Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.7, 2014

Ideological Expectations for Value Consensus in Chinese Society

(Abstract)

Fan Hao

As shown in surveys, the ideological trend among the masses in contemporary China is going on a shift from pluralism to a focus on duality. We are entering a sensitive and critical period for the formation of our value consensus. The formation of a consensus or common understanding on values has to answer three basic questions: What is “common” in this consensus? How is this “understanding” arrived at? And what gives the “values” legitimacy? Based on the survey information, the argument of this essay is that what is “common” is “ethics”; the “understanding” is arrived at “spiritually”; and the values are legitimated in terms of the true home of the national culture of the Chinese. There are three major ideological expectations for the value consensus of the masses in contemporary China: the expectation of ethical enlightenment, with the theme of turning “I” into “we”; the expectation of a spiritual baptism that pursues the “unity of the single and the universal”; and the expectation of the endeavor to “return to one’s true home.” Its particular content is as follows: to protect ethical existence and undertake a second enlightenment in terms of ethical consciousness of the nation, the family and the group; to sublate the atomistic exploration of the theory and mode of a rationalist ethics and to carry out the “spiritual” construction of the three great ethical entities of the society, the state and the family; and to return home to the national cultural tradition and ethics and build value legitimacy. These three major expectations congeal into three ideas: to protect ethics; to revivify the “spirit”; and to return “home.”