Filial piety and the Chinese conception of rights: an empirical study of college students in China

Fichtelberg, AaronElizabeth Perry argued that the Chinese conception of rights is primarily based on the historically developed state-society relations in China, in which the state’s centralized power is legitimated by its provision of economic goods to the peasantry. This moral economy, Perry argued, was further solidified by Confucian moral philosophy, the state orthodoxy of imperial China. This study is intended to empirically contextualize Elizabeth Perry’s argument of the Chinese moral economy by examining the relationship between Confucian interpersonal ethic (in particular, filial piety) and the Chinese conception of rights among contemporary college students in China. The results of quantitative analyses in this study confirm Perry’s argument about the primacy of economic security in the Chinese conception of rights, and link Confucian values such as filial piety to this conception of rights. However, findings in this study also reveal that although Confucianism and filial piety as cultural symbols continue to shape contemporary legal and political consciousness, their contemporary meanings have significantly shifted. Specifically, understanding filial piety as authoritarian predicts stronger endorsement of civil and political liberties over economic security as rights. The findings of this study are also discussed in relation to Chinese nationalism and the possibility of political liberalization in China.University of Delaware, Department Sociology and Criminal JusticePh.D