A lead story in China Daily last week carried the title: Awareness of Culture Key to Modernization. The report strikes a chord with me since I have been writing on the subject of soft infrastructure, of which culture is the key component.
I have always believed that culture is the foundation on which a nation stands. If the culture is solid, offers fertile ground for growth and development, motivates people to live in harmony, and bestows people the freedom to innovate and to improve themselves, the country will thrive. If the culture is corrupt, producing self-centered and self-interested people all striving for self-aggrandizement, the country will be doomed. We are fortunate to have inherited the Chinese culture, which upholds equality, division of labor, and self-improvement through reflections.
Last April in this column, I wrote an op-ed on the May Fourth Movement. I quoted “The Great Learning” in the ancient Chinese classic Liji (The Book of Rites), which teaches that the perfect life starts from relentless personal development, then bringing up a family, then serving the country and perfecting its governance, then bringing about a world that makes no distinction between different peoples. Unfortunately, a century ago, many intellectuals thought traditional Chinese culture was the cause of China’s weakness and wanted to learn from the West. They did not realize that it was arrogance, ignorance, and selfishness among the ruling class then that had prevented China from retaining its traditional strength.
Recently I gave a talk about institutional reform in a Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area conference hosted by Sun Yat-sen University and co-organized by Lingnan University. I noted that institutional innovations, like all innovations, are motivated by needs. However, although an institutional innovation may benefit and solve some problems, it will also take costs and encounter barriers. Historically, reforms have often failed not because they were inherently incorrect but because they encountered obstructions. These obstructions were due to real difficulties and costs, but oftentimes they were because of inertia. People may simply think that rules cannot be changed. People may also think that it may be cumbersome to change the rules. And then there may also be objections from interest groups who think that their interests are undermined. Generally, all these obstructions have to do with culture.
Many people in Hong Kong have been taught to believe that the ballot box is the substance of democracy. Some people would think that China is ruled by a dictatorship. Today, thanks to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948, many people believe that universal suffrage is a human right. However, as I have maintained in an article in my column on “the spirit and substance of democracy”, the spirit of democracy is that a government must be responsive to people’s needs and serve them wholeheartedly. An elected government that fails to serve its people’s real needs is not democratic in substance. At best, it can be called a formal democracy, but not a substantive democracy. Thanks to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, many believe that governments that are not elected have no legitimacy, and thus they cannot claim to have democracy. Somehow, the culture of “original sin” continues today. Regardless of how devoted and how well a government is serving its people, it is deemed to be a dictatorship without the process of Western-style elections.
Of course there is some good to elected governments. It is that if the government is really lousy and corrupt, voters can vote in an alternative government. But alas, what choices do the voters really have? They vote out a bad apple only to welcome another bad apple. The government may rotate, but problems remain unresolved, and actually get worse day by day.
But the Universal Declaration of Human Rights today continues to haunt us. Just because Chinese people are not given the vote to elect an alternative to the Communist Party of China, China is believed to be violating human rights, regardless of what it has done to eradicate poverty, improve the health of the population, provide a social safety net, keep the economy growing, improve air and water quality, and offer great infrastructure that connects the remotest counties to the internet and to roads and railroads, etc; and regardless of the huge number of Chinese nationals who leave the country as tourists or students and return home to serve their beloved motherland.
In order for a country to do well, there has to be a will to change. China today is trying to change the mindset of people. Again referring to the Great Learning, which opens with the statement of the principle of the “Great Learning”: “The way to the ‘Great Learning’ is to let virtues shine, to renew people’s mindsets, and to ultimately achieve the best for humanity.” Renewing people’s mindsets is to imbue the thinking that we need to free ourselves from inertia and from selfish thinking. For example, with regard to the GBA, all 11 cities need to work together for the common good. However, an online comment saying that Hong Kong had lost to Shenzhen because it failed to attract Professor Yan Ning, a top scientist from Princeton, to serve Hong Kong reflects how narrow-minded the commentator was. Such a mentality is a reminder that the narrow-minded culture is exactly what the Greater Bay Area proposal intends to eliminate.
The author is director of the Pan Sutong Shanghai-Hong Kong Economic Policy Research Institute, Lingnan University.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
