Come to Qingzhen – a city of integrity

Integrity is the foundation of the market economy, the key concept in the socialist core values, and also a quality that any civilized society should have. 

The government in Qingzhen, Guiyang, Southwest China's Guizhou province has devoted many years to creating a "credit-based society", in which consumers don't have to worry about products, enterprises trust their business partners, and students are told to be honest from an early age.

Qingzhen Shiguang Experimental School is a credit demonstration school. Ai Zhihao, a junior student, comes to the reading corner with his classmates to recite credit-related excerpts from The Analects of Confucius during the school intervals at noon. The Analects of Confucius was written by the ancient Chinese educator and scholar Confucius, and includes many of Confucius's views that are typical of Chinese philosophy. 

"In addition to the reading corner, our school also has the credit-based demonstration library, saving-box and examination hall," said Ai, adding that being honest is taken for granted throughout the campus. 

Education for children is only a part of the county's credit construction. Farmers are also told to comply with market rules and regulations, and to be consistent with the business contracts they have signed.

Integrity is an important lesson to learn not only for Qingzhen's people, but also for officials in government bodies. The Qingzhen government has built credit-based incentive systems. Integrity is a crucial indicator in officials' performance evaluation.

To keep abreast with the times, Qingzhen employs big data so that the personal credibility information of citizens can be shared.

Thanks to those efforts, Qingzhen now ranks second in the province in terms of its business environment assessment, and has been included on the "top 10 regions" list for favorable business conditions.