On Official Morals Building

This dissertation aims to promote the formation of official ethics, which now becomes a socially concerned issue because of the serious official corruption in our country.The so-called official ethics are the ethics that should be obeyed by government officials and become their behavior pattern. In the wide sense, official ethics are not only special professional ethics, namely, public office ethics but also special role ethics, namely public servant ethics. Categorized in social ethics, it is both a political ethics category and an administrative ethics category. So it is considered in this dissertation from different angles.At present, official ethic building in China should first meet the challenge of market economy. On the one hand, market economy makes it possible for government officials to have the chance of deal between power and money, on the other hand it changes the official function and government officials are required to face new responsibility. To meet these challenge and requirement, official ethic building should be adjusted both in the content and method.Official ethic building should also meet the requirement of the development of democracy. The development of democracy on the one hand strengthens the basic rights (human rights) and political rights for the citizens;on the other hand it ensures that the government power is entrusted by the people and responsible for the people. The convergence of these two points completely changes the ethical relationship between government and people. The idea that "People's rights are prior to and higher than government power, government serve the people" becomes the basic idea of the relationship between government and people. So official ethic building should be adjusted both in the content and methods.At present, the basic standard of official ethic building in Chinacan be generalized as: serve the people, be loyal, be just and be honest. Serve the people is the key point and the soul, it decides whether it is official ethic of socialism or capitalism or feudalism. Be loyal is the basic attitude of officials towards country, people and their responsibility. Be just is the role ethical requirement for them as suppliers of public materials and public service and it is also the essential requirement which embodies the legality of the power. Be honest is the basic requirement for officials as people's servant and a necessary requirement which embodies that power is for the people and the public—the most basic ethnical standard for government officials.The methods of official ethic building are also very important. Because of the development of market economy and democracy the objective and subjective conditions which affect the formation of official ethics have changed, which include social environment, bureaucratic system, organization culture, moral education, moral practices and the personal quality of the government officials, as well as their responsibility for the roles they play. Given such conditions, the methods of official ethic building should be changed from those aspects as system, supervision, education and personal quality.From the point of view of ethical genetics, support from government system is the necessary external condition. Great importance should be attached to the external support for official ethic building from government system because it is a matter of whole and essential importance and has existed for a long time. In a long term, we have paid too much attention to soft mental structure but ignore necessary systematic construction. Experiences of official ethic building from other countries show that it is an important means of official ethic building to set down the requirement for official ethic in the form of rules and regulations and make them to be carried out. Theoretically, to ask for support from government system accordswith the principle of ethnical development.Also viewing from ethical genetics, effective supervision is important in ensuring that government officials do their moral duties and official ethic building cannot be independent of effective supervision. To strengthen effective supervision, institutional supervision should be greatly improved, supervision by public opinion and masses should be strengthened. Further more, supervision should be normalized and institutionalized.Education, as the prerequisite for officials to discipline themselves is still the basic way to build official ethics in modern society, because official's moral quality, which is the motivation of self-discipline cannot form without official ethic education. To strengthen official ethic education, what to be done first is to help officials form correct outlook on world, life and value and to enlighten their intuitive knowledge. The second is to improve our official ethic education methods and form a full open educational model—to learn both from the experiences from abroad and the experiences of ancient China.As we all know internal cause is a more basic factor than external cause. In official ethic education official's self-cultivation is an internal cause and thus a basic issue we have to face. How to improve official's self-cultivation is a problem that should be concerned according to their professional characteristics and psychological change and adjustment. This is an issue concerns two respects as following: One is the self-cultivation consciousness raising under the basic requirement of market economy and democracy. The other is social supervision, which should be normalized and institutionalized.