Virtue in the Making: The Social Construction of Confucian Values in Contemporary Chinese Moral Education

This article analyzes the contemporary reconstruction of Confucian virtues within the context of Chinese school-based moral education. Drawing on Berger and Luckmann’s theory of the Social Construction of Reality, this study analyzes how Confucian ethics are transmitted, objectified, and internalized through curricula and pedagogical practices, particularly in their alignment with the socialist core values. The analysis demonstrates that the revival of Confucian virtues is selective rather than comprehensive, with particular ethical capacities emphasized according to their compatibility with institutional and ideological priorities. Through the process of legitimation, moral norms are rendered culturally authoritative and subjectively binding, thereby shaping students’ moral self-understanding. The article posits that moral education functions as a key site where ethical traditions are reorganized to align individual conduct with prevailing normative expectations, thereby producing moral subjects whose identities are both culturally resonant and institutionally structured.we