Read this piece from NY Times on the recent coronavirus caused crisis, and you will begin to understand why US is still much more powerful today than China, despite a report from the Economist that has recently called China and US 400-pound rivals. The bad news for China is that more similar stories are likely to emerge in the future. This is sad because China has come a long way of striving to win the respects from the world, and many Chinese believe now is finally the time to shake off all the historical humiliations the country had suffered in the past — given that China became the second largest economy in the world. It is also sad because hardly anyone in other countries cares more about national pride and country reputation than the average Chinese citizen.
Who Is Responsible for the Image Problem?
For the most part, China and Chinese have themselves to blame. Merely having the desire to be liked by others in the world is not enough. We all have to earn that respect of other by our own continuous deeds, not automatically just because you are big in economy. The fundamental weakness of the the country is its weak citizenship education systems, the weakest in the world. All the problems started from within the family, where parents are supposed to teach their offspring to install the right values in the children. Parenting counts far more important than schools and social networks later on in life. Most Chinese parents have only one concern for their child: To raise or to expand family fortune and to make future generations financially and intellectually thriving at any cost. This creates huge opportunity costs because it is ten times harder — sometimes simply impossible — to fix value related problems later in adulthood.
The Confidence Doctrine Made Incomplete Attribution and Ignored Future Vulnerabilities
Chinese government has done a good job in social management or social governance to turn a weak citizenship base into a strong economy. Economic success however have created an illusion all the successes are due to the state leadership, proving that the Chinese system is superior to those in other countries, even in the US. This is the reasoning behind Xi, Jinping’s self-confidence doctrine, urging Chinese to be confident of the country’s developmental path, political system, guiding theories and ideologies and its culture (see this Wikipedia article for more details). But this is a causal reasoning solely based on economic successes in the past, judging and extrapolating everything else from past economic results. It ignores the numerous uncertainties and vulnerability for the country to face in the future. The biggest problem is to attribute economic successes completely to political system, to one party institution and to Marxist -Maoist ideology. Interestingly, similar reasoning also can be seen in the west, where scholars and commentators attribute everything to the institutions, laws and regulations.
Preinstitutions More Than Institutions
The truth is preinstitutions, rather than institutions, that play a much bigger role in economic development as well as much of everything else.
Yes, China has achieved much so far but how to read the success is subject to debate and discussion. The real China story has been the one of working with extraordinarily strong materialistic desire of parents, of the willingness to do everything to secure the financial future of the sons and daughters, of the thick family walls built on blood ties and of doing everything based on how close the blood ties are. These preinstitutional facts mean that China can move very fast on anything that parents think will help them to raise family fortune, to make their sons and daughters financially stronger.
But having the wills and actions of parents is not enough — they also need a strong leader from the top who understands and shares the same family dreams, perhaps with an additional desire for the entire country to show the world that China can do economic growth faster and more efficient than others, including the US. Strong leadership also means something else: Uniting the society that normally is divided into families that compete with each other. One feature of competition for materialistic gains is that it tends to become a zero-sum game, because of the undivided attention to the same goal by all parties and thus losing the diversity buffer zone that would otherwise make the competition less intense. So this works out in the country just like it would be in a family: A strong parent or a father figure would carry the authority to rule over the competition among siblings to prevent family from getting into chaos and lost of orders. An authority would also make any decisions final and unarguable. Far more important than simply judging over the disputes, the father figure has one more role to play. Siblings would compete for parental attention by doing what they want, knowing that doing so would win rewards and more attention from the authority.
Meanwhile, as China grows economically, its social problems ranging from weak institutions, rule of law, citizenship value above and beyond materialistic fortune, truth respect, rule respect, mutual respect, China has miles to go. Just read this piece to see how bad it can get, it says Chinese gangs would purposefully infect pigs with African pig fever just so they can make themselves a fortune from buying pigs cheap and selling them high. It is easy to claim that crimes like this are everywhere. But there is something unique in China: Its people share a rampant materialistic desire and are willing to get it at any cost! Such a desire, combined with weak law enforcement, can do damages hundreds of times more than in other places.