Moral Boundaries

Mary Ann O’Donnell is the most knowledgeable person about Shenzhen, Chinese or other, I’ve read. Her blog, Shenzhen Noted, deals with the sorts of issues on a level I aspire to. She recently wrote about different moral boundaries for America and Chinese students. For Chinese families academic cheating was “unwise” but understandable because scores were important. Smoking marijuana, however, was among the worst things an adolescent could do because it “showed a student’s selfishness and lack of concern for family and friends.” Mary Ann, like many Americans, thought the opposite: cheating is horrible and while you wouldn’t recommend smoking pot to teenager, it’s hardly the worst thing they could do.

our common point was that ethics is about responsibilities toward others in our lives. we differed in the groups we chose as our ethical point of reference. more interestingly still was my friends’ idea that care of the self (by not smoking pot) was in fact an ethical question because one’s body belongs to family and friends and not primarily to some self.

I don’t so much disagree as think there’s a different level of analysis that explains things easier. Mary Ann is absolutely right that ethics towards others explains the difference, but I don’t think we need to go so far as to say that in modern urban Chinese society there is a limited idea of “self” and that your family owns your body.

What I’ve been saying about the “Confucian Blind Spot” seems to apply here perfectly well. The issue at play is that in Chinese society the rest of society, both individuals and any idea of a “Greater Good”, are ignored at the expense of help those in your own “circle”. Confucian, and post-Confucian, society is modeled in a way that someones relationship to you defines your responsibilities to them. Others are necessarily people you know, there is no other “Other”. That cheating on a test hurts somebody else who you don’t know, but deserves it more, means less than getting into a good college and later supporting your family at a higher level. It’s a collective, rather than individual, selfishness.

SkyPeaceDoor

I want to write a belated response Stan Abram’s (from China/Divide) thought-provoking take on the SkyPeaceDoor Incident of the last year of the 1980s. They make what I think is a fundamentally profound point that everyone, everywhere should consider about the things they deem deeply significant – which is that the an event’s significance is a social construction of “selective attention.” This goes for 9/11, terror attacks, SkyPeaceDoor and other political or symbolic events that have meaning to us. More people die every year from industrial accidents in China than did all the Americans who died in the Vietnam War – so where is their Memorial Wall or any acknowledgement of their sacrifice? We choose to dwell on, glamorize, and remember the thousand or so who lost their lives in the SkyPeaceDoor but we choose to ignore other deaths. Why?

Society, et al

I’m working on my Master’s dissertation with my academic advisor to get it published (hopefully) soon. Don’t want to jinx myself like I have with everything involving post-M.Ed academics, but it’s good and it’s already getting bites from a respected journal. In our lit review we’ve been going over the origins of civil society and the West and in China. The academic world is one of nuance, but a blog is a world of bombast. I want to say here what I can’t say there. In fact, I’ll just quote Peter Hessler.

Well I can’t do that because I don’t have the transcript, but I’ll just tell you what he said during an NPR interview about his new book “China Road.” A listener called and asked what the social life was like for the millions of young migrants pouring into the new boomtowns of China. Hessler responded that the first thing you notice in these cities is the lack of institutions. There is no church, no volunteer groups, no libraries with reading groups, no coffee shops with a subculture hanging around them. It’s really just the Party and the businesses and millions of individual people and (sometimes) their families. Strong social groups would form at workplaces and would outlast that particular job, but there weren’t many friendships being formed outside that because of the aforementioned lack of institutions.

Levers of Governance – Reform in China?

China/Divide has a new post up reflecting how I feel about the Chinese governmental system on it’s best days.

Hence the great trade off of government. To paint in broad strokes and risk some coloring outside the lines, or to paint in fine strokes, which results in cleaner work, but at a bigger price? To let each pull in a different direction, or to have leadership and one decided direction, even if it may be an incorrect one at times? To afford the inefficiencies of debate, consensus and minority interests, or to address the greater good in a utilitarian manner, even if at the risk of alienating the minority?

America was once the greatest experiment in government in the world–the shining “city on a hill.” Today, Beijing’s running the next great experiment in government, a gradual evolution from classic communism to a social democracy with Chinese characteristics. Have recent events made Americans so nervous about our “city on a hill” status as to wish failure upon China, and fault-find its every step?

My best contribution to this idea is this: if the Chinese Communist Party allowed all of it’s members to vote for the top leadership, China would be roughly as democratic as America was in 1776. To wit, that would be 79 million people in a population of 1.3 billion or about 6% suffrage. Remember, in America’s most enlightened age only white land-owning men could vote in most states. That would mean ~60% of white men could vote, men counting for half the population, meaning only 30% of white adults could vote. My Google-Fu is failing me at finding the post-colonial demographics were of white, Native American, and slave populations but you get the picture though. Perhaps more Americans could vote in 1776 but it was anything but universal suffrage.

A second observation is that I prefer the Chinese government to the Filipino government, though I prefer the Philippines more open society (The Inquirer is one of the best newspapers on the planet!). A free press, civil society, and rule of law, for me, are the foundations of good governance that can approximate the positive effects of voting. Voting, in and of itself, does not make a democracy or good governance, lest anyone forget Hamas in Gaza. There is a culture of democracy and I think China and the Philippines fall far from it. Voting means understanding the issues, respecting honest debate, and voting for something more than tribal/clan or economic loyalties. I would argue that America, right now, is losing this culture. When a majority of Americans oppose a piece of Health Care Reform while also supporting the policy contents inside it, something is seriously amiss. I don’t see a lot of difference between the Tea Partiers/GOP Two Minutes of Hate and poor Filipinos being bought off with a bag of rice by parties with no platforms (really, go look at the political party platforms there – there are none!). Neither are terribly fit to vote when you’re voting on personalities and instead of real policy.

My final submission is this. China/Divide is far too optimistic about the scope and possibilities of reform. The problem with my thought experiment at the beginning is that this is a very safe idea not being considered. China has a lot of governing institutions that could be reformed with just a bit more accountability and transparency but they’re it’s just not happening, nor is it even being talked about publicly. Class and village elections are cheap glaze over some very deep structural problems. There are no real reform proposals on the table. Though the CCP’s ideas and goals have changed over the past 30 years, there has been almost no change in governance. The simple truth is that other levers of democratic governance – civil society, rule of law, and a free press – are being constantly weakened. When lawyers stop disappearing, when world-respected NGOs aren’t being accused of “infiltrating our interior”, and when the press stops getting memos like this, I’ll start believing that there’s anything shining about this example. It’s fine that someone wants to stand up in lead the boat of squabbling people, it’s another thing to throw dissenters to the sharks.

The End of the Hukou? Educational Context

It looks like we’re about to see the end of the hukou. A dozen different papers across China had an editorial saying it was time to ditch the social engineering relic that I think played a key part in making the Chinese urban experience what it is. The Party is sending a pretty powerful message that things are about to change (I wonder if this has anything to do with the labor shortages in the cities?). I wrote a paper defending the hukou‘s role in education development in China while studying at Hong Kong University.

A Broken Culture? The Government (Part 1)

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about James Fallows‘ twenty-three year old description of the Philippines today, “A Broken Culture.” It’s important because there’s another election around the corner, a new round a people promising an end to poverty, but the outlook is the same. Fallows argued, and was right, that the end martial law under Marcos and return to democratic rule under (recently deceased) Aquino wasn’t going to fix the underlying problems of the Philippines despite the optimism at the time.

All in all, I think I agree with Fallows. But it isn’t just a broken culture. It’s a broken economy, a broken polity, and a fractured state. I unfortunately agree that these problems seem as intractable today as they did then. I want to take a different approach than Fallows and instead of looking at what’s wrong with the Philippines, I want to look at what’s right and ask why it’s not working. The most frustrating thing about the Philippines is that it seems like it has all the right pieces when each part is viewed in isolation, but the whole of society and the polity just isn’t moving like it should.

First, let’s look at the government.

Standard Operating Procedures

Hera’s father works for the local government and was telling us yesterday about “SOP” – Standard Operating Procedure. It’s the term for executive-level corruption in the Philippines. SOP is the jacking up of the price of government projects by contractors who then pass the extra cash on to government officials. I was told last night by the Mayor’s speech writer that any project more than 20 million pesos (about $500,000) gets 30% or more SOP. The money gets spread down from presidents, governors, mayors and down to barangay (neighborhood/sub-district) chiefs. It’s Standard Operating Procedure because no one needs to ask for it, it just comes. There effectively is no non-corrupt executive leader in the Philippines. They don’t need to do anything other than do their jobs building roads, bridges, schools and hospitals and the dirty money flows right into their hands.

China has corruption too, of course, but it’s different.