The Study Of Chinese Ancient Contract Ethics

China is under the great construction of socialist market economy. Chinese people are trying our best to improve the fast-developing material and spiritual civilizations of socialism, fulfill people's material requirement and enrich people's spiritual world. Therefore, we should persist in attaching equal importance to both material and spiritual civilization, to systematic and cultural construction, and to legal and moral construction as well. According to it, the combination of the honesty and credit ethics and the spirit of contract is reasonable.In order to provide the socialist market economic construction with reliable theory, many scholars have researched into the honesty and credit and the spirit of contract from every aspect. Because of their own love and pride for the traditional culture, some scholars prefer that among the great civilizations in the ancient time, only Chinese culture has been increasingly valued to this day, comparing to other cultures rising suddenly during the recent hundreds of years, some of which have disappeared while others tend to decline. Owing to it, the honesty and credit ethics can be considered as the moral support of the socialist market economic construction. Other scholars believe that the brilliant achievement in all kinds of civilizations should be absorbed and learned by us in the socialist construction, so they"borrowed"the spirit of contract from the west. Still others go in for the combination of both the Chinese and the western culture. That is to say, we should unite Chinese ancient honesty and credit ethics and the spirit of contract in the west. All of them have devoted themselves to our country, and they should be respected for their elaboration.In the opinion of the author, though the various theories have its own advantages respectively, they are more or less their own wishful thinking to some extent: it's obvious that single honesty and credit ethics can't meet the criteria of the market economic construction, while sheer the spirit of contract in the west is not enough to make up for the emptiness in our minds; the combination of the two is always interfered and paused due to the cultural difference between the east and the west. So, the author thinks that a country's construction must be rooted in its own culture, and the reform in a country is the reform of the traditional system at first. The national characteristics exist only in this case. After careful research into the history of Chinese ancient contract ethics. it is not difficult for us to discover that Chinese ancient contract ethics contains faith moral, which is fit for the socialist economic development and the mature form and content in western contract.The close association of the two can provide moral support and systematic guarantee for the development of the socialist market economy. By means of the research into the history and the value, the author has surveyed the Chinese ancient contract system summarized the characteristics of it, and discovered the meaning of contract from it. Basing on the above, the author has also compared ancient contract ethics Chinese ancient honesty and credit ethics and western contract ethics respectively, and found out that Chinese ancient contract ethics bears the characteristics of honesty and credit ethics and the western contract ethics on the whole, which can be applied to the socialist market economic construction and used for reference from both theoretic and realistic approaches, according with the current practice in China. As a result, the outline of the thesis is as follows:With its origin dating back to primitive society, contract can be contract divided into political contract,economic contract and individual contract, each of which has its own specialties. Among the three, economic contract is considered to have the perfect form and content. We can discover the meaning of contract ethics from it—the pursuit of the legitimate interests, fair competition, faith morality and mutual benefit. On one hand, Chinese ancient contract ethics and the traditional credit ethics have something in common, but on the other hand, they are exclusive from each other. However, the combination of the two can be a possibility, for Chinese ancient contract ethics covers the content of ancient credit.The western contract ethics contains individual departmentalism,the freedom of the will of the main body and the independence and equality of the main body,with its meaning including rational egoism, the unity of the freedom and the responsibility, and the unity of the individual rights and social justice. The western contract ethics and Chinese ancient contract ethics have a lot in common, and there is complementarity between the two disciplines. Whereas, we should base on Chinese contract ethics ancient contract ethics directly instead of forcing to bond Chinese ancient honesty and credit ethics and the western spirit of contract . The author suggests that the socialist market economy makes up for the limitations of the Chinese ancient contract ethics and in return, Chinese ancient contract ethics can provide every kind of the guarantee and the support for socialist market economic construction from theoretical, systematical, and ethical aspect. The interaction of the two has positive and great influence on socialist market economic construction in both theoretical and realistic sides.The innovation of the thesis consists in its breakthrough in the profound and careful research on the positive significance of Chinese ancient contract system.The author exceeds other scholars who only focus on the limitations of Chinese ancient contract system and gets rid of the scholasticism, which placed much stress on the forced binding of Chinese ancient contract system and the western contract ethics in order to create the modern spirit of contract.The thesis states the content and the characteristics of Chinese ancient contract and makes some constructive suggestions for socialist market economic construction.