Forum: All That Is Old

In September 2013, Reuters reported ‘three independent sources’ as saying that Xi Jinping believes China is ‘losing its moral compass’ as a result of the country’s extraordinary economic growth and the national mania for making money. Xi believes that Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism can help to provide a moral bulwark against corruption. One of Reuters’ sources claimed that Xi realises his anti-corruption campaign can only ‘cure symptoms’ while ‘reform of the political system and faiths are needed to cure the disease of corruption’.

A drunken man surnamed Dong walked into a Chongqing police station one evening in late 2013, shouting, ‘I’m denouncing my son in the name of righteousness!’ 大义灭亲. His son’s ‘crime’ was to have invited his mother, who had abandoned the family ten years earlier, to his thirtieth birthday dinner. Mr Dong had stormed out of the dinner and gone straight to the police station. He felt entitled to denounce his son for neglect because the traditional supreme Confucian virtue of ‘filial piety’ 孝, the responsibility of sons and daughters to respect and look after their parents, is enshrined in the amended Law of Protection of the Rights and Interests of Elderly People 老年人权益保障法, which came into effect on 1 July 2013. The 2013 law was an amendment of the original 1996 law of the same name that identified the rights and responsibilities of older citizens. These include the responsibility of the state to provide welfare as well as social programs that utilise the expertise and knowledge of the elderly.