Peng Fuchun, a deputy of the National People's Congress  (NPC) and professor of philosophy from Wuhan University, thinks that China cannot wait any longer to improve its population quality. He proposes that China popularize citizen education with the core of law, morality and belief among all levels of educational institutions from elementary schools to universities in an effort to build up a new image of Chinese people.

"China's population quality has many deficiencies and lags far behind the global level. However, this is just the surface of things, the roots are weak consciousness of law, degradation of morality and lack of strongly held beliefs," said Peng.

In his view, the market economy has introduced many unprecedented problems into China and the existing mechanisms are unsuitable to solve these problems.

"The key to manage state affairs is the people, the key to the people is their minds, and the key to their minds is citizen education," remarked Peng. "At present, schools mainly teach students languages, knowledge and political essentials. Some moral cultivation lessons are just pro forma, and the so-called citizen education is almost a blank."

Peng considers that the appropriate remedy is to open citizen education courses in all levels of educational institutions from elementary schools to universities. China should firstly reinforce the spread of laws and make civil rights and duties prescribed in the constitution a deep-embedded guideline of people's life. In terms of moral consciousness, China should convince its people to abide by the moral baseline of not harming others, and gradually elevate people's moral standard to the ultimate principle of caring for others.

(China News Service March 13, 2006)