Xi Jinping<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nAlthough Xi failed to name any names in his speech, the students were not so reluctant to indict particular entities within the culture. No less than a half dozen of the speeches either directly or indirectly mentioned the slew of food scandal problems that have rocked China in recent years. The most notorious of these involved melamine, an industrial chemical used in making plastics that was added to infant formula in order to artificially drive up the protein content. By the time this was discovered, at least six infants died and as many as 300,000 were sickened.<\/p>\n
More recently the practice of restaurants reclaiming and reusing oil that has already been dumped as waste\u2014otherwise known as the sewer oil scandal\u2014has been in the news. Add to this the whole exploding watermelon phenomenon, the aluminum dumplings, and the glow-in-the-dark pork and we can begin to talk about a trend. Indeed, a new food scandal seems to appear almost daily in China. Earlier this year a website that catalogued Chinese food scandals, throwitoutthewindow.com<\/em>, crashed because of its popularity.<\/p>\nDressed in jeans, a white shirt and black tie one of the few male contestants starts his speech by asking the audience \u201cDid you drink a glass of milk this morning?\u201d After most of the audience raises their hands he follows up. \u201cHow many of you are confident about that milk?\u201d No hands shoot up. Corruption in the food industry is only one part of the multi-colored tapestry that constitutes traditional Chinese business practices. Last year it was Guo Meimei, a young woman who posted pictures of her very elaborate lifestyle financed, she declared, by an official in the Red Cross of China. Indeed, not long after Xi\u2019s speech, an official was arrested when a five-year-old video of him having sex with a teenage girl in exchange for approval of a construction contract surfaced online.<\/p>\n
Why Does Love Decrease as Economy Increases?<\/h2>\n In the aftermath of his speech, Xi seems poised to make the fight against corruption a central focus of his tenure, emphasizing the topic in additional public addresses as well as offering symbolic gestures and making some high profile arrests. The message is clear that the law against corruption will be more strictly enforced and those guilty will pay the price. The students, however, suggest a different strategy. Unlike Xi, the students explicitly tie the corruption to a larger breakdown in traditional values in the society, for in conjunction with the melamine scandal several of the speeches discuss another recent, notorious incident.<\/p>\n
Last spring, a two-year old girl, Yueyue, was run over twice by cars and lay dying in the street while dozens of pedestrians, bikes and automobiles drove by. At least for a few days a country paused and asked of itself the same question a small girl with a plaid skirt and wire-rimmed glasses posed to the audience today: \u201cWhy does a people\u2019s love gradually decrease while their social and economic level increases?\u201d<\/p>\n
In speeches declaring that what the country can\u2019t afford to lose is variously dubbed trust, responsibility or love, these college students announce that the problem is not a legal but a moral one. Of course, the suggestion that stricter enforcement of the law is a hopeless way to impose moral order is stated in the Tao Te Ching: \u201cThe more rules and regulations,\u201d warns Lao Tzu, \u201cthe more thieves and robbers.\u201d Indeed, this ancient truth received recent verification, for despite the death sentence meted out to those in charge, more tainted milk has since found its way into the marketplace.<\/p>\n
The reality is that in going after a few cases of corruption Xi is behaving like the physician whose strategy for treating cancer consists solely in removing the lump from the breast. If he listens to these students, he will understand that a much more sweeping reform is necessary to eradicate such morally egregious behavior.<\/p>\n
Given the history of widespread social reforms in China, however, I am actually a bit relieved he is on the other side of the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With more Chinese than ever applying to American universities, English ability is becoming crucial for the Chinese version of success. But as China strides toward globalism and modernity, what does it lose?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22993,"featured_media":34561,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,96,38],"tags":[499],"yoast_head":"\n
The China Dream: In English - Chengdu Living<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n