementary, with the rights being most basic. The premise upon which citizens carry out their obligations is that they first have rights as owners of the country and society.
It's hard to image that anyone could wholeheartedly love a nation in which one had no right of ownership, would truly support a government to which one could not elect the leadership, and would obey laws and regulations under which one's own rights were not respected. For example, we do not require foreigners to serve in the military, as they are not Chinese citizens and have neither the rights nor the obligations of citizens under China's laws.
If one has no knowledge of one's civil rights, or has no way to exercise those rights since they exist only on paper, one will not even know when those rights are being trampled on. One may also hold a negative attitude and desire to escape from one's civil obligations and responsibilities. People will not positively carry out their civil obligations if their civil rights are not assured.
It is characteristic of an autocratic society that civil rights are stepped on while heavy civil obligations and responsibilities are imposed. Asking the citizens to carry out these duties is in itself unfair. It will make their actions a mere performance and force the people to become cynical -- they know their so-called civil rights are just nonsense; they are unable to change the situation, but will not carry out their duties either. The absolute outcome of destroying the concept of "rights" is the fall of the concept of "obligations."
Based on these considerations, the statement made at the 17th Party Congress of the CCP last month is very wise and timely: "Making the citizens the owners is the essence and core ... We need to have a healthy democratic system, enrich our forms of democracy, widen the channels of democracy, implement democratic elections, decision making, management and supervision based on law; protect the people's rights to information, participation, expression and supervision." This is just the beginning, however.
Civil rights are still rarely addressed in the media or in official documents, even those concerning education in citizenship, where the issue of rights is often mentioned only superficially. This will easily stir up resistance from the people -- they will feel they are merely requested to do this and that, while protection of their fundamental rights is never discussed. Thus, the concept of civil obligations will be given only lip service without reaching the people's hearts.
Citizenship is a legal status, generally and universally applicable. People are equal before the law. Therefore, the law should not be entangled with the ideology of a political party or a religion.
This point determines the difference between citizenship education and political indoctrination. Citizenship education should not follow one party's ideology, for it has universal value and goes beyond a specific ideology. Teaching based on a party's ideology is political indoctrination. Thus, it is inappropriate to adopt Marxism or Mao Zedong thought and expect all citizens to have absolute faith in them.
As a legal status, one's citizenship should have nothing to do with one's political party, profession, race, gender, etc. The status of citizenship is a more general identity than the others, and is shared by a large population. The requirements for such a huge population should be general, realistic and basic.
They should include basic and bottom-line morals that can be promoted among the people, rather than high, idealistic morals that cannot be widely promoted -- such as high-sounding virtues like "unselfish sacrifice" and "not seeking fame and wealth" that were issued as guidelines by the CCP in 2001. If one pursues his or her reasonable interests legally, then the person is not violating civic virtues. We should not demand a citizen to act like a Party member or a religious practitioner.
The major tasks for civic education are to educate the people in the rights and duties of citizenship, to clarify that civic virtues are universal and basic morals, and to diminish the political or religious tone in instructing the people.
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(Tao Dongfeng is a professor in the Chinese Department of Capital Normal University in Beijing. He is also editor-in-chief of the scholarly periodical "Culture Research." This article is translated and edited from the Chinese by UPI Asia Online. ©Copyright Tao Dongfeng.)
