The reform and open-door policy have stimulated Chinese economic development and paved the way toward the national goal of four modernizations. Historical experience shows that economic development leads to a transformation in ideology, modes of thinking and sense of value. Of these, the transformation in mo-rality is certainly among the most important.

As economic development needs moral support, so in the course of economic development morality sets new demands which cause moral transformation. Specifically, on the one hand, some old moral ideas do not meet the requirements for economic pros-perity and so need to be reestablished or to be enriched by new contents. On the other hand, with economic development, new moral requirements will spring up constantly which need to be reviewed and generalized. Besides, such questions as how to deal with traditional Chinese morals, that is, how to inherit and promote what is good in the morals of the Chinese tradition, and how to study the relation between the Chinese moral tradition and modernization, all concern the content and dynamics of morals and must be studied in detail. For this reason, the relation between economic development and moral transformation is an important topic for moral philosophy.

The necessary condition for social transformation usually is a proper interaction of various factors in social life. In a society the economy, politics, ideology and culture are mutually related and interactive. The objective of economic development to increase the social productive force is based on the interchange of the various social factors. It is the harmony of these factors that makes for rapid economic advance.

Morality conditions human behavior by means of common sense, behavioral norms, ideals and faith. This includes a sense of values, of ideal personality, social norms and so on. Only by conditioning morals can human behavior be brought under control and converted into a huge force that drives economic development; in turn economic development brings about a moral transformation corresponding to the transformation of the social structures. Con-sequently economic development and moral transformation interact with each other.

Historical experience tells us that during the period of social transformation, acute conflict of old and new morals is inevitable, and exerts an important social influence upon the sense of value, life ideals, and the understanding of perfect personality; it can lead even to reflection upon and reshaping of morality, generally called a "moral crisis". Typical expressions of this moral transformation can be found in the development of both Chinese and Western morality.

In ancient China the period from the east Chou Dynasty to the Qin and Han Dynasty was a turning point when the slave system crumbled and the feudal system was born. It was a period filled with acute moral conflict. The ritual system of Chou Dynasty served as the core of the moral ideas of the slave society, but in feudal society different ideas, centered upon benevolence and love, were formed in place of the moral ideas of slave society. It was against the broad background provided by these two different kinds of moral ideas that the ethics of the early Qin Dynasty thrived. The ethical thoughts of this period reflect a very complicated paradox of which Confucian theory is an example. Such words as "Since ritual collapsed, music got worse, I could not see King Chou again" is the historical prototype of the moral crisis of the Confucian age. The Confucian doctrine of the mean promoted compromise among conflicting moral ideas in social life, while the doctrine of kind-heartedness represented the moral demands of feudal force. Con-fucian ethical thought demonstrates the complexity of economic development and moral transformation.

The moral development of the modern West also reflects the fact that economic prosperity will lead to conflicts between old and new moral ideas. When the Renaissance exerted great impact upon moral and religious norms the ideas of Man being the center of the universe and of freedom were advanced. The new views on mo-rality and a new sense of value replaced religious morality. In England the rise of experimental science laid the philosophical foundation for a new morals. In France the moral forms were established by Enlightenment thought and political revolution. In the modern West this acute conflict of moral ideas lasted several hundred years.

The alternation of various moral forms in history relies greatly upon the development of the social economy, while the latter was always accompanied by moral transformation in which old and new morals were inevitably in a state of fierce conflict. As the social transformation proceeds to deep structures and the economy thrives, the moral transformation and reshaping surely will continue. Hence we should study further the special charac-teristics of moral transformation in economic development.

Morality as a cultural phenomenon differs from the economy in the following ways: economy is the most direct and elementary embodiment of social relations; hence social transformation always begins with a change of economic relations. As compared with the economy, morality is the spiritual force that constitutes the internal human essence and the good that the subject consciously pursues. A change of morality can be realized only by associating the internal feelings of the human body with the requirements of the external world. As the conditioning system of social life, morality dwells in personal habit, social custom and ritual norms; it effects the cultural and psychological elements of the human body. It is the organic combination of human volition, sense and sensibility. In one way, morality depends upon economic development, but in another it is independent. The above properties of morality give rise to the following special characteristics of moral transformation in the process of economic development.

Stability. The relative independence of morality from eco-nomy implies a stability in the course of moral transformation. The persistent influence of morality makes it a customary fact of social life and of the cultural and psychological elements of personal life, which thereby achieve a special stability. Its moral psychology is a cumulative effect of the pursuit of the good by countless people, containing elements from different stages of development. This stability in moral transformation is manifested by the fact that many moral norms and qualities are required for moral change. In the contents of morals, there is bitter conflict between the old and the new, good and evil, making moral relations and transformations more complicated. But in the course of moral development, the moral content remains stable, and the good as the objective of morals cannot be changed.

Action. In economic development, on the one hand, moral transformation, is stable, but on the other it is active. The social function of morality is to condition human behavior, to advocate what is right and to criticize what is wrong. Moral education should be designed to stimulate the moral activity of human beings, to be beneficial to economic development and to drive the society forward. But since moral activity is not compulsory, if there is no internal consciousness, no matter how strong be external public opinion, it will be impossible to produce moral enthusiasm. As morality is the combination of human sense, volition and sensi-bility, it must be the end of human pursuits and aspirations. Moral behavior is controlled by the internal moral effect produced by this sort of internal consciousness as the activity of moral trans-formation.

In economic development much good behavior can be looked upon as the behavioral effect produced by setting the conception of the good as the objective for the subject in the course of moral transformation. As an ideology closely related to human feelings moral behavior has strong and active power: hence moral trans-formation manifests the moral reaction to economic development. The special properties of morality determine that its development does not keep in step with economic development; usually it lags behind. Some moral ideology still has some effect on society after the economic structure on which the moral ideology was cons-tructed has been eradicated. Besides certain factors of the new economic relation appear in the course of economic development. In such circumstances, the elements of a new morality which represent and maintain the new economic relation also will be produced. Morality then is not inactive and static, but active and mobile in relation to the economy. This is the activity of moral transformation in economic development.

Inheritability. No doubt the moral transformation results from economic development and social progress, but the moral ideology that dominates a society must rely on the moral assets accumulated over the long history of human society, thus the problem of moral inheritance. The pursuit of moral personality often attains a certain transcendence. A typical example of this can be easily found in the moral ideology of Chinese feudal society. The Confucian ethical theory based on the ritual system of Chou Dynasty is the orthodox moral ideology throughout the long Chinese history. Despite the fact that Confucian morality displayed different characteristics in various historical stages and social groups and was differently interpretated, nevertheless the 2000 years of Chinese feudal society co-existed with other theories. This shows that in history different types of morality have aspects of both transformation and inheritance.

Moral inheritability refers to continuity and self-transformation in morality. As morals of every historical time serve as a link to the whole of human moral development, the law of moral deve-lopment is the objective foundation upon which later generations are able to draw on the moral heritage. Moral inheritability serves as a subjective criterion for assimilating the moral heritage. Criti-cism and inheritance are the two indispensable aspects for dealing with moral heritage. Criticism is a necessary condition, while in-heritance is required for human practice and objective choice. Without inheritance morality cannot advance. At present, as great achievements have been made in the economic development of China, moral transformation surely will take place.

This is the question of how to build a new morals. China has more than 5000 years of civilized history which left a large treasure of excellent culture and traditional morals. Apart from Confucian theory, there are other theories of different schools in which many things are worth studying and advocating. In order to meet the demands of economic development of our country and cultivate the new generation, it is necessary to undertake this task.

How should we inherit Chinese traditional morals with a critical attitude. Generally speaking, the basic method is to discard the dross and select the essential. But first of all, we ought to acquire a correct understanding of traditional morals. On the one hand, we should not look upon it as useless and sweep it away; but on the other hand, we also should not regard it as a perfect and eternal truth. In deepening economic transformation the method of a unity of opposites can serve in treating moral problems. While we criticize the unhealthy parts of traditional morals in guiding theory and practice, we are required to renew it and turn it into important content for a renewed morals.

Moral reconstruction requires that socialist morality under-go a process of rearrangement, purgation and perfection. Just as Marxist philosophy does not claim that it discovers all truth, but only finds the way to know truth, traditional Chinese morals does not reach the summit of human morality, but only lays the founda-tion for realizing the ideal of the good. The criticism and inhe-ritance of traditional morals is in essence creative and revo-lutionary, and contains the philosophical basis of self-trans-formation.

Complexity. In the course of economic development moral transformation is a particularly complicated phenomenon and can-not be reduced to the simple formula "economy-morality", which would mean that development in the economy and morality are the same; this would be a mechanical point of view. In reality, eco-nomic development does not correspond to moral transformation, and economic prosperity does not necessarily promote a moral ideology; to the contrary, often it results in a loss of creative power on the part of morality. This shows the complexity and multi-formity of moral transformation.

Morals, as an important content of human consciousness, not only has the effect of conditioning human behavior and main-taining economic relations, but more importantly it is the ideo-logical structure and rational power of human self-perfection. This is an historical process which cannot be regarded as one kind of self-perfection at one age and another kind of self-perfection at a different age. Human self-perfection may be different in degree at different ages, but this difference expresses itself in the course of its own evolution. The historical transformation of morality is the process of human awakening and maturity, and the perfecting of moral reason. The prerequisite for the ideal good is that there exist common factors in the different moral transformations at each historical stage. Therefore, it is necessary to study the complexity of moral transformation in order to understand and promote the progress of moral culture in economic development.

Some pessimists fail to understand the dialectics of moral development and think that economic development will cause a gradual degradation so that society will return to its natural and primitive state before morals can reach perfection. Generally speaking, this viewpoint, is incorrect. The general tendency of moral transformation, in no matter what economic period, is always to go forward, not backward and down, although its way forward is winding rather than straight. In the general forward course, there will be some stops, even retrogression at certain stages, and in some respects it will appear to go down. The history of moral transformation makes clear that the way in which morals advances is tortuous.

This complexity of moral transformation is revealed clearly in the history of social development. In primitive society morality is to labor collectively and equally, to help mutually and to merge the individual into the whole of mankind. Many scholars regard such a natural and equal moral circumstance as a beautiful, ideal state. In slave society, the products produced by slaves were totally taken by slave owners. The basic rule that slaves must be absolutely subject to their owners became the morality of slave society. In feudal society, a patriarchal relation was the primary social prin-ciple of morality: Being loyal to the king and filial to one’s feudal society. Modern capitalist society changed all this so that the viewpoint that the primary condition of human nature is to pursue personal interests became both the starting point and the end of every action. Economic prosperity brought about by the rapid development of modern science and technology far surpassed the total economic achievement of past times. Reviewing the history of social development, we can understand the corresponding history of moral transformation. But the question worth attending to is whether the morality of various periods of economic development goes forward or backward.

From primitive society to slave society, economic develop-ment was achieved at the price of moral degradation, for which reason some scholars suggest a return to nature. Such an attitude obviously lacks understanding of the nature and history of morality and does not associate moral transformation with the history of human civilization. In fact, the peaceful and harmonious primitive life and moral system was broken up by slave labor which changed reality. But in this painful loss people reflected upon the meaning of self-existence which aided self-awareness to reach maturity. At various stages of social and economic development human life was filled with new contents and significance. In this way an improve-ment of material and spiritual riches took place. It was the loss of humanity that enabled mankind to understand more deeply and clearly its own nature, and to see the hope for human development and an ideal society. Otherwise, if we hold to the dream of primi-tive morals then the human value that unfolded as truth, goodness and beauty will be lost. Economic development is always con-cerned with moral transformation and any moral transformation according to old moral norm will be repudiated as degraded. This is the intrinsic pattern of the self-perfection of human nature: moral transformation is the very ladder to perfect human morals.

Change in moral ideas is one of the important components of ideological modernization. The change in the various factors of economic development logically causes a change in morality. For more than 5000 years Chinese civilization has been famous for its rich and splendid culture, especially its ethics. In the great cause of modernization, it is the primary task of workers in ethics to study the characteristics of moral transformation and enable it to develop in the right direction so that it is favorable to an open-door policy and to economic construction.

Here it might be interesting to review the history of Chinese modernization. In the 19th century when Western culture began to exert even stronger influence over China, the Chinese people began unconsciously to renew itself. The history of the Chinese move-ment of modernization is made up of movements of social trans-formation initiated by natural vanguards, their numerous heroic deeds and the unforgettable lessons learned from failure. To study the real causes of these failures will no doubt bring us plenty of valuable information for present economic development and moral transformation.

Ideological transformation always plays the role of a pre-cursor in political and economic transformation. Since the Opium War of 1940 China had gone through several movements aimed at rebuilding a powerful country with a thriving economic and demo-cratic system by introducing Western technology and social sys-tems. Thus appeared eventually the Revolution of 1911 which overthrew the Qin Dynasty and established the capitalist system. But the cultural and ideological transformation was not launched until the May 4th Movement. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, both the political and the ideological system underwent a complete change. However, in socialist constructs very often priority is given to material civilization without enough attention being paid to the feudal factors and their cultural back-ground. This has been the cause of some failures in our work of nation-building. Therefore, the present socialist transformation is a deep revolution.

As an important part of social ideology morality falls in the area of socialist reform and the open-door policy. On the one hand, it is inheritance of the moral culture of the long period of civilized history; on the other, it is a development of new moral factors from the socialist economy, thus creating the double task of setting and resetting moral norms. The former means enhancing the excellent traditional morals, the latter refers to establishing new morals suitable to economic development. These twin tasks are closely related. Culture cannot be separated from history, for its formation must undergo a very long process; therefore it depends on the national traditions. Now that we are going to establish a socialist market economy, the objective is clear, but its mechanism is im-perfect; hence it is necessary to set new moral norms to support economic development. This is the general task of moral con-struction for the present time.

It should be noted that realistic moral activity is relatively independent of economy. That is, on the one hand, it follows the theoretical direction of economic development, and on the other, it lags behind that reality. But whether it is setting morals or resetting morals, both are concerned with the objective of moral norms for economic development. Without this objective, we have nothing to say on economic development and modernization.

Generally speaking, the objective of morals in economic development can be summarized as follows; first, to maintain human dignity, and second to make social progress. To maintain human dignity means to respect human rights and freedom, to respect science and democracy, to respect knowledge and talents, to be just and righteous, honest and faithful, and to be a noble person.

It should be pointed out that in economic development some phenomena do not conform to this objective. For instance, making a large fortune at the expense of public interests, disturbing normal market competition with a view to profiteering, and so on. These unjust and greedy deeds damage human dignity, injure the growth of new morals and block economic development. This immoral phenomenon must be checked effectively to prevent it from doing too much harm.

Man is a social product. Only by maintaining human dignity, respecting human freedom and giving the human spirit full free-dom can we drive society forward. In economic development, morality is a question not only of theory, but also of practice. Up-holding human dignity and driving society forward require morality to be unified on the basis of theory and practice.

At present, China is making a great effort to develop its national economy and to realize the four modernizations. We must strive for the goal of economic development and moral trans-formation.

The female personality will be developed and improved in the process of the modernization of society and its ideal will be realized.

First, the productive mode of the modernized economy helps manifest the personality of women as subjects. In modern industry, what determines the production is no longer physical human strength, but the application of a high level of technology, which increases the proportion of mental work. Now in some developed countries, the proportion of mental work versus physical labor approximates 1:1, while the value created by the former far exceeds that created by the latter. Therefore, the application of high level technology will reduce or eliminate the physical inferiority of women in production, and enable women to give play to their superiority in patience, carefulness and nimbleness. This is obviously indicated in developed countries: in the U.K. women have more job opportunities than men.

Second, the operational mode of a modernized economy enables women to choose the job suited to them. The open, dynamic pattern of the economy enables women to find positions of their own in a wider range of social activity. In developed countries, women are exploring molding ideal personalities. They are not the traditional good mothers and wives who sacrifice themselves in a closed family context, nor are they the so-called strong women of industrial times. They develop their own standard and hope to get a valuable job with flexible hours and a good location; they hope to take account of both family and career. Some women give up work and become housewives while bring up their children, but their return to the family is for the purpose of educating their children and giving their children the natural love of a mother so that the children can grow soundly. In the meantime, they engage in further studies to give play to their potentialities or to develop their interests, so that they will be more competitive when they take up a career after their children have grown up. Such exploration is praiseworthy under the conditions of a modernized economy; it advances the civilization of the whole society.

Third, the high educational level of society, the high degree of democracy and the modernization and socialization of house work due to the modernization of the economy will enable women to elevate their quality as human beings, to demonstrate their personality, to strengthen their competitive power in social life, and to realize a sound personality. There will be a day when we need no longer emphasize that the male and the female differ and recognize that there is something common to both sexes. Then the peculiar and varied beauty of the character and personality of the female will demonstrate itself naturally in the world.

Of course, molding the female personality depends not merely on the progress of economy and is not merely a matter for women alone. It depends on the consistent efforts of the whole society; this requires theoretical work by scholars to find the incompatibilities and in time eliminate them.