Li Hongmei

"Let the Chinese live with greater dignity," vowed the Chinese Premier Wen during an online chat this early Spring, breathing a new hope into the beginning of the year. Later on, the pledge to ensure the Chinese people to lead a life with happiness and dignity is reiterated in his 2010 Government Work Report delivered Mar.5 during the opening meeting of the Third Session of the 11th National People's Congress (NPC).

It is evident that the ultimate purpose of a country's development should be meeting the increasing material and cultural needs of the people, and that the comprehensive development of the society should be based on the development of individuals.

Premier's highlight on human dignity not only reflects the enhancement of the government's social conscience, but also echoes the public appeals for a fair distribution of social wealth and equality before the law.

"It must be unfair when a society's wealth is in hands of a few people and, in that case, the society must be unstable," as Premier was cited as saying in his just wrapped-up online chat, "it is the government's responsibility to make the cake of social wealth as big as possible" and to "distribute the cake in a fair way," he added.

The fair distribution of social wealth concerns social justice, and actually involves distribution of national income. But the proportion of residents' income is still relatively low in the distribution of national income.

Fortunately, the government has realized in good time that only a buoyant economy and a galloping growth of GDP are not adequate to build up a harmonious and well-to-do Chinese society.

Confucius (551—479 BC) made the talented discovery even in China's ancient days that the commoners would be troubled with fears of a want of contented repose, rather than fears of poverty. Thereby, when there is such a contented repose, there will be no public upset or mass unrest. And the feeling of ease will grow if people feel they are equally and fairly treated in a society.

Take the destructive earthquake in Haiti, for example, it isn't the earthquake that kills so many people, it is poverty, corruption and mismanagement of social resources. What is noteworthy is that poverty here not merely refers to an impoverished standard of material living, but also an insidious misconception about human beingness: that we are only rich in spirit when we are rich in wealth. This misconception, prominent among the world's rich nations, paradoxically exacerbates the suffering of the world's poor because it encourages partial approaches to poverty, as if merely giving them more 'stuff" will cure the poverty of dignity that always and everywhere accompanies the absence of human self-sufficiency.

To help the poor out, in that sense, it's not enough to offer support with wallets, but it must be done with hearts. Even if money can ease up the physical sufferings to some extent, it cannot buy the feeling of dignity for the victims.

If what has come about indicates that the sense of dignity has less to do with wealth, but it is a lot more connected to the social fairness, justice and equality, the situation would seems even more baffling, as there is never absolute fairness and perfectly well-cut distribution.

However, an efficient government can always devise ways to push forward with the social fairness, by reconstructing the mechanism to balance the social interests under the context of market economy, establishing a sound system and introducing the relevant policies to create a relatively fair social atmosphere.

In actuality, there is plenty to do for the government to build a society featuring fairness, justice and equality in an effort to make the people live with greater dignity, in that people could be deprived of the best life can offer, human dignity included, not merely by war, disaster and disease, but more by human misconducts like corruption, power abuse and bully.

To let the ordinary people feel proud of being what they are and lead a decent life with dignity, the government needs to assure them of the fair and equal access to wealth and resources, which is far more significant than wealth in itself.