The state of being moral and the process of becoming moral was
examined in a sample of 211 Chinese students from Taiwan who
were divided into seven age groups. "Structured wholeness" was
demonstrated by cross-sectional data that showed that moral mean ings associated with the self are organized coherently across different situations; this finding describes the state of being moral. With
respect to the process of becoming moral, the longitudinal data
suggested an invariant sequence of moral reasoning stages, with
little retrogression or skipping of stages by most subjects. Social
class but not gender had a positive although modest effect on rate
of development. A comparison of the Chinese data with previous
American and Israeli data points to basic cross-cultural similari ties in terms of sequence of stages and rate of development.
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