--By Wei Zhixun, Associate Professor, School of Law, Shandong University

Abstract

Social justice is of fundamental significance to the existence and sustainable development of any political society, and the discussions of social justice in the context of the Chinese dream are particularly critical and constructive. The Chinese dream provides guiding principles for building China's social justice. Besides absorbing the essence of the classical theories of justice, the social justice with Chinese characteristics should also build its own basic principle based on China's reality and its political discourse context.

The essence of the basic principle is that all the inequalities in social and political positions, economic gains distribution and use of environmental resources will be addressed in a way that the basic self-esteem, the basic development needs and the long-term prosperity of the bottom should be guaranteed; the reasonable and differentiated expectations from all ladders of social classes should be met; the compensation demands of the special regions and groups and the inter-generational justice demands should both be satisfied.

Guided by this principle, China's social justice theory should propose its basic areas and criteria so that the main bodies of social justice, namely the state, social organizations and individuals, can be weaved into a unity.

But it will be an extremely difficult task to build a sole model for social justice and at the same time carve out its distribution principles. The right step is to sort out the distribution principles of different social relation models based on the inherent features of the current social relation model we now live in. In building social justice, we should design an open system to allow for different understandings of social justice, and seek for common understanding through rational conversations to re-establish the basic social structure. Therefore, the road ahead for China's social justice should be one that is to bridge the gaps between differences and integration, divergence and common understanding, and between diversity and unity.

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