Xunzi carried on the noble ambitions of “Zhou Kong Jiaohua 周孔教化” and systematically demonstrated the necessity of cultivation and how to realize it. Starting from the belief that human nature is evil, he argues that cultivation was necessary and its teachings must penetrate the mind. The key of cultivation is to cultivate man’s feelings, encourage man to behave properly, and attempt to mold his nature through Ritual cultivation, Musical cultivation, and the Five Classics. The main point of Xunzi’s ethical thought (...) is cultivation. As far as cultivation theory is concerned, Xunzi’s is the most logical and systematic of the famous Pre-Qin thinkers. (shrink)
The results of our research, obtained from a survey of 50 Western managers working in Romania, show that differences exist between Western managers' ethics and those of their Romanian counterparts, especially with regard to bribery. Different backgrounds are at the basis of such divergence. Beyond the communist era and its heritage, the cultural aspect of bribery has been analyzed. Nevertheless, the results of our research suggest that culture may play a double role and the influence could come from both the (...) home environment of Western managers and their new environment. Some Western managers who adapt to the Romanian environment appear to have been already conditioned to bribery from their home environment. (shrink)
The idea of “just war” is not alien to Chinese thought. The term “yi zhan” (usually translated as “just war” or “righteous war” in English) is used in Mencius, was renewed by Mao Zedong, and is still being used in China today (zhengyi zhanzheng). The best place to start exploring this Chinese idea is in the enormous Art of War corpus in premodern China, of which the Seven Military Classics is the best representative. This set of treatises served as (...) the military bible in imperial China from 1078 CE. Ideas analogous to ius ad bellum and ius in bello can be found in these texts. These norms are present in these military texts, elaborated in subsequent commentaries, understood as a matter of fact in Chinese political history, and recently and briefly acknowledged by a few Chinese military scholars in the mainland and in Taiwan. This Chinese just war ethics has its distinctiveness vis-à-vis James Turner Johnson's articulation of the Western classic view. It differs from Johnson's claims that military lethal violence is intrinsically morally neutral and that last resort is not a primary consideration in deciding for war. Contemporary Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) military publications show that the PLA understands the general idea of just war, but they acknowledge only the ad bellum part, not the in bello components. (shrink)
Taking the increasing implementation and practice of ?quality?oriented education? as the background to the current reform, the paper outlines moral education in the Chinese junior high school over the last 25 years. It offers a brief review of a few theoretical and empirical research projects which have had some influence on the 2003 reform of the course of Ideology and Morality. It describes: three basic principles behind this new curriculum, focusing on the developing lives of students; curriculum characteristics with ideological, (...) humanistic, practical and integrative dimensions; and the objectives of developing feelings, attitudes and value orientations, competencies and knowledge. The curriculum is illustrated by four textbook and class?based examples of respect for parents, self?esteem, environmental awareness and being a responsible citizen, which offer some insights into contemporary moral education with distinctive Chinese characteristics. Finally, the paper gives an overview of the significance of the moral education curriculum reform and of its ongoing challenges. (shrink)
We have refined entropy theory to explore the meaning of the increasing sequence data on nucleic acids and proteins more conveniently. The concept of selection constraint was not introduced, only the analyzed sequences themselves were considered. The refined theory serves as a basis for deriving a method to analyze non-coding regions (NCRs) as well as coding regions. Positions with maximal entropy might play the most important role in genome functions as opposed to positions with minimal entropy. This method was tested (...) in the well-characterized coding regions of 12 strains of Classical Swine Fever Virus (CSFV) and non-coding regions of 20 strains of CSFV. It is suitable to analyze nucleic acid sequences of a complete genome and to detect sensitive positions for mutagenesis. As such, the method serves to formulate the basis for elucidating the functional mechanism. (shrink)
