A Teen’s Cultural Revolution

China’s headlong rush to capitalism is creating a society with few parallels in history -- a people with great economic freedom but little commensurate political or cultural freedom. One consequence is the perversion of Chinese values and cultural traditions.

Truly free societies operate on an understanding. People pursue material self-interest -- capitalism -- but submit to regulation and other limits imposed by a government they elect.

Citizens yield those powers because they have had a hand in shaping their government. They understand that the interests of individuals and those of society clash at times, and that often the collective interest must prevail. For instance, voters in the United States approve school bond measures because they realize that an educated population is good for society, even if the new taxes curtail their personal spending.

The Chinese people have little say in their government. Indeed, many Chinese distrust the leaders who supposedly are watching out for society’s larger interests. That absence of political freedom and lack of trust provide the people with little reason to consider the needs of society as a whole.

Instead, their primary incentive is to act in the one arena of their lives where they are now free -- making money. When their individual economic freedom clashes with society’s interests -- as defined by this government they do not trust -- the people are often inclined to try to subvert those interests. Hence, we see tragic spectacles such as the one reported last week -- the owner of a canvas-making factory in Beixinzhuang so determined to make money that he hired underage girls, and then so desperate to cover up the unlawful practice that he apparently buried alive some young workers he found unconscious and assumed were dead.

Of course, many free societies suffer abuses as well. No system is perfect, because man is imperfect. But in the United States and other democratic nations, the system at least encourages people to think of the common good as well as the individual. This twisted new Chinese system does not.

This new obsession with material consumption and wealth is seen most in the younger generations. Education serves “to preach the way, to bestow the livelihood, and to solve the confusion,” poet and essayist Han Yu wrote about 12 centuries ago. China’s educated classes could contribute their knowledge to the society so that they “worry before the world worries, and rejoice after the world rejoices,” poet Su Shi wrote about three centuries later. Today, an obsession with wealth is changing the purpose of education into merely getting a well-paying job.

What becomes of Chinese after generations have been raised to pursue money above all? Traditional Chinese philosophies of Confucianism and Taoism will suffer as the people are rewarded for putting themselves first, not for honoring society and family. Hospitals used to care for all in need, for example. Doctors and hospital directors now are so obsessed with money that they routinely kick out patients who can’t pay.

Fortunately, more and more intellectuals in China see these imbalances. The government, feeling the tension, knows there is a desperate need for China to have a freer social and political environment. The liberation of the Chinese people seems inevitable.

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To Non-Chinese Readers, a Note

Translated loosely, the Chinese headline at top reads: “Is China’s Sudden Rise a Good Thing or a Disaster?” Jueqi -- the fourth and fifth characters from the left -- is a common term for China’s precipitous, assertive and, to some, alarming economic and military expansion in the last decade.