Abstract: Although many studies have concerned the values of the Chinese, only a few of these studies have been empirically based, and most of these either borrowed measurements from abroad or used participants who were students or young people. Studies on values in China need to have measures developed in China itself and to build an elaborated model of Chinese values based on research employing a variety of Chinese participants.
Chinese Values Questionnaire (CVQ) was created based on the content analysis of structured interviews of 303 natives of China. The CVQ was then completed by 2296 native Chinese participants including workers, peasants, professionals, college students, and high school students from 12 provinces. An exploratory factor analysis of the responses of 1100 of these participants suggested that there were eight factors, and this structure was confirmed by a confirmatory factor analysis of the remaining 1196 participants. The eight factors were in-tegrity, self-support/respect, public interest, love/happiness, prestige, family/equilibrium, conformity, and mon-ey/power. Reliability coefficients (Cronbach’s a) ranged from 0.74 to 0.86.
The eight factors we found are similar in some ways to other models of Chinese values, but they also differ in ways that reflect the uniqueness of Chinese culture. One aspect of this uniqueness is the tendency for the Chinese to think in terms of the “Good-person,” indicated by higher scores on the integrity, self-support/respect, and public interests subscales. The high fit index and reliability of the eight factor model of Chinese Values suggests that the CVQ may be a good measure of Chinese values.

Key words: Chinese values, individual development and maintenance, social development and maintenance, the Model of Good-person