After hearing him mention it so many times, we finally came to know precisely what he was referring to when he talked about "the sense of honour and shame."

It was President and Communist Party General Secretary Hu Jintao's first effort to expound the usually less-than conspicuous phrase that frequented his recent speeches, when he addressed members of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference last week.

He gave a list of eight deeds and qualities which people should take as honourable, including patriotism, diligence, honesty and thriftiness, along with eight disgraceful, such as laziness, selfishness, greed and extravagance.

The so-called "eight honours, eight disgraces" immediately became a topic of conversation at the national legislature and political advisory body, now in session in Beijing.

Unlike gross domestic product or national income, a sense of honour and shame hardly matters in measuring national strength. But it is an essential moral compass that gives meaning to everything we do.

Hu's appeal to distinguish the right from the wrong, the good from the evil, and the beautiful from the ugly is, by far, the national leadership's most direct response to the desperate need of moral renaissance in the nation that prides itself on its 5,000 years of civilization.

Right before Hu's remarks, we heard familiar calls from our legislators and political advisers to incorporate and accentuate "benevolence, righteousness, etiquette, wisdom, and faith," the five virtues that define the ideal Confucian personality, in school textbooks.

Since the nation remains divided on the path toward moral rejuvenation, we will not be surprised if people disagree on where to start at: a return to our Confucian traditions, or a brand-new code of conduct, or somewhere in between?

President Hu put a spotlight on a topic that is generally marginalized by our persistent concentration on account books.

For a long time, many decision-makers shared the belief that as economy grows, all the nation's headaches would heal themselves. But increasingly, it appears to be only an illusion. For one thing, wealth has not delivered good faith. Instead, we hear more and more people lament over society's moral degeneration.

There is a common feeling that money and power has flipped society's moral values upside down.

Many businesspeople feel no shame when they deceive and bribe. Professors and students often appear bold and assured when they are caught plagiarizing. Some doctors take advantage of under-the-table cash from their patients. Certain officials, who claim themselves "public servants" and custodians of State and civic interests, do not blush when they receive or extort bribes, and embezzle or squander public money.

A more revealing example is that calling someone an honest person is, more often than not, no longer a eulogy. The once-respectable personal quality now carries the derogative connotation that you are naive, not clever, or incapable. Indeed, how can you be honest when others are not?

That partially explains why books on the use of Sunzi's "Art of War" in everyday life have sold well in recent years. Their popularity tells us something is seriously wrong with our interpersonal relations - trust is in short supply.

It is dangerous if we have to live in a perpetual fear of being set up. But just as we have to worry about the safety of the foods on our dinner table, vigilance remains the most reliable tool of self-protection.

It is good that our society has awakened to the potential threat of energy and environmental crises, and is taking precautions. But the cost of a credibility crisis may be significantly higher.

To prevent shamelessness from becoming a social epidemic, those acting in the name of the State must set good examples first. The prevalence of shamelessness in our society has much to do with the undesirable conduct of some of these people.

(China Daily 03/11/2006 page4)