The People-Oriented Nature, the Scope of Public Good Orientation, and Institutional Advantages An Analytical Framework Based on the Behavioral Attributes of "Public Good"

Existing studies have mostly demonstrated the institutional advantages of socialism with Chinese characteristics from the perspectives of macro-history or economic performance, but they have lacked a systematic theoretical explanation of the micro-mechanisms through which the "people-oriented nature" is transformed into concrete governance effectiveness. This paper proposes the core concept of the "scope of public good orientation" as an analytical bridge connecting the people-oriented nature (the value foundation) and institutional performance (governance effectiveness). "Public good" is defined behaviorally as the behavioral orientation toward the well-being of others and the community, with "protecting others, enriching others, pleasing others, empowering others, and respecting others" as its five core dimensions; its core variable, the "scope of orientation," refers to the breadth of the objects toward which public good is directed. The paper argues that the governance logic centered on the public-good leadership of the Communist Party of China possesses significant systemic advantages in the breadth and stability of the scope of public good orientation; the broader the scope of orientation, the more the social-relations system tends toward positive balance; and positive balance is superior to negative imbalance. The expansion of the scope of public good orientation is precisely the concrete unfolding of the "people-centered" development philosophy in institutional operation, and the micro-mechanistic expression of the essential requirements of Chinese modernization such as "common prosperity for all" and "the coordination of material and spiritual civilization." Advancing the inquiry into institutional advantages from macro-level performance to the mediating variable of the scope of public good orientation constitutes a theoretical attempt at constructing China's independent knowledge system.