In recent years, thanks to the high penetration of Internet, a large number of cases of counterfeit and shoddy goods, as well as corruption and violations of law have been exposed.
But almost every time something or someone is exposed, the intention of the whistle-blower is questioned by netizens: Did you do it to become famous? Did you have an ulterior motive? As Yi Zhongtian, a Chinese writer and historian, summed it up, “People often ask about attitude, not facts; about motive, not right and wrong; about relationship, not reason.”
Why do people not face the facts and instead only talk about motives? The reason is that once the whistleblower or the actors behind the exposure are shown to have ulterior motives, it implies that their morality is questionable, and therefore, their claims should not be trusted.
Apart from the questioning of motives, digging out the opponent’s moral flaws has always been a surefire way to victory in Chinese competition. So some people keep an eye on each and every move of their opponents. Any instance of immoral conduct, sometimes even a fabricated one, is enough to defame the opponent or even force the opponent to raise the white flag and give up without a fight. To put it simply, as long as the opponent can be morally discredited, he or she can be thoroughly defeated.
Moral preemption is the dominant strategy in hierarchical societies and a long-standing rule.
Ancient China was a typical hierarchical society, where all resources were allocated according to the hierarchy. There was hardly any equality among people of different social classes. Even though there were laws, they were applied differently to people of different classes. There is an old Chinese saying, “Senior officials are exempt from the penalties prescribed by the law (刑不上大夫),” which is a clear evidence of discriminatory punishment. There is also a saying that goes, “If a prince commits a crime, he must be punished like a common person (天子犯法与庶民同罪),” meaning that all are equal before the law. But sadly, the latter has never been implemented. Even Bao Zheng — also known as Bao Qingtian, an ancient official known for his integrity and courage to challenge authorities — could only flog the dragon robe of the emperor to punish him for the crime of being unfilial. Then how could anyone else possibly dare to challenge the imperial power?
There was one common constraint for all classes, which was “morality.”
Although unable to surpass the three legendary saint emperors, Yao, Shun and Yu, in morality, the emperors of later dynasties all actively or passively declared that they wanted to become saints. Thus, once a courtier was dissatisfied with the emperor, he could only talk to the emperor on the abstract moral level, but could not point out any substantive weakness or wrongdoing. Senior officials who committed crimes could not be penalized, but only treated according to the moral standards prescribed by Confucius. Meanwhile, criminals belonging to the lower class would be punished pursuant to the law strictly, with or without moral criticism. In a word, if equality ever existed in an ancient hierarchical Chinese society, that happened on the moral level. The habit of sidestepping the law and favoring morality was one of the main reasons why Chinese society had long been outside the rule of law.
Unlike ancient China, European societies were religious. All people were supposed to be the children of God or Allah. The king, with the highest power, ruled the secular world, while the Holy See, charged with spreading the Gospel, ruled the spiritual realm. Even kings were subject to religion, whose accession to the throne required coronation by the Pope or a bishop. In the early 11th century, King Henry IV of Germany announced the ouster of the Pope, who in turn declared that Henry IV had been deposed. It all ended with the king apologizing to the Pope in the snow, in what would become known as the Canossa Incident. In the Middle Ages, the Bible or Koran was to a considerable extent the legal code or moral precepts that sustained European societies. At a time when laws had not taken shape, all men were equal before God in European societies.
But in a modern society where politics and religion are separated, the law plays the main role in maintaining social order, while religion just has a supplementary rule. From being equal before God to being equal before the law was a major step forward for modern society. Laws are easier to enforce than religious dogmas, with easier measurements for crimes and differentiated punishments according to the severity of those crimes. More importantly, laws are the legislative body’s expression of the will of the people. They can be amended and improved over time so that national governance can be better underpinned by legitimacy. In contrast, religious dogmas can be hollow and rigid, failing to truly reflect the interests of the people.
In most cases, the practice of determining one’s moral level through motives lacks verifiability and operability. While the law is able to reasonably measure crimes and impose punishments, morality is like a dummy variable. With morality as the benchmark, there would be only “moral” and “immoral” people in the world, with nothing in between. Hence, resorting to moral criticism and trying to replace laws and regulations with morality is undoubtedly going in the reverse direction of modern civilization. The law also talks about motives, but only as a basis for reasoning when the case is unclear. If facts themselves are clear, motives cannot be used to deny them. Law-based governance requires being dependent on facts and evidence, rather than questioning motives and resorting to moral criticism.
I know many of my economist colleagues rarely read or write books, but I’d advocate they read good books on history. I highly recommend the book “Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768” by Philip A. Kuhn. At the end of the book, the author writes that the malice of people at the bottom of society toward their peers is actually about seizing a rare opportunity to enjoy a “feast of power.”
Interestingly, the story of that book and the feast of power from the commoners take place in the present-day Deqing county of Zhejiang province, where the Moganshan Conference — a landmark event of China’s reform and opening up — was convened in 1984. In 2012, I attended the first Forum on Reform and Opening Up of the Symposium of Middle-Aged and Young Workers in Economics Science, the so-called New Moganshan Conference. Although the landscape has not changed, some things definitely have.
Nie Huihua is a professor at the School of Economics at Renmin University.
Contact editor Michael Bellart (michaelbellart@caixin.com)
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