Abstract:
The two basic conceptions, practice and ideology of honest and clean government, must be well discriminated in an investigation of the origin of honest and clean government in ancient China. Honest government as a practice of government moral rose fresh in the late days of the prehistoric primitive commune while the conception of honest and clean government was introduced much later in class society. The introduction of the six principles for honest and clean government indicated the birth of the ideology of such government. Although different thinkers in the Springautumn and the Warring Kingdom period of history differed in understanding of honest and clean government, the ideology of such government was succeeded and advanced by generations of Chinese thinkers in feudal times, which provides a rich cultural treasurehouse for strengthening construction of honest and clean government in contemporary China.
