Source: The Austin American-Statesman
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/world/05/23/23chinavalues.html
YINCHUAN, China — Zhang Xianliang is an unlikely advocate for remembering the past. Branded an enemy of the Communist Party in 1958, he was thrown into a labor camp and left there for 22 years, often surviving on little more than boiled grass.
Yet Zhang, at 70 one of China's most famous living writers, is one of a growing number of prominent Chinese calling for the nation to reconnect with its history as a way of strengthening a value system they say has been derailed by the Communist Party and China's rapid shift to capitalism.
"Because of the damage to our cultural legacy by the Communist Party and the influx of Western culture during the past two decades, we have become culturally unmoored," Zhang said in an interview at a movie studio and theme park he runs in China's northern Ningxia province. "Only now are we understanding how important it is to cultivate a shared moral sense."
Zhang and many other Chinese say a weakened sense of moral values is largely to blame for a surge in social problems, including a rising crime rate and an increase in corruption.
"Over the last few years there has been a major revival of interest in Chinese history and thought," said Xia Xueluan, a Beijing University sociologist. "Our value system has been shaken by modernization, so people are seeking a moral base."