A Study On The Growth Of Chinese Citizen Consciousness

The modernization is the most profound connotation of the East and West social development in last century, and spiritual transformation is the most important change of the modernized process. As the basic spiritual implication of the modern society, citizen consciousness plays an important function in the process of modernization in our country. This kind of function not only limits to the denial and transcendence to the subject consciousness, but manifests in the spiritual guidance for the development of modern politics, economy and culture. In political sphere, citizen consciousness is not only the thought leader for the democracy establishment and development, but the psychological basis of effective operation of democracy and the important safeguard for political stability. In economic domain, citizen consciousness satisfies the market economy regarding the independence requirements for market players, and it is helpful to the establishment of contractual relationship by manifesting contractual spirit. Moreover, it ensures normal operation of the market economy through guiding the rule of law. In cultural field, citizen consciousness is the important symbol of concept modernization, which not only enabled people to be more respect for freedom, equality, democracy, rationality, tolerance, but trains the modern people with the deep understanding and care for public value. In modern society, the essential meaning of citizen consciousness lies in the political connotation, which emphasizes citizen's independence, unity of the rights and obligations, validity of public political participation. In this sense, citizen consciousness is citizen's conscious reflection for citizen's role and value, which mainly reflects citizen's feeling, cognition, appraisal of citizen's political status, own rights and obligations, the public political participation. Citizen consciousness takes citizenship as its premise. Citizenship expresses the independence, freedom and equality among the citizens, that is, citizens is independent in personality, equal in status, and equal in rights and obligations. Citizen consciousness reflects the relationship between citizens and state, it means that mutual respect and mutual responsibility exist between citizens and the state. Citizen consciousness takes citizen's public political participation as its basic attribute. In modern society the key character of citizen role lies in equal participation in political process. Therefore from the structural content, citizen consciousness mainly includes citizen's main body consciousness, right consciousness, responsibility consciousness and sense of participation. Citizen's main body consciousness is the core of citizen consciousness. The value of citizen consciousness lies in the praise to human subjectivity, the transformation from the traditional personality to modern personality, molds citizen's independent personality and raises citizen's main body consciousness. Right consciousness is the inevitable product when person's main body consciousness develops to the certain stage. The right affirms person's main body status, and it is the reflection of person's independent essence. Responsibility consciousness is the intrinsic stipulation of the right consciousness, the right in itself contains responsibility factor, any kind of behavior not only follow the right principle, but follow responsibility principle, thus there is not any right without undertaking any responsibility. Participation consciousness is the intrinsic request for the realization of citizen consciousness. Only through the participation in public political life, the citizen can realize own right and duty, and demonstrate citizenship value, thus establishes citizen's main body status ultimately.Citizen consciousness is the cultural product which breeds in the West long history development process, and is also the result which politics, economy and society interacts in the special historical background. From the prospective of historical formation process of citizen consciousness, its growth has essential economic mechanism, social mechanism and political mechanism. From the economic mechanism, the market economy guides the initial growth of citizen consciousness. As the huge penetrability, the market economy thoroughly realizes the disintegration and transcendence to the traditional natural economy, it requests the members of different social classes get rid of geography boundary, blood relationship ethics and the rank attachment which were rooted in the natural economy, and participates in the market system with the independence and equality. The independence and equality among market players is the concentrated expression of the market economy, is also the necessary requirement in jurisdiction relations of market economy. This not only forms the reality basis of individual independence and causes the main body consciousness personally, but also the condensation of right and responsibility consciousness is the result which is generated by jurisdiction relations of the market economy. Simultaneously as a universal exchange system, the market economy takes highly developed social division of labor as the important symbol. Complicated social division causes the relations between market players to be closer inevitably, which makes person get rid of the enclosed survival pattern in natural economy, and forms the positive participation consciousness gradually. From the social mechanism, civil society constitutes the social basis for the growth of the citizen consciousness. As a special form of society, civil society takes the individual independence as its core, and takes individual's independent contact or union as the basic social relations. It is different from the social relation with dependency, hierarchy and homogeneity. Civil society realizes social revolutionary transformation from "the status" to "the contract". Civil society gradually separates from the State on the basis of market economy development, and simultaneously establishes social autonomous domain which opposed with the public political realm, including family domain, economic exchange system and cultural public domain. As the beginning of the civil society, the family personal domain impels the initial initiation of citizen consciousness. As the core of the civil society, the market exchange system realizes the formalized popularization of citizen consciousness. As the highest level of the civil society, the cultural public domain realizes substantive sublimation of citizen consciousness. From the political mechanism, the modern democracy is the system safeguard for the growth of citizen consciousness. The subversion between modern democratic politics and the traditional political system is the result of the development of civil society. The biggest political significance of civil society is the mutual division and independence between civil society and the state. The interaction between civil society and the state promotes political structure differentiation and the function specialization, political authority's rationalization and the legalization, scientific and democratic decision-making, the institutionalization of politics, political participation's efficiency and generalization. Therefore in a sense, civil society is the cradle for modern democracy. Regarding growth of citizen consciousness, the modern democracy provides the growth of citizen consciousness with perfect system safeguard. Through democratic system's education function, the modern democracy can form the good citizen. Through the institutionalized political participation, the modern democracy can provide the growth of citizen consciousness with the essential political practice.Looks back social development history and the reality in our country, the process of citizen consciousness is bad. In traditional society, individual independence is congenitally deficient obviously. The long despotic system, the glorious small peasant economy and strict patriarchal family system mold Chinese ingrained subject consciousness. Individual lacks the intrinsic sense of the political main body. But in modern culture enlightenment process, the introduction of ideas from the West is difficult to go deep into Chinese culture value system due to congenitally lacking the soil which the modern culture is rooted in as well as the huge difference between the West political culture and Chinese political culture. So when people seek the truth from the West and accept equality, freedom, democracy, right, duty and other concepts, people just accept the surface meaning of these concepts, but neglecting the intrinsic value of these criteria behind the concept and theory. Moreover at that time saving the nation overwhelming the Enlightenment, the growth of individual liberation and the main body intrinsic consciousness is limited by the tide of saving the nation and promoting the country in some degree.After the founding of the nation, our country establishes the high degree of concentrated politics and the economic system, "the general" social arrangements cause the state monopoly all social resource and the space. Absolute control suffocates the social independent mechanism and the personal life space seriously, and there are no resources out of country's control and the social independent domain. Independent individual as well as individual independent social interaction is radically unable to realize, not to mention the growth of citizen consciousness. Since the reform and open policy, along with our country's economic system and political reform, the state relaxes controls on society and individuals. A certain degree of political democracy, market economy and pluralistic society make the citizen began to realize that everyone originally should have some rights and the responsibility, citizen consciousness grows a little. But at the same time, we realize that citizen consciousness is still limited to the scope of people, citizen consciousness as a whole is still in the weak state. Although the citizen knew the necessary of democracy, but the psychology is not mature enough to adapt democracy. This is mainly manifested in many aspects. Citizen's political cognition is quite low. The populace lacks the necessary knowledge of political structure, the politics rule, own right and the duty. The citizen still has some anticipation for enlightened despotic, and there is the blind worship of elitism and the fear of politics. Citizen's awareness of law is not strong. Ethics standard function is bigger than the law by far in the daily behavior. The status of constitution in the citizen mind is very low. Citizen's political efficacy is not strong. Citizen emphases political output, but neglects political input. Consciousness of political participation is not high, thus showing an authoritative personality. As the reason, the current small peasant economy and small-peasant mentality is still very stubborn. Traditional political culture is still difficult to break through. The growth of citizen consciousness lacks social foundation due to the slow development of civil society. The insufficient supplies of democratic system cause the shortage of citizen role experience. Therefore facing difficulties and challenge, we should carefully examine from the whole society, and regard the growth of citizen consciousness as a system's social engineering. It can be finished only through the joint effort of individual, society and state. Specifically speaking, citizen consciousness growth not only needs individual spontaneous initiation, but also needs the national target-oriented guidance and the influence of social overall atmosphere. Citizen consciousness growth model not only needs the kind of spontaneous generation model from the West, but needs planned generating mode of the state and society. Civil society can provide the growth of citizen consciousness with solid social foundation. Citizen education can provide the specialized training. The political socialization may provide the popularity of citizen consciousness with variety of forms and channels. Order political participation can provide the essential political practice. It can be said, the growth of citizen consciousness is bound to be the result of a variety of forces, different modes and multiple paths.