Rising socio-economic inequality is a heated topic of discussion in China. China Digital Times links to several pieces about growing resentment toward the increasingly base and brazen nouveaux riches. This is not a new story. Economic growth in China has come at the cost of growing inequality. Suisheng Zhao summarizes the political implications nicely:
China now has one of the most unequal income distributions in the world, with a Gini coefficient of 0.50 in 2009, even higher than the United States, at 0.46. This alarming inequality has come as China has dismantled its social welfare structures, leaving hundreds of millions of people with minimal or no provision of healthcare, unemployment insurance, and other social services. These growing gaps are at the root of social unrest, that threatens political stability, an accepted pre-condition for economic development. Coercive force has been deployed with increasing frequency to suppress popular unrest. This year, the financial cost of ‘maintaining stability’ (维稳) is estimated to have outstripped the size of the defence budget. The dramatically rising costs of maintaining internal control have raised questions about the sustainability of the China model, which is based on the wrong assumption that economic growth trumps all else. If the government takes care of economic growth the assumption is, people will be willing to give up all moral and other demands.
As economic growth has delivered the essentials of living, Chinese people appear, in fact, to be expressing greater demand for social justice and protection of their rights. So it is increasingly difficult to contain or discourage social discontent through economic growth alone.
Whether increased repression is sustainable or political reform of some sort is inevitable are big questions. I want to turn in a different direction, however: how current socio-economic inequalities in China violate Confucian justice norms as expressed by Mencius.
To begin, we must first acknowledge that Mencius is not, by any means, a radical egalitarian. He clearly recognizes that variations in talents and abilities will create divergent life chances for different individuals. Perhaps most famously, he approvingly quotes an anonymous source:
Some use their minds to work, and some use their muscles. Those who use their minds govern, and those who use their muscles are governed. Those who are governed provide for those who govern, and those who govern are provided for by those who are governed.
A pretty clear political hierarchy based upon socio-economic difference. And just in case we didn't get the point, Mencius ends this same chapter with a paragraph that begins: "But inequality is in the very nature of things."
Alright then. Mencius is not a Digger. But while accepting a certain level of inequality as just and right, he strenuously argues against wealth gaps that are too great. Some inequality is acceptable, even good; too much inequality is inhumane. And the extent of inequality in China today would would certainly be seen by Mencius as excessive and immoral.
The first chapter of Mencius gives us several examples. Here's one:
Emperor Hui of Liang said: "I'm ready to be taught without resenting int."
"Is there any difference between killing someone with a stick or killing them with a sword?" began Mencius.
"No, there's no difference."
"And killing with a sword or a government - any difference?"
"No difference."
"There's plenty of juicy meat in you kitchen and plenty of well-fed horses in you stable," continued Mencius, "but the people here look hungry, and in the countryside they're starving to death. You're feeding humans to animals. Everyone hates to see animals eat each other,and an emperor is the people's father and mother - but if his government feeds humans to animals, how can he claim to be the people's father and mother?"...
This might seem to suggest that only the most extreme inequality - lots of food for some, starvation for others - merits any Mencian concern. But notice how government is tied into the argument. Since it is the ruler he is addressing, and that ruler is the executive power of the government of that time, it is government, through its wrong-headed policies, that is "feeding humans to animals."
Elsewhere in chapter one, we get a fuller sense of government's responsibility to address inequality. When talking with Emperor Hsuan of Ch'i, Mencius suggests that even more moderate levels of inequality should be of concern and he provides a guide for public policy. Government, he argues, should "secure the people's livelihood;" that is, intervene in society to make sure everyone has sufficient material existence to fulfil their familial and social duties in dignity, to "serve their parents or nurture their wives and children." And he tells us what is required for that:
If you want to put my words into practice, why not return to fundamentals? When every five-acre farm has mulberry trees around the farmhouse, people wear silk at fifty. And when the proper seasons of chickens and pigs and dogs are not neglected, people eat meat at seventy. When hundred-acre farms never violate their proper seasons, even large families don't go hungry. Pay close attention to the teaching in village schools, and extend it to the child's family responsibilities - then, when their silver hair glistens, people won't be out on the roads and paths hauling heavy loads. Our black-haired people free of hunger and cold, wearing silk and eating meat in old age - there have never been such times without a true emperor.
That strikes me as a fairly extensive policy agenda. One that requires serious governmental attention to inequality well before we get to conditions of starvation. As such, a contemporary Mencian could only look at China today and condemn the glaring inequalities that now stalk the land....
(photo from ChinaSmack, "Elderly, Women, and Children Left Behind in China's Countryside.")
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