China's eight socialist honours combat the eight pernicious disgraces

BEIJING - China's new "eight socialist honours" are unambiguous and fiercely patriotic:

Love the Motherland.
Serve the People.
Be united.
Struggle hard.
Work hard.
Advocate science.
Be honest.
Obey the law.

The eight principles are part of President Hu Jintao's efforts to combat eight pernicious "disgraces" he sees creeping into Chinese society.

The only way to stop the rot is for the masses to learn a "socialist sense of honour and shame".

This weekend the campaign hit the streets of China's cities and towns and cadres were out in force, offering tutorials in virtue - obeying the law, protecting trees and cleaning up dog droppings.

There were volunteers offering free health check-ups and advice on traffic etiquette.

In a real sign that China has changed during the more than 25 years of economic growth, other enthusiastic apostles of the eight honours were offering to string badminton rackets, fix cigarette lighters or clean jewellery in parks around the city.

In Beijing, the Wangfujing shopping thoroughfare became a venue for an award ceremony for those truly infused with a "socialist sense of honour".

To the tune of the theme from "The Magnificent Seven", which begs the question which of the eight "socialist honours" was being left out, cadres honoured 10 model residents, among them Li Zhenhuan, who has been giving free haircuts to residents for over 35 years.

China's supreme leader launched the campaign at this month's National People's Congress to encourage new moral values by issuing the list of eight principles he hopes will bring people back to their old, polite ways and make them amenable citizens ahead of the 2008 Olympics.

Burgeoning wealth and the rise of flagrant consumerism in the world's fastest growing economy has seen many traditional Chinese values of honour and decency slip away in favour of self-serving, money-grabbing behaviour, the leadership believes.

Hu said that to meet the goals set out in the 11th Five Year Plan, approved by the Congress, China needed to "extensively and thoroughly mobilise the masses...work hard to cultivate and bring up socialist citizens who cherish ideals, possess moral character and are educated and disciplined."

In the old days, these campaigns would have been trumpeted on luridly coloured posters, replete with apple-cheeked farm girls and muscled steelworkers facing into the sun.

Hu's aphorisms, however, were printed on a plain poster with Chinese characters above a photo of the Great Wall and this rather austere handbill has been on display in offices and shops since the campaign began.

China may be embracing socialism with Chinese characteristics, which to the untrained eye looks an awful lot like straightforward capitalism, but the rhetoric of the latest morality campaign will be familiar to many in still-Communist China who remember the Five Standards, the Four Virtues and the Three Loves.

Despite their catchy names, these are not the latest Taiwanese boy bands to make an impact on the mainland, but rigorous campaigns to tutor the masses in ways of righteousness from the 1980s.

The official Xinhua News Agency hailed the list as "a perfect amalgamation of traditional Chinese values and modern virtues", while a dictat from several city governments said: "We will cut out uncivilised actions that are contrary to public morality, violate honesty, harm our image, pollute the environment and threaten order." For most people in China, the focus of "socialist disgrace" is still corrupt local officials taking bribes and creaming off cash from provincial coffers.

With widescale public dissatisfaction with corruption in mind, there were a number of strongly worded remarks on state media this weekend.

One state councillor in Shijiazhuang in the northern province of Hebei said China would focus on "improving supervision mechanisms to check some unhealthy social trends this year", including commercial bribery and kickbacks on the sales of textbooks and medicines.

Hu's statements all have the ring of good, old-fashioned Cold-War era Communism, but his message is a far cry from the more belligerent tone of founding Communist leader Mao Zedong, who famously declared: "Political power comes out of the barrel of a gun."

- INDEPENDENT