Cultivating Moral Citizenship in the Republic of China

In 1914, the newly established republic in Beijing enacted a new Commendation Act to reward its exemplary citizens, a policy previously enacted by various imperial predecessors. In 1931, the Republic of China under the Nationalist Party in Nanjing promulgated the Commendation Regulations to honor citizens with “moral conduct of exceptional quality” and “devotion to the public welfare.” The state awarded medals and inscriptions to people for their ordinary acts of virtue, such as caring for their parents and siblings, arranging weddings and funerals for poor relatives, and donating to charity in their local communities. In 1958, when the People's Republic of China launched the Great Leap Forward Campaign to create a utopia of collectively-oriented citizens, Chiang Kai-shek launched the Good Person Good Deed Campaign to reward those who fulfilled the two categories of the 1931 Commendation Regulations. Chiang envisioned the campaign as a way to create a virtuous citizenship in contrast to what he perceived as a degenerate population under Communist rule. On the eve of the Cultural Revolution in mainland China, Chiang's 1967 speech emphasized that his "Good Person Good Deed" campaign in Taiwan was "to preserve the life of the nation and protect human dignity by taking the implementation of cultural revival as the foundation and the promotion of morality as the premise. Each December, nominated citizens of virtue, usually generous benefactors in their local communities, were invited to the Taipei Presidential Palace to share their good deeds with the entire nation. At the same time, personifications of altruism such as Lei Feng were promoted as ideal citizens of socialist China. In this paper, I demonstrate how the vision of a moral and community-oriented citizenship was crucial to the nation building processes across the Taiwan Strait despite their antagonistic positions.