In recent weeks, China has been consumed by an unprecedented
internal debate concerning a subject bound to make its Communist
rulers nervous. At issue is the moral health of Chinese
society.
Widespread Chinese discussion of this most un-politically
correct subject was triggered by the October 21 death of a two-year
old girl in the city of Foshan in Guangdong province. She died of
internal injuries sustained after being run-over not once, but
twice in a local market.
Accidents happen. But what made little Wang Yue’s death a
matter for intense public discussion was the fact that nearly 20
people simply walked by and ignored her plight as she lay bleeding
in the gutter.
What, hundreds of Chinese websites, newspapers and even
state media outlets are asking, does this say about Chinese
society? Have Chinese people lost all sense of concern for others
in the midst of the scramble for wealth unleashed by China’s long
march away from economic collectivism? One local official
summarized the collective angst by stating: “We should look into
the ugliness in ourselves with a dagger of conscience and bite the
soul-searching bullet.”
The problem, from the perspective of China’s
party-government-military elites, is such soul-searching may lead
increasing numbers of Chinese to conclude that the circumstances
surrounding Wang Yue’s death are symptomatic of deeper public
morality problems confronting China, some of which could
significantly impede its economic development.
One such challenge is widespread corruption. By
definition, corruption doesn’t easily lend itself to close study.
Its perpetrators are rarely interested in anyone studying their
activities. Few question, however, that there’s a high correlation
between corruption and widespread and direct government involvement
in the economy. The more regulations and “state-business”
partnerships you have (and China has millions of the former and
thousands of the latter), the greater the opportunities for
government cadres to extract their personal pound of flesh as the
price of doing business.
Back in 2007, for example, a
Carnegie Foundation study of China reported
that approximately “10 percent of government spending, contracts,
and transactions is estimated to be used as kickbacks and bribes,
or simply stolen.” The situation has since become even worse. In
late 2009, for example, China’s state anti-corruption watchdog
admitted that 106,000 officials had already been found
guilty of corruption that year — an increase of 2.5 percent from
2008.
From an economic standpoint, high corruption levels are a
powerful disincentive for foreign investment. And if corruption
grows to sufficient levels in China, there’s a strong possibility
it may start cancelling-out the attraction of the lower labor costs
that are one of the biggest magnets for foreign investment in
China.
The ethical predicaments corroding China’s economy,
however, go beyond everyday corruption. They also touch on China’s
willingness to tell the truth about what’s really going on in the
Chinese economy.
While hardly anyone questions China’s economy is growing,
doubts are continually expressed concerning the veracity of its
growth figures — including by some members of China’s elite. In
2010, for instance, Wikileaks revealed that China’s present Vice
Premier Li Keqiang had expressed little confidence in his own
country’s GDP numbers during a 2007 conversation with the American
ambassador.
The causes for such uncertainty are several. But one that
has consistently plagued China since the 1980s has been outright
fudging and lying on production and growth numbers by local
officials eager for political advancement.
Why does this matter? It’s important because domestic and
foreign businesses need reliable data if they’re going to be able
to make prudent investments. Conversely, misleading GDP data helps
generate a cycle of expectations, risk-assessment, investments,
production and exports that is built on lies. And if the falsehoods
are big and systematic enough, they will severely undermine
business confidence and leave a legacy of distrust of China among
foreign investors and international markets.
Many members of China’s Communist party elite — but
especially its younger set — are very conscious of these problems.
Their concerns were vented in an unprecedented fashion at an
informal October 6 meeting held at the China World Trade Centre
which gathered together the children of those party leaders who
ended the anarchical insanity associated with the “Gang of Four” 35
years ago.
Instead of being a gathering during which preparations
were supposed to be made for next year’s Party Congress, young
apparatchik after young apparatchik stood up and slammed the state
of Chinese society. Some spoke of the “rapid decline of moral
standards.” Others referred to “rampant corruption.” Still more
expressed their disgust at the perks enjoyed by party and
government officials. One well-connected cadre even
insisted: “The Communist Party is like a surgeon who has
cancer.… It can’t remove the tumor by itself, it needs help from
others, but without help it can’t survive for long.”
And herein lies the dilemma for those members of China’s
elites who are aware of the threat that widespread corruption,
nepotism, and all the usual phenomena associated with one-party
states represent to China’s economic and political future. The
ideology that still (at least theoretically) justifies their
leading place in society and politics — i.e., Communism — has
literally nothing to offer by way of serious moral
counsel.
Communism is, after all, based on a materialist conception
of life, and materialism can’t generate any coherent
ethic, beyond recourse to appeals to speeding up the so-called
“dialectics of history” or the mailed fist of raw power. That’s why
Marxists typically dismiss concerns for objective morality as
“bourgeois false consciousness.”
Nor does the other force that increasingly serves to
legitimize the rule of China’s elites — old-fashioned nationalism
— have much to offer by way of moral guidance. Indeed, nationalist
regimes are invariably associated with widespread corruption
because of their propensity to meddle widely and deeply in every
aspect of economic life.
Either way, if China’s rulers are going to confront some
of the looming moral problems threatening to compromise China’s
economic progress (not to mention the present elite’s
power-monopoly), then they need to find some alternatives — and
quickly. Revolutions have, after all, started on far
less.
