The Spread And Influence Of Western Fair Thought In China Since Modern Times

The problem of fairness is an ever hot topic in both Chinese and western history.People in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Period(770-221 BC)of China have been studying on it.The explanations of "gong","ping","zheng" and "yi" and the longing for harmonious society both showed people's yearning for fairness.In the west,the study dated back to ancient Egypt.Fairness was related to people's labor and resource allocation.With the development of society,especially the development of capitalist market economy,various theories have been formed in different periods.The thoughts of scholars from China and western countries are still instructive for China to understand and solve the problem of fairness under the condition of socialist market economy.Since the adoption of reform and opening up policy in the late 1970s,planned economy has transformed into socialist market economy.People's thoughts,the ways of social resource allocation and the distribution have become diversified.Since the legal environment and the operating procedure need to improve gradually,the income gap continues to widen,especially the gap led by non-market causes.It demonstrates that the Gini coefficient has surpassed the warning line.As the conflicts' nature of periodic and intensive appears,the problem of fairness has become a growing focus of attention.Apart from this,Chinese government also attaches importance to this problem.From adopting the policy"giving priority to efficiency with due consideration to fairness",to "stressing efficiency in the first distribution and fair in the second",then to "allocation to deal with the relationship between efficiency and fairness,more attention paid to fairness redistribution",the improvement of the policies has showed the determination of Chinese government to solve the problem of fairness.From the perspective of market economy,the paper not only summarizes the influence of western ideas of fairness spread in China,but also analyzes the historic environment,contents,medium,audience and the effects of these ideas spread at different periods in China.In this way,a lot of reference and inspiration can be drawn from this paper.Many research methods have been adopted in this paper:main western ideas on fairness spread in modern China are studied comprehensively from the perspective of history,politics and communication.Introduction and six chapters are included in the paper.The introduction provides a general description of the significance of the research,related theories and researches home and abroad,researches methods,structure and the concepts.The differences between fairness,justice and impartiality,and the types of fairness are pointed out in this part.Equality is demonstrated to be an important criterion to measure fairness.Almost all kinds of western ideas about fairness are summarized in this paper,and the main thoughts of fairness that spread in China are screened out,including thought of fairness of Christian Theology,thought of fairness of Contract Theory,thought of fairness of Utilitarianism,laski's thought of fairness of Democratic Socialism,Rawls's theory of distributive justice,Nozick's theory of right justice,Dworkin's theory of resources equality,and theory of pluralistic justice of Walzer and Millers.Although Marxist Fairness Thought was born in these ideas,the nature was entirely different.So,it is separately listed.Also,the background information is introduced.The influx of western thoughts of fairness was accompanied by the invasion of western powers.Back in the Han and Tang Dynasties(nearly 2000 years ago),Christian Theology was introduced to China.After the Opium War,with the appearance of the Bible in China,missionaries spread the ideas on fairness to Chinese by preaching directly,writing or translating related books,setting up mission schools or publishing related newspaper.On the one hand,because of the misleadingness and the negativity,the thoughts were used as a tool of cultural invasion by the western powers in order to enslave Chinese people.On the other hand,since the thoughts impacted the hierarchical order in feudal society,the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom learnt much from them."Equality under God" was an important development stage of the thoughts.The thought of fairness of Contract Theory was then spread into China as China's degree of semi-colony worsened.Although the invasion accelerated the disintegration of natural economy in China,it still promoted the development of commodity economy and the capitalism in China.As the representatives of new bourgeois' interests and aspirations,the bourgeois reformists believed that the western advanced science and technology and the political systems and cultures should be learnt.Gradually,evolution,the theory of nature rights and the separation of the executive,legislative and judicial powers were introduced into China.The thought of fairness of Contract Theory came from the thoughts of Hobbes,Locke and Rousseau,including "all men are created equal" and the theory of nature rights.In China,the early bourgeois reformists,such as Wang Tao,Zhen Guanying,He Qi and Hu Liyuan,spread the theory of nature rights.Then,bourgeois reformists,such as Kang Youwei,Liang Qichao and Yan Fu exerted great influence on the direct or indirect spread of the thought of fairness of Contract Theory.Bourgeois revolutionaries,such as Yang Tingdong,Zou Rong,Liu Guanghan,Chen Tianhua and Sun Yat-sen,also spread the thought of fairness of Contract Theory.As an ideological weapon of bourgeois reformists and revolutionaries to oppose the feudalism,the thought of fairness of Contract Theory promoted people's national consciousness and rights consciousness.However,it was used just as a tool.During the spreading process,the original idea of thought of fairness of Contract Theory was lost,so the negative effects were led.The craze for reforming society promoted the wide spread of thoughts of fairness in the New Culture Movement.During the period Marxism's Fairness Thoughts began to spread as well as the thought of fairness of utilitarianism.Marxists in early period,such as Li Dazhao,Li Da,Chen Tu-hsiu,Chen Wangdao and Mao Tse-tung,spread Marxism's Fairness Thoughts by publishing articles on newspaper,translating related books and setting up Marxism research institutes.Some people from the Kuomintang also promoted the spread,so did the argument between "problem and doctrine".Apart from this,Hu Shi and Gao Yihan spread the thoughts in the intellectual circle.At this period,Marxism's Fairness Thoughts were widely spread to eradicate the capitalist system of exploitation,and to achieve a better society of socialism and communism.At the theoretical level,the thought of fairness of utilitarianism was not only the intellectual resource of "democracy" during the May 4th Movement,but also the important content of "science",as well as the theoretical basis to reform national character and to increase national awareness of individual rights.Since Marxism's Fairness Thoughts pointed out the new developing direction of fair society,the influence continued to spread from the theory to the practice.In the 1930s and 1940s,Marxism's Fairness Thoughts played games with other thoughts of fairness,that was a battle of theory and practice in the aspect of institutional fairness among Marxism,liberalism(democratic socialism)and New Absolutism.Li Da,Li Yimang,Wu Liangping(Wu Liping),Guo Dali and Wang Yanan spread the Marxism's Fairness Thoughts by publishing articles,translating related books.During the 1930s and 1940s,the main part of liberalism was democratic socialism.The nature of democratic socialism was the reformism of bourgeoisie.Due to this,the so-called fair society in "planned democratic country" was impossible achieve.In this battle,Marxism(New Democracy)finally wined,which was the choice of history and people.There was a twist in the practice of Marxism's Fairness Thoughts 30 years after the founding of the PRC.After the relatively fair basic system was established,Marxism's FairnessThoughts was practically explored and took an unexpected turn,from the initial pursuit of equality to the wrong region of egalitarianism.During this period,the thought of fairness of institution and allocation were mainly spread.Marxism's Fairness Thoughts believed in socialist society,the principle of allocation was based on the rights and the principle of "distribution according to one's performance",while in communistic society,it was based on the principle of"distribution according to one's needs".Because of the influence of various subjective and objective factors,the thoughts were impacted by Chinese traditional thought of "Great Harmony"and egalitarianism.The spread of thoughts of fairness has a new atmosphere with the development of socialist market economy after the reform and opening up.Thus the paper attaches importance to the analysis on the thought of justice in nowadays China from the perspective of market economy.Besides,the impact of western thoughts of fairness will be analyzed too from the perspective of equality of starting point,equality of opportunity and the equality of outcome.During this period the spreading thoughts of fairness mainly consist of Rawls's theory of distributive justice,Nozick's theory of right justice,Dworkin's theory of resources equality and Walzer and Millers'theory of pluralistic justice.In the practice of reform and opening up,the Marxism's Fairness Thoughts have gained new development,and the developmented Fairness Thoughts of Marxism still occupy the leading position,more thought of fairness of other genres can be learnt to establish the theoretical system of fairness and justice under the socialist market economy.The spread of Marxism's Fairness Thoughts tell us that we should give full play to all kinds of communication subject' s potential in recent times,fully explore all kinds of traditional media and new medias' functions,and we also should pay attention to the practice of sinicization of Marxism's Fairness Thoughts,through which to enhance the spread of Marxism and its fairness thoughts,consolidating their dominant position.