The Chinese Pursuit of Happiness: Meaning and Morality in Everyday Life (Draft Epilogue)

Abstract

What is happiness? How do people in China get it? What are the social obstacles to having it? And what does this tell us about contemporary China’s moral order? These are the big questions addressed by the research that produced the essays in this book. Each essay uses empirical research to focus on part of the answers to the questions. Here, I will try to provide a synthesis, a holistic but inevitably more speculative response.