Promoting Civilized Families Through Family Building, Family Education, Family Traditions

Chinese President Xi Jinping pointed out at the 2015 Spring Festival Gathering on February 17 that great attention should always be paid to family building, family education and family traditions, whatever changes people might face through the ages and in their life.

From a strategic point of view, President Xi revealed the important role the family plays in the progress and development of the Party and the nation, showing a direction in which women's federations can make greater efforts to promote civilized families.

A "family" is unit of society, and civilized families will contribute to building a civilized society. Valuing family building is something highly appreciated by the Chinese nation, in addition to family education, family traditions, rich morals and other such family practices that have been passed on from generation to generation. There are over 400 million families who are aiming at civilization. This will surely provide impetus for the country to comprehensively build a moderately prosperous society, to deepen reform, to implement the rule of law and to strengthen Party discipline.

In the new era, however, the traditional ideas about family, family structure and family life have undergone huge changes, with issues such as household production, child raising and supporting the elderly causing the public grave concern.

Diversified values and excessive pursuit of personal gains and freedom have led to some fine family traditions and rules being ignored by the people. Massive migration of rural adults to big cities for better jobs has brought about the problem of "left-behind" women, children and seniors, who are desperate for care, support and attention. The trend of stressing knowledge accumulation over moral cultivation has severely impacted the growth of some children and their future development. All of these problems require stronger family building, family education and family traditions.

Efforts should be made to promote the building of civilized families during the course of developing a moderately well-off society, by constantly meeting the growing needs of the people, encouraging their participation in reform and development, leading the public to safeguard their legitimate benefits through the law and promoting the role of fine family traditions in strengthening Party discipline.

Moreover, core socialist values must be highlighted in the process of strengthening family building, family education and family traditions, with an eye to creating harmonious families, where the family members love and support each other, the children can grow happily and healthily, and the elderly are well tended to. Women, as indispensable parts of each family, should be encouraged to play a bigger role in carrying forward the family traditions.

Over the years, women's federations at various levels have always made it a priority to promote the building of civilized families. A campaign of "Seeking the Most Beautiful Families" was launched last September, having gone a long way to promoting fine traditions, ideas and practices among the public.

Having found over 1.83 million "Most Beautiful Families" at different levels, the women's federations vow to make the campaign a long-term effort, with a focus on promoting the building of civilized families and strengthening scientific family education.

Hopefully, more families will be encouraged to join the campaign and strive to be the "Most Beautiful", which will ultimately help create a civilized society.

(Source: Qiushi/Translated and edited by Women of China)