It has been too long since I last published a blog, I will randomly put down whatever came to my mind this time.
The miserable situation in Thailand
Today is the birthday of my ex-wife, and this morning I made a phone call to wish her happy birthday in Thailand, more accurately in Bangkok, the most developed city in the country and of course the capital. What I’ve heard was shocking, as she told me there were dead bodies on the streets under the broad sunlight due to Covid-19! Some people suddenly fell to the ground to their death, and others would call an ambulance to pick up the bodies. Yes, the ambulance had been used for picking up dead bodies rather than transporting living patients, since all hospitals are full and no longer admit new patients. In Thailand all cremation service is done by temples, so the government is circulating a map showing which temple is available for cremation and which is not or is full or broken down.
I did some desktop research and found that the daily cases for seven day average was 20,000. According to the WHO, there are more than 670,000 confirmed cases there, with 5,503 cases dead. China used to supply its vaccines to Thailand but now the Thai government decided to switch to Madonna or AstraZeneca partly due to public pressure.
The inevitable risk of seeing everything from the ideological lenses
What we should wake up from the pandemic is to pay more attention to efficiency of governance. Pandemics does not know ideology, nor the nature of regimes, it only cares about how effectively mobilized and organized humans are in a country, whether they can effectively leverage existing social and natural resources for the better life and welfare of human beings.
Having said that, it is unrealistic to ask all humans to forget or to ignore ideologies. This report by BBC contains more detailed information. Even though BBC is not particularly friendly to China, this article admitted that “Across Asia, Chinese vaccines have played a crucial role in immunizing people against Covid-19, with millions receiving either a Sinovac or Sinopharm jab.”
Why China did a good job in controlling pandemic?
This got me to think and to ask this question: What if China had failed to control COVID-19 and became like Thailand and Indonesia today? It is fair to say that would spell a global disaster, as nobody else can help a country of that size. For that we must give credits to Chinese people and the Chinese government. I put the people before the government because it is the shared and pragmatic preferences in the Chinese society that have generated a social demand for self- and collective protections, making Beijing’s job much easier than the Biden administration in persuading some Americans to accept the vaccines. Believe it or not, fear for the high cost of healthcare from fighting the virus has played a big but hidden role. I can totally imagine Chinese parents telling their offspring “If we don’t take care of ourselves, our family will bankrupt after long time hospital stay.”
The biggest problem China faces
My sister has a friend in the east Bay, whose husband is in a wheelchair all the time. According to the wife, her husband would have died several times by now if he stayed in China, mostly because disabled people are not receiving priority treatment they deserved. One easy example is in the hospital, whenever there is an elevator coming down, everyone would rush and jam into it, never paying any attention to people in the wheelchairs. It sometimes would take one hour for disabled people to finally get into the elevator to meet the doctors.
Speaking of elevators, I ask myself what would have happened in the US. My guess is that the local level laws or codes would have at least one elevator designated to disabled people. Any violators competing with the disabled would be charged in the court of law, ranging from a fine to discipline actions. Violators will face legal consequences in addition to bad publicity.
China, at least in big cities, may also have a designated elevator for the disabled, but guess what would happen to violators who may push the wheelchairs out of their way in order to get into the elevator designated to the disabled? Nothing! The same thing happens every day as we speak. People smoke in front of the “No Smoking” sign, and drive against the traffic on the road that clearly marked “One Way.” This is how China differs from the US, you violated the law, and you suffer no consequences whatsoever.
My brother’s case
In the ceremony celebrating the 100th birthday of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Secretary Xi Jinping announced that the CCP is all for Chinese people’s welfare and has nothing for itself. Xi must have been living in his own dream world, which is easy to leaders in a country that is top heavy and bottom light, meaning leaders depend on leaders to get promotion, fame and indirectly fortune.
When a leader took the seat of power, everything changes because the system works in such a way that everyone tries to make the supreme leader happy, which ultimately turns all the subordinates happy. The supreme leader quickly loses touch of the reality because he is surrounded by people who do not want him to keep in touch of reality. Mao Zedong was one of the best examples. During the Great Leap Forward (大跃进) campaign, all the provincial party secretaries only reported news that Mao wanted to hear, because nobody wanted to be the one saying the emperor was really naked — until the truth became irrelevant for everyone to know.
My own brother has been a member of the CCP, even a director level (处级) party officer in Nanchang, the capital city of Jiangxi province. Yet it made little difference because he himself had been a victim of a corrupted legal system. The story was more twisted than a crime movie.
In 2015 my brother was the Chairman and CEO of a real estate investment firm in Nanchang. Back then there was a public auction for a piece of land in Nanchang that several entities were interested and competing in bidding. The Jiangxi Provincial Supreme Court first announced on April 25, 2015, that the auction would be held on June 3rd, 2015. Interestingly, one week before the first auction, on May 28, 2015, to be accurate, a brand new real estate entity was established and entered the auction. This new bidder was not just anyone but a joint venture between the municipal real estate development firm under the district government in Nanchang (with 10% of funds) and a private real estate firm (contributed 90% of funds). But that was not the only thing strange. In its public announcement for the auction, Jiangxi Provincial Supreme Court originally declared on April 25, 2015, that the land was to be used for commercial purposes, which obviously held much profit potential, and explained why so many entities were competing for it. Yet on November 25, 2015, the Nanchang municipal government decided and internally circulated a government document that said the land should only be used for public landscape — no commercial use at all. This happened less than two months before the final auction on January 12, 2016, when the new bidder with government background finally won the auction. If this was not dramatic enough, in April of 2016, the Nanchang government had another change of mind. This time it announced that the land could be used for commercial purposes — after the bidder won the auction and obtained the right to use the land. I say “use” because in China, nobody really owns any land except the government, one can only use the land for up to 70 years, with the possibility of extension for another length of time that is subject to negotiation.
Anyway, the story may sound complicated, but the idea was very simple: The local governments can randomly make changes before, during or after public auction any way they see fit, anyway that benefit themselves, even though China has a Law of Auction that prohibit such practices. In this case, limiting and changing the use of the land clearly created an unbearable and unfair risk for all bidders except for the government insiders. To this day my brother has lost more than 29,450,000 RMB or roughly $4.5 million and has been appealing to legal entities in Beijing to no avail, as they simply kicked the case back to the provincial level.
Given the sad story, how can one say the party has no private interest in public affairs? It is clear that the system is all driven by private gains of the government officers. Anti-corruption campaign has only sent corrupted officers into temporary hiding. They would still come up with more innovated ways of getting what they wanted. It is not even smart to reject private interests, the job is to leverage them for the best results of a country.
Making the law enforceable
The laws in this country are very specific and very detailed, written with so many numbers to quantify the details of regulated behaviors. The more quantified the law, the easier to implement and enforce. Chinese law on the other hand more like moral textbooks, full of what people should do, very little on how to do it, and how to punish for violations. Setting quantitative boundaries is the first step for people to take law seriously.
My biggest wish for China is to go from rule by the party to rule of law. This way the party will not live forever, nor rule forever. Instead, the party will act like the “Mao’s flower” to harbinger and to lead the rule of law in the society, and then silently smile when thousands of flowers blossom. The first step for that to happen is to make the law above the party.
I can honestly say that Deng Xiaoping was smarter than Mao Zedong. The latter just wanted to be the second Stalin, while Deng was the first to come up with the idea that markets did not have to be linked with capitalism, socialism can have and use markets as well. This fundamental change of mind is easy to look today, but if you think about it, it’s hard after so many years of Soviet mode of economy under Mao. Unfortunately, even Deng was not smart enough to come up with such ideas like “Freedom of express” and “transparency of governance” are not the patents of capitalism. Socialism can do those things as well.
The key to realize democracy and freedom of express is to install rule of law. This is the best way for China to grow into a democracy. I say “best” because it would incur the least cost of transition, and the party can still play the key role, making sure it has a happy ending, instead of being “dishonorably discharged” or even worse, being overthrown.
Motivation & regulation, two keys of successes
During my time studying for insurance license, the thought came to me repeatedly: Two things are crucial for economic growth and development in any place: People must be motivated for successes, and that motivation must be regulated so it stay constructive, not destructive. The best countries have both elements, while the worst countries have none. China sits in between, it has high motivation among its people — even higher than Americans — but weak regulations. The United States is still the best country in having both.
Instead of rule of law, which bets on the law, China bets on men and replaces rule of law with rule of people. The country has never broken from its long past of relying on good leaders. Deng Xiaoping tried to install not just one generation of leaders led by Jiang Zemin, but his successor of Hu Jintao. But the most Deng could do was to ensure leadership stability for a few decades, while the US has been thriving for centuries. In regime stability China is absolutely no match to the US.
Faith in rules, not in humans
China can be another US if it realizes that deep down in the rule of law is the idea that humans are not reliable, written rules are far better. Another idea is that it is better to assume a bad, greedy, selfish, stupid, irrational human nature than a good, generous, altruistic, smart, rational human nature.
Confucianism has been a ghost hovering above the mainland because from Mao to Xi, no matter how critical they may have been to Confucius and his ideas, they all implicitly relied on educating or teaching the mass with moral principles. But Confucianism failed in the past and has been failing in contemporary China as well. Throughout the history of PRC, the party has set up one moral behavioral model after another, and guess what the Chinese people do? They pretended they cared and listened, they pledged repeatedly to follow those models, but they never did! Why? Because moral models have limited power. Dreaming about changing people through mass education is a waste of time. It is much more efficient to install concrete, enforceable rules for them to follow.
I wish more scholars in China would read and study the US laws, which are really the secret codes of successes for this country. It’s one of the biggest myths in the US and the world to call this country a land of free. In truth it is a land of regulations. This is so for a good reason; regulations guarantee freedom and save the country from falling into chaos.
When an average American happens to visit the mainland, perhaps the most shocking thing for him to find out would be how few regulations governing individual behaviors there are. China is not a democracy, but Chinese have far more personal freedoms than American. Driving within the marked lanes, holding no open cans of alcohol on the street, and walking on the sidewalks, these are all highly negotiable rules in China.
But to be regulated is to be civilized. China and Chinese will never win respect of others if they act the same as they do at home.