Abstract
At the Spring Festival banquet of 2010, one of the most affectionate moments for ordinary Chinese nationals, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao solemnly proclaimed: “What we have done is solely targeted at making a happier and more dignified life for our people.” Such statements like “making a happy life for people” have been frequently made by Chinese leaders at various political events, but they have been fairly occasional in promising that Chinese people should be given a more dignified life. It certainly acquires extraordinary import when such promise is made at the Spring Festival, full of optimistic expectation for Chinese nationals. Such promise, consequentially, aroused heated discussions among Chinese nationals from all walks of life, generalizing roughly to two categories: one being the material aspect of dignified life in ‘affluence in food and clothing’ as well as ‘living in peace and plenty’, and another being the spiritual aspect of dignified life in ‘free thinking’ as well as ‘independent personality’.
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Notes
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Chun, S. (2012). Human Dignity Reflected in Confucianism and Daoism . In: Major Aspects of Chinese Religion and Philosophy. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29317-7_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29317-7_8
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