Cultivation of Chinese Farmers' Integrity

Yang Xiu-li, and Zhu Xue-jiao

College of Humanities and Law, Northeast Agricultural University, Harbin 150030, China

Introduction

As Chinese good tradition required, honest and trustworthy is practical requirement of the development of socialist market economy, the core element of promoting rural economic development and the proper meaning of implement the ideas of building a new socialist countryside. Farmers are not only the direct beneficiaries of new rural construction, but also the main force to promote new rural construction. Farmers'levels determine the quality and speed of rural economic development, and also affect the achievement of other new socialist countryside construction requirements. Currently, some farmers are of low honesty awareness, which hinders the development of rural economy and rural appearance. Therefore,strengthening honesty awareness of farmers is to accelerate rural economic development and build a harmonious new countryside.

Necessity of Cultivating Farmers'Awareness of Honesty

As Chinese traditional culture, it is believed that"honesty" is the rule to conduct people and also the basic moral principles people should abide. Honesty is the basic norms of traditional Chinese morality and virtues of China, it is the prerequisite to people themselves, family, country and the world since ancient times. Confucius said, "The man without faith, I wonder what he could be" (Confucius, 2010).It means that we do not know what a person can do if he is disloyal. Thus, the basic requirements of human interaction should be: keep promise, faith intersect,and be frank.

As the main force of new socialist countryside construction, farmers' honesty is not only related to the construction and development of rural areas, but also related to all the aspects of social life, including the country's political stability and economic development.New socialist countryside construction will transfer some farmers to the secondary and tertiary industries,so that more rural people can live and work in cities and towns. This part of farmers' credit status will inevitably have an impact on people around. Therefore,improving the quality of farmers is not only the requirement of building a new socialist countryside,but also the need of building a harmonious society.

To construct a new socialist countryside is a new task and pioneering work, which requires a lot of capital investment. For a long time, rural fund was in serious lack. The rural collective economic income is less and farmers are short of money which caused by difficult financial intermediation contradictions resulting from poor rural social credit environment of farmers. Lacking of honesty blocked the financial transverse circulation and the development of "three rural". On the one hand, the increasing of production and income of individual farmers can't be balanced; on the other hand, a new socialist countryside construction will be affected significantly. Farmers must realize that trustworthiness means loans, orders, and earning money; if they choose the wrong direction, they may get nothing.

Current Status of Farmers' Integrity

To fully understand status of the integrity of Chinese peasants and accurately grasp the real situation of the contemporary peasant honesty, I designed a survey for farmers on issue of integrity, which investigated some farmers from a mountain village,Bin County of Heilongjiang Province. This sample survey used a random sampling method, issued 150 questionnaires, and 146 valid questionnaires, which was of 97% effective share of the questionnaire,and this questionnaire approach was taken by secret ballot, so the data quality of the questionnaire could be guaranteed. The questionnaire sample was scientific and reasonable, which was also of certain representation.

Farmers generally recognized honesty importance

Chinese farmers are agree to maintain the integrity of their attitude and they realize that honesty is traditional Chinese virtue that should be promoted and pursued; higher integrity and quality are the requirements for farmers to be good farmers in today's society; accompanied by the socialist market economic system maturing orderly competition and social development, dishonesty farmers will eventually be abandoned by the society. As for the credibility of farmers' attitude, Fig. 1 showed that more than 91%farmers emphasized on integrity issues and concerned more; it also showed that the position of integrity issues in today's society was very important, and modern farmers were very concerned about the issue of integrity.

Fig. 1 Attention on integrity

Overall integrity of farmers is in good condition

Most farmers in ordinary life can be honest and trustworthy. When they were asked the question of "Are you usually in good faith", 90% farmers believed that they were honest and their words could be trusted. Less than 10% could not be in good faith or of honesty confusion (Fig. 2), which showed that the overall integrity of the majority of Chinese farmers was basically, positive, healthy and progressive and in good condition.Although most farmers inherited and perpetuated the idea of honesty and trustworthiness, many people are still con fi ned to blood and geographical difference,human beings still link to the "small circle" social acquaintance. Hebei Province carried out the "sale of sick pigs" in the vast rural areas, as an example of integrity, the survey showed that people choose to trust each other in villages, but gradually reduced the integrity of strangers (Liu and Zhang, 2008). This hysteretic ideology becomes a force of bounding and hindering the economic growth. Under the socialist market economy, along with the establishment of the market economy, people are constantly chasing the maximum benefits, and farmers gradually emerge issues of integrity in the process. It was mainly refl ected in the following aspects:

Agricultural and sideline product adulteration

To seek illegitimate interests, some farmers add deterioration into rice flour, or add sand in rice;as for livestock, they use growing fattening agent;using prohibited pesticides in fruit and vegetable growing, etc. Zhouzhi County, which locates in Shanxi Province, is known as the hometown of kiwi,its fruit marketing and processing accounts for 80%of domestic market share. Some farmers heavily use swelling agent, and the result is that people refuse to buy and no longer eat them. Undoubtedly,the product unmarketable ultimately damaged the benefit of the majority of farmers (Zhang, 2011).In our investigation of this problem, when farmers answered the question of whether sold adulterated agricultural products, 40% farmers said they had never adulterated; however, 60% farmers said occasionally or often adulterated (Fig. 3). These bad behaviors seriously affected the food safety and directly damage the farmers themselves and the interests of others.

Fig. 2 Honesty of farmers

Fig. 3 Adulterated agricultural product selling

Illegal building

Some farmers would build "overnight room" in the shortest possible time when heard land acquisition,and then used both hard and soft tactics ask for compensation. It is reflected in the demolition of houses,more than half of the illegal building, resulted in severe loss of state funds.

Malicious unpaid loans

Rural credit cooperatives have become the most professional local financial institutions which have the most extensive coverage and most practitioners who service "three rural" and SMEs. 2012 National Rural Credit Cooperatives and farmers new agricultural loans were 737.4 billion RMB and 309.3 billion RMB, an increase of 19% ending balance and 15%,greatly contributed to agricultural production and farmers' income and rural economic and social development (Ding, 2013). People's Bank of China released the fourth quarter of 2012 China's monetary policy implementation reported by the end of 2012,the Rural Credit Cooperatives performing loan ratio was 4.5% (PBC, 2013). Some farmers did not care reputation, malicious avoiding the debt, resulted in a large number of bad loans and dead accounts in rural credit cooperatives, increased the management risk of the credit union and formed a "core wall" between RCCS and farmers. To solve farmers' loan problems and release credit cooperatives lending situation, in a survey on the willingness of farmers to repay loans showed that there were about 67% farmers said that they should repay loans, but 33% thought they should repay if they could and some people even thought they do not need to repay the loans (Fig. 4)(Zhang, 2011).

Fig. 4 Loan repayment willingness of farmers

Farmers' lacking of credibility is not only on the above aspects, but also in deceiving neighbors, blinded examination, illegal fund-raising and so on. The above analyses show that the overall integrity of the current situation of farmers in China is good, but the fact is that some farmers still have weak sense of integrity.

Main Reasons of Farmers' Lacking of Credit

Low trust of traditional culture

The good faith is established on basis of relatives,acquaintances, and friends since ancient times of China, and it is "the code of conduct human relations by patriarchal clan or consanguinity relationship beyond commercial utility, which is a kind of moral spirit on basis of blood kinship, friendship, social culture and feudal patriarchal-state relations" (Lv,2002). In essence, the traditional society is an"acquaintance society", as regulated the honesty and ethics of interpersonal relationships, good faith's ethic is also established on basis of consanguinity and affinity. Beyond the category of acquaintances,traditional honesty ethics hardly work. Weber said,"All the Chinese common behaviors are surrounded or restricted by purely personal relationships especially relations "(Weber, 1993). That is to say, the trust of Chinese is a kind of special trust which shapes and keeps relying on consanguinity and clan ties. Famous sociologist Xiaotong Fei thought that the interpersonal relationship of Chinese is "'relationship' circle which takes oneself as the center, and makes small circle in big circle". In this social based kinship, the usually judge standard is the personal interests or the interests of the family, but inner morality, foreign does not.Facing the environment of market economy, the frequent economic exchanges among strangers increasingly, and the original honesty and morality lose effects, meanwhile, new faith system which adapts to the reality economic environment is not perfectly set up in time, appeared integrity specif i cation "vacuum"in the rural, causing the break promises of farmer appearances.

Inadequate credit system

Honesty needs three social conditions: fi rst, there is the pursuit of long-term motivation; second, the dishonest behavior of clients can be observed in a timely manner; third, the parties have enough enthusiasm and possibility to punish violators. Only meet these conditions, the principle of good faith can be widely followed, and the good faith moral can be chosen consciously and purposefully. Honesty which becomes a kind of self-discipline and social public morality relies on a valid credit record and the establishment and perfection of evaluation system, and depend on the establishment of the society disciplinary mechanism,the law and public opinion environment, and even the improvement of the competitive environment (Wang,2003).

But at present, China has not formed strict credit evaluation mechanism yet, for lacking of a scientif i c,objective, fair, and operability evaluation system, we can not evaluate credit of business farmers, factory farmers and the broad masses of farmers scientif i cally;the current laws and regulations can not guarantee integrity of supervisors and their responsibilities,credit monitoring program expressly, and leading to no honesty monitoring mechanism. The credit management law which specification citizens, especially farmers, protect farmers' honesty interest and other specialized honesty management laws are still blank, except for some special law associated with enterprise honesty rules and regulations. There is no remedy mechanism for the loss caused by breach, no legal channels for private relief. Due to the escape of legal sanctions system "space", and it's easy to form a "honest cheated, not good faith benefit" mentality.Because of the lacking of supervision system, the performance can not be subjected to regular surveillance.

Unformed status of honest and trustworthy atmosphere of public opinion

Good faith is an indispensable important criterion of adjustment in interpersonal relationships, credit is the fruits of civilization of the human morality, and it is a required moral theory by market economy. At present, the nine-year compulsory education is put into practice in China, without offering honesty and morality course and even rarely set up these courses in universities. In countryside, publicity about honesty is not extensive and not in-depth, an honesty honor has not been formed, and faithless shameful atmosphere of public opinion exists. Some farmers are of low honesty and quality, they only consider self-interest in economic interactions, faithless phenomena often occur seriously disruption of the healthy development of rural economy.

Negative impact of grass-roots government dishonest

Government should advocate social integrity, strengthen law enforcement of social good faith. But in reality, the boundaries between rural grass-root government and market are unclear, especially in the government's good faith and breach of side by side.

Some grass-roots government departments sell at a discount greatly in the implementation of the central rural policy in order to achieve specific goals, some government departments do not fully estimate about the negative effects on the policy when they make policies, and even fail to take effective preventive measures. Such as some local counterfeitings, counterfeits, which are not closely connected with the local government of local protectionism.

The dishonest acts, although they are a minority,have damaged the image of the government on a whole. If standardize government staff credit, it is necessary to change the government's functions,require civil servants focus on the things what they are doing in order to keep and win the trust of people for them.

Countermeasures for Improving Farmers' Credit Consciousness

Perfection of rural credit system

First, construct complete credit system. Fundamentally,breaking faith is an act of convention violation, out of considerations for the interests of farmers to choose to be false-default or honest and trustworthy. If benefit of honesty they got is less, they often do not choose to continue being honest and trustworthy. Due to the delayed relative system construction which matches current development of China's socialist economic system, the current breach cost is not high as a whole.

Second, establish relative legal system. Without relevant mandatory legal system, building up the system will be difficult, legal construction should always be the core of the construction of system.Today, under the condition of socialist economy market of China, loyalty and the laws are corresponding. A complementary legal system is the basic premise to protect the smooth development of credit construction, also the basic guarantees for people to follow the credit. Since we are in the process of building a new socialist countryside, the fi rst thing to make sure is to strengthen and perfect the legal system,and ensure the penalties of farmers and guarantee them to find a corresponding legal basis for whom abides good faith. Main subjects of violations must be held accountable under the law responsibility and the relevant law enforcement departments should be strict.

Nowadays, the society steps into the information society, establishing an effective integrity test and evaluation management system provides the necessary direction of public opinion for the credit construction,or can provide citizens with accurate and reliable credit evaluation and fair or necessary objective basis for moral rewards and punishments. This system increases the transparency of public life, which can reduce the occurrence of dishonest behavior in economic and social life effectively, enhance people's awareness of honesty and sense of social responsibility, and form good atmosphere of social credit. Establish a reasonable reward and punishment system, in which fraud and breach should be punished and honesty will be rewarded, and this will be an important part of rural social credit evaluation construction system. Such as good credit farmers, their loan interest can be lower and deposit interest rates higher. If inadequately punished, credit construction will be impossible and it will be diff i cult to improve farmers' social credibility crisis.

Strengthening rural credit culture construction and building honest public opinion atmosphere

The main construction part of rural social credit system is farmers. Improving faithful awareness of farmers and creating a faithful environment for social environment are prerequisites for building the rural social credit system. Taking full advantages of the direction of mainstream public opinion and steer full uses of newspapers, television, radio and other news media to make farmers widely known the importance,necessity of honesty. In rural area, publicize progressive ideals and values of modern civilization,form "trustworthy glory, otherwise shameful" atmosphere of the community, thereby, contribute to the establishment and perfection of social credit system in China with a solid ideological and moral support (Lv,2001). In addition, actively develope rural vocational education and adult education, in terms of teaching content, set suitable local rural economic development courses (Wei and Jiao, 2009). What's more, strengthen the integrity and socialist market economy theory education, make farmers understand the market operating rules and the benef i ts of competition law and faith management, and know how to take advantages of market to develop agriculture and reap the benef i ts.

Strengthening administration grass-roots credit construction

Well known United States political scientist Michael Ruskin said "All the government actions are affecting people" (Cooper, 2001). All the acts of the government are closely related to the immediate interests of the broad masses. It's easy to have a profound effect on people. Integrity is a fundamental factor to governments to be existed; on the other hand, government credibility is the foundation of social credit. Strengthen the construction of grass-root government integrity, and focus on strengthening government staffs especially leaders' credit education (Sun, 2007).Government staff should set an example and be role model, be sincerity, honesty and ethical. Choose the path according to farmers' needs and local rural areas,so farmers can continue to see tangible benef i ts in the new rural construction; properly handle various social contradictions in rural areas, strengthen the governance of social security in rural areas, and create a stable and peace social environment for farmers to live and work.

Strengthening propagandistic power and setting integrity examples

Publicize typical characters and stories, expose and castigate the faith-failure people and things to form "faith respected, dishonest despised" culture.Governments at all the the levels should reach out into farmers, focus on incident handling, exposure issues that affect large scope on time, so as to enable bad actors pay a price, and destroy the reputation. At the same time, set a positive example. Power of example is priceless, which can give us huge inf l uence, especially in terms of the human spirit, its role beyond measure.Grass-roots staff make full use of advantages of the slack season or family reunion, during Spring Festival to carry out universal credit education activities, and use some typical examples to prove "credibility is the irreplaceable wealth". Publicize typical honest and trustworthy propaganda of villagers to achieve the goal that guides and educates farmers to be honesty and strict to themselves. Holding the "credit farmers"award, farmers can not only have a sense of honor from election, but also be given real visible benefits on loan to participate in the new rural cooperative medical system and so they can enjoy various preferential treatments. The honest atmosphere will bring advantages for promoting credit construction.

Conclusions

To sum up, due to the effects of various factors,farmers lacked integrity consciousness would seriously affect the new rural construction and the whole construction process of socialist harmonious society. We need variety of ways to cultivate farmers'awareness of integrity. However, transformation of consciousness is not an easy thing, which needs to go through a long and complex way to achieve. We need to constantly establish and improve relevant systems with efforts of all the social members, and make farmers and the whole society to consciously abide by the honesty moral.

Confucius. 2010. The second of off i cial career. Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, Shanghai. pp. 7.

Cooper L. 2001. Administrative ethics: the way to realize the administrative responsibility. China Renmin University Press, Beijing. pp. 11.Ding J. 2013. Analysis of rural credit cooperatives' bad loans causes and countermeasures. Times Finance, 9: 199-200.

Lv F. 2002. "Integrity" of cultural comparison thinking. Xuehai, 26(4):56.

Liu Y Q, Zhang Z G. 2008. Analysis on factory farmers' integrity.Agricultural Economy, 3: 86-87.

Lv H P. 2001. Rural family problems and modernization. Hebei University Press, Baoding. pp. 212-213.

PBC. 2013. China monetary policy report. http://www.pbc.gov.cn/publish/zhengcehuobisi/591/index.html

Sun B C. 2007. The cultivation of integrity of farmers in the construction of new socialist countryside. Journal of Anhui Agricultural Sciences,35(16): 5003-5005.

Wang L. 2003. Theory of social integrity. The CPC Central Party School Press, Beijing. pp. 175-178.

Weber. 1993. Confucianism and Taoism. Jiangsu People's Publishing House, Nanjing. pp. 271.

Wei X H, Jiao B L. 2009. The socialist market economy calls for integrity. Journal of Academic in the East, 2: 30-36.

Zhang F Z. 2011. The thinking of improving sense of integrity of rural citizens in China. Credit Investigation, 5: 64.