December 4 marked China's first national Constitution Day, with many educational activities being carried out to raise constitutional awareness among the public. Constitution Day was proposed at the Fourth Plenary Session of the 18th Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee in October. This meeting, which focused on the rule of law, also suggested requiring government workers to pledge allegiance to the Constitution before taking office.

This is the first time that China has made regulations on the aforementioned practice. This practice, which encourages government employees to be faithful to the country's supreme law, will bolster the Constitution's authority.

The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security set up an oath-taking system 12 years ago, requiring civil servants to swear to reject corruption the moment they commenced duty. The first such ceremony in 2003 has become an important precedent in induction training.

However, owing to the lack of detailed guidelines on oath-taking ceremonies, the form such events have taken has varied across the country, and no standardized pledge exists for civil servants to swear. In some places, online videos of meticulously planned ceremonies have been met with negative public reactions.

In November 2004, 77 civil service recruits undertaking a training session in Jiangsu Province swore to a bronze statue of Zhou Enlai (1898-1976), the first Premier of the People's Republic of China, promising to "serve the people for the rest of our lives."

In Hefei, the capital of Anhui Province, more than 100 officials participated in an idiosyncratic ceremony in August 2006, where they swore to Bao Zheng (999-1062), a famously virtuous official in the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127), to be "clean and corruption-proof."

In 2004, Yang Fuping, then Mayor of Xingyang in Henan Province, was among the first to be sworn in as head of a local government. He took his oath in front of the national emblem, with a copy of the Constitution in hand, in front of 232 deputies to the people's congress of the city.

Swearing in government recruits who hold the Constitution and face the national flag and emblem has since gained in popularity among local governments.

Swearing-in ceremonies are practiced in many countries. In more than 120 nations, the requirement for government workers to take oaths is stipulated in their respective Constitutions, with the aim of highlighting civil servants' legal duties and obligations. When civil servants have to announce their responsibilities on a public occasion, the sense of moral duty their jobs entail weighs more heavily on them.

Some difficult tasks lie ahead in China's battle against graft. Other than factors related to a decline in morality and a distorted value system, some officials are embroiled in corruption owing simply to legal naiveté.

At the October meeting, the CPC reaffirmed its commitment to governing the country in accordance with the Constitution and other laws. The integrity of the latter is dependent on that of the former, so promulgating Constitutional authority is a vital matter. The focus should be on the implementation of the country's supreme law and the supervision of this process. Swearing to the Constitution is therefore of great importance.

Although being sworn in is merely a ceremony, the undertaking of legal duties requires an accompanying ritual to accord them the appropriate solemnity and weight. The new system is undoubtedly a step forward as it promotes the affiant's internalization of values. One may reason that having declared publicly his or her position, the need to pay more attention to one's actions and commit to one's oaths is ever more pressing. This represents the fostering of internal discipline.

Nonetheless, some issues remain. To wit, what should one say when swearing fidelity to the Constitution and on what occasion should such a ceremony take place? Even more important is preventing this ceremony from becoming a trite formality. This ceremony is designed to suffuse the office of a civil servant with dignity, honor recruits and foster values in them. Achieving all this, however, is no easy task.

While cracking down on corruption is paramount, more attention should be paid to the improvement of officials' personal characteristics and work practices. The oath to "forever reject corruption" is one thing, standardizing the civil service system is quite another. The daunting challenge we face is to fill in our system's loopholes so that good people will not do bad things, and to tighten the noose on networks of corruption so that bad people are frightened out of doing bad things.

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