Party leaders call for moral education after three murders
Top party leaders have called for better moral education after shocking murders of two teachers and a professor in the past month.
Leading the call was Li Changchun , a Politburo Standing Committee member, who said moral and ideological education must be stepped up among the country's youth.
In a letter to a conference in Hangzhou on the moral education of young people, Mr Li wrote that it was critical that they be given the right guidance. 'Particular care should be given to children and their growth as they are successors of the socialist cause.'
He added that cultivating ideals and ethics among young people was 'closely linked to the nation's future and fate, the public interests and social harmony'.
Another party leader, Liu Yunshan , head of the Communist Party's publicity department, told conference participants that China needed to create a sound social and cultural environment for the young.
'More healthy cultural products should be made to ... cultivate values such as patriotism and civilised manners,' he said.
The mainland's cultural critics have lamented that almost three decades of reform have brought a decline of moral values among the country's young, and there were no homegrown literature and arts of which it could be proud.
Mr Li and Mr Liu did not mention the murders in their comments, but the mainland media have been flooded by reports of the grisly cases in recent weeks.
Beijing police confirmed last week that Cheng Chunming , a law professor at the China University of Political Science and Law, had been hacked to death by a fourth-year student in a seminar room on Tuesday night.
State television reported that the suspect, identified as Fu Chengli, had confessed.
The university had organised its staff to assist Cheng's family and his pregnant wife.
Staff said they were unaware of any personal problems related to Cheng.
The motive of the murder was being investigated.
It was the third attack on an educator on the mainland in a month.
In the other two cases, a 16-year-old student at a middle school in Shanxi province killed his teacher with a knife , and another student of the same age strangled his teacher to death in Zhejiang province.
