I was (am) always curious about the seemingly opposing forces at the Global times. Often I was amazed at how far they would go allowing commentators to criticize the CCP, even columns mocking China’s navy and arguing it was hardly ready to participate in any conflict in the South China Sea. So many examples like that. There was a 2009 op-ed praising Deng Yujiao, the karaoke waitress in Badong who stabbed a lascivious government official to death. And a lot more. These were balanced, of course, with xenophobic outbursts, sabre rattling and incredibly paranoid/irrational arguments about the West and the Western media. But still….I was amazed at what got past the censors at what the censors let through. But I never doubted that it was strategic. Nothing got through by accident. Give the people some space to vent, as long as they never cross the line, the fat red line between acceptable criticism and advocating for democracy or for greater freedom in Tibet or for referring to a massacre in 1989.

I wondered about this same thing tonight as I read this piece on the one-year anniversary of the Wenzhou train crash. It’s actually a damn good article; it’s real journalism. Paragraphs like these just pop out at me:

At the scene of the accident, wreaths for the deceased have been removed, memorial poems written on the viaduct pillar have been scrubbed off and there are no signs of the crash. Everything seems to show life has returned to normal. But the local villagers still remember the tragedy vividly.

“I will never forget that night, even now when there’s a thunderstorm and lightning, I am little worried about the viaduct, and worry that such accidents will happen again,” a local resident, who refused to disclose his full name, told the Global Times.

And then there’s this:

Although boasting one of the fastest high-speed trains in the world, the way the Ministry of Railways (MOR) disposed of the wreckage and delayed the results of an investigation into the crash sparked public fury and widespread doubt as to the wisdom of the massive investment in high-speed railways….

Though unwilling to discuss the past, Wang Jian still complained about the MOR. “After the memorial service, the MOR officials fled and have never contacted us ever since. The investigation result was delayed, and the complete name list of all the passengers on the trains has still never been released,” he said.

“The MOR did punish someone, but nobody was even jailed,” Wang complained.

This doesn’t sound like state-controlled propaganda. But maybe it is; maybe it’s doing exactly what the party wants it to do, placing the blame on a specific group of bunglers. I honestly don’t know. The one thing I always thought when I read articles like this, hypercritical of the government, was that it somehow fit within the approved party discourse — that the government was willing to let the media go this far and even encouraged it to do so in some instances, especially when reporting on corruption and local malfeasance.

Is this an example of opening up and greater freedom of the press? Or is it the same old propaganda, disguised as a watchdog media, that is actually planting exactly the stories the government wants it to? I wonder.

Is this op-ed a parody or what? Everyone here will find it worth reading, but may not know whether to laugh or cry. I’d like to know what you think.

If that column gives you a headache, you can also use this as an open thread.

Go here and open the pdf file. A beautiful portrait of the Cultural Revolution by one of my very favorite bloggers Xujun Eberlein, whose older sister drowned in 1968 as she paid tribute to Chairman Mao’s famous swim up the Yangtze. Just beautiful. Aging members of different factions of the Red Guard share memories, and we almost understand how these people surrendered their critical faculties and followed Mao on the road to catastrophe. Almost. They were “well meaning” and idealistic. And they ruined countless lives along the way, often their own as well.

I know, in the Twitter age it seems like a burden to open a pdf file and read an actual essay, but this is more than worth it. Mesmerizing.

How many times have we discussed whether China would be better off with some form of democracy as opposed to its one-party authoritarian system? I know, too many times. But this article on the recent debate between CCP apologist and shill Eric Li and professor of government Minxin Pei is well worth reading. If you don’t believe me about Li being a shill, or if you are unfamiliar with him, read this. This is one of my favorite of Li’s assertions:

China is on a different path. Its leaders are prepared to allow greater popular participation in political decisions if and when it is conducive to economic development and favorable to the country’s national interests, as they have done in the past 10 years.

However, China’s leaders would not hesitate to curtail those freedoms if the conditions and the needs of the nation changed. The 1980s were a time of expanding popular participation in the country’s politics that helped loosen the ideological shackles of the destructive Cultural Revolution. But it went too far and led to a vast rebellion at Tiananmen Square.

That uprising was decisively put down on June 4, 1989. The Chinese nation paid a heavy price for that violent event, but the alternatives would have been far worse.

The resulting stability ushered in a generation of growth and prosperity that propelled China’s economy to its position as the second largest in the world.

For a marvelous take-down of this drivel go here. As if all of China’s great progress rests firmly on the shoulders of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Anyway, sorry for that digression, but you have to know who Li is to appreciate this debate.

I’ve always been careful to say I don’t believe Western-style democracy would necessarily be the answer to China’s problems of corruption, human rights violations, and the injustices inherent to any one-party system that operates without the checks of rule of law. Pei makes a strong argument, however, that the huge political and economic challenges China is facing are weakening the government and will ultimately result in an “unraveling” of the one-party system. So China should have a democratic infrastructure in place if the party implodes. In a nutshell:

The economy has been driven primarily by investments at home and exports to developed countries, which isn’t sustainable. In the political sphere, we’re seeing manifestations of a fundamental vulnerability of one-party systems globally: a tendency to drift into benefiting a relatively small, and ultimately predatory, elite at the expense of society generally, and the associated phenomena of high-level corruption and inequality.

Together, Pei claimed, these two domains of contradiction tend to impede the growth of China’s economy and undermine the legitimacy of its government. You can see the last two decades as a story of the rise of the Chinese system, Pei said; but the next 10 to 15 years (no less than 10, no more than 15) will be one of the system’s unraveling. And this is what the United States and the West generally need to worry about — not China’s strength but its weakness, because when the transition to a more democratic system comes, it will be very difficult to manage, particularly given the country’s deep ethnic divisions, its disputed borders, and its complex integration with the global economy.

Li’s arguments are familiar: all of China’s mistakes have been dwarfed by its accomplishments, the party has put China on a long trajectory of growth and it would be insane to shift gears when the current system is working, Western democracies are thrown into chaos by politics and therefore can’t get things done, etc. Pei argues that by clinging to an unrepresentative system of government, China may be on a path to collapse should the economy falter dramatically, and having no other alternative to the CCP political bedlam could ensue. A comparison to the collapse of the Soviet Union is not inconceivable.

Li showed his true stripes several times, and he was proud of them. This was one of my favorites:

In response to a question from the audience, Li also criticized the very ideas of political liberty and individual rights. Unless you think rights come from God, he insisted, you really have no theory of why any one view of political liberty any discrete set of individual rights should be sacrosanct at all. “If they’re from men, they’re not absolute; they can be negotiated.” It was only too bad there wasn’t time to discuss what “negotiated” means here.

“I want to break the spell of the so-called right to freedom of speech,” he added later. “Speech is act. It has harmed from time immemorial.”

It’s too bad he sounds like such an apologist. Some of his arguments are fair. We all know how well China has done compared to 30 years ago. I believe the CCP has to be given a lot of credit for improving the quality of the lives of so many of its citizens, and wonder whether its people are ready for pluralism. But who gets to decide that? And if the people so adore the CCP, why do Li and other shills so strongly oppose free elections? And if the government is so confident in China’s future, why are so many party elites moving their assets out of China? Li got kind of tongue-tied over that one.

Anyway, read the whole thing. Nothing new, exactly, but thought provoking. And you really are left wondering what the answer is. Neither Pei’s nor Li’s answers are totally convincing and it’s hard for me to say who “won.”

Let me admit it up front: Few topics could bore me as much as avionics and the aerospace industry. I only want to know that my pilot can take off, get me to where I want to go and land the plane safely. I don’t really know the difference between the words “avionics” and “aerospace.” So I approached China Airborne with a touch of trepidation: How could I possibly enjoy a book about a topic I find dryer than dust?

Leave it to James Fallows to take a subject to which I am indifferent (if not downright hostile) and turn it into a story of suspense and adventure, human and technological, and to delight me with every page. Yes, China Airborne is about aviation in China, how it started, how it has evolved and where it’s heading, yet the book transcends its ostensible subject, which Fallows uses as a metaphor for China’s evolution in general, for its advancement into the modern era, and all the challenges it faces as it seeks to break away from its role as the maker of goods designed by others to a nation that actually pioneers new technologies.

Before the 1990s China’s aviation industry lagged drastically behind that of the developed world, to say the least. Most of the planes were Russian made, the airports were primitive and few, and its safety record atrocious. Now China is home to some of the world’s most impressive airports, its aviation industry is growing at breakneck speed with billions of dollars in government funding, and it boasts one of the highest air safety records in the world.

How China got here is a breathtaking story, a story of China’s famous “can-do” attitude and willingness to throw itself into the projects it sets its sights on. An important part of this story and one the Chinese are less likely to talk about is the role of US entities, especially companies like Boeing and engineers and contractors from US agencies, which guided China along the way over the decades. Fallows charts China’s progress during these years and introduces us to the cast of characters who possessed the vision, the skills and the sheer bravura to move China’s aviation industry into the modern age.

Fallows’ description of the proposed development of an avionics research center in a remote area outside of Xi’An immediately brought to mind a chapter in Peter Hessler’s Country Driving, where he describes the building of a factory in China that plans to manufacture the little metal rings that hold brassieres together. They have no customers, no plans for sales or marketing, no business infrastructure, yet they pour money into building the factory, get it going into full swing and hire a complete staff. Eventually, after several months, they begin to get customers. Build it, and they will come. The same, it seems, with this aviation center and its grandiose plans to transform the region to attract tourists and become China’s center for aviation research.

Fallows describes how projects like these begin at the local level in China, the first step being winning the blessing of local officials and convincing them of the financial rewards to their region. A lot of guanxi is expended along the way. The dreamers will worry about getting the central government involved later. The avionics center project was immense, and Fallows’ descriptions of the building of runways in what was essentially the wilderness are amusing but also so quintessentially Chinese — we can do this, and we can do it on a grand scale! The obstacles they face — and there will be many — can be dealt with later.

A pilot himself (the book begins with his preparation to co-pilot the first Cirrus jetplane in China), Fallows obviously loves this topic. The breadth of his knowledge is sweeping and I closed the book rather amazed at all I had learned about what it takes to manage international flight, how today’s jets are built, how new GPS systems are changing how pilots take off and land and making it possible to put up runways even in remote rugged mountain terrain in Tibet. As I started the book I didn’t really want to know about these things, but I was quickly engrossed.

To a large extent this book is about China’s efforts to adapt to an age when leading an industry means opening up your people’s minds to new ideas, to new ways of thinking, to sharing knowledge and information. The last quarter of the book is less about flight and more about the Chinese government’s conflicting interests, ones we’ve discussed so many times here: retaining control and directing people’s thoughts vs. opening up and encouraging talent to blossom. If China wants to be on the frontier of the aerospace industry it needs to draw talent from all over the world. It will have to loosen the military’s grip on who controls the skies so the industry can operate without ridiculous and irrational restrictions. Fallows makes the point more than once that China has the hardware, the money and the facilities

but it lacks the “soft” ingredients necessary for a fully functioning, world-leading aerospace establishment. These include standards that apply consistently across the country rather than depending on the whim and favor of local potentates. Or smooth, quick coordination among civil, military and commercial organizations. Or sustaining the conditions — intellectual property protection, reliable contract enforcement and rule of law, freedom of inquiry and expression — that allow first-rate research-and-developments institutions to thrive and attract talent from around the world.

If China can succeed fully in aerospace, then in principle there is very little it cannot do.

Fallows doesn’t pretend to be a prophet and he leaves this question open. But he is clear about one thing: without the requirements he lists, without greater rule of law and respect for contracts, without protection of intellectual property, China will surely fail to meet its objective. It will not lead the world in technology and innovation. The book is all about China’s dreamers and their dreams. It would be such a pity to see China’s inflexibility and insecurities hold its people’s dreams back.

Boeing and Airbus see China as its most promising market and have agreed to joint ventures that involve the sharing of technology, despite the risks, because they know this is where the customers of the future are. China will play a huge role in the assembly of today’s incredibly complex jetliners, just as it does with iPhones. It will be buying more aircraft than any other nation. But can China design the next jetliner or iPhone?

It cannot, Fallows argues, unless it embraces “the openness and experimentation that world leadership in fields like aerospace would demand.” China now shields its people, protects them from “harmful content” on the Internet, which Fallows says makes many Chinese feel “infantilized and diminished by this reminder that they’re not quite part of the modern world.” China has to deal, too, with its paranoia and prickly sensitivities, its inability to deflect incidents like Liu Xiaobo’s winning the Nobel Peace Prize instead of being thrown off balance and revealing its insecurities to the world. There’s a lot about China’s thirst for soft power, and how it always gets put onto the back burner behind China’s No. 1 priority, internal stability and complete power of the party.

I bookmarked so many passages in this wonderful book, and I can’t go into every aspect of it that I enjoyed. It is about so much more than I can say here. It’s worth reading just for Fallows’ description of how he and his wife were bullied by plainclothes police at Tiananmen Square on the 20-year anniversary of the June 4th crackdown (an incident he blogged about at the time).

You come away from this book so impressed with what China has done and can do, with just how extraordinary its progress has been and how its authoritarian system has, so far, worked well enough that most people in China would say their lives are better off today than they were twenty or thirty years ago. But you also come away with strong doubts about China’s ability to rise to the next stage of power, where its people’s creativity and imaginations are unleashed, and where universal laws are respected. Where China becomes a true global citizen, concerned not so much with the specialness of China but with China’s role as a world leader. (This discussion of how China fosters the notion of its own uniqueness, with 5,000 years of history, as opposed to its place within the world community as a nation that cares — or at least pretends to care — about other nations aside from itself is one of the most fascinating in the book.)

All readers of this blog will enjoy China Airborne. Fallows’ accumulated wisdom of living in China, starting with his first visit there in 1986, pervades every page, and you will be thinking about where China is heading for a long time after you put it down. I can’t recommend China Airborne highly enough.

Not sure how long this video has been around, but I’ve never seen anything like it before and want to recommend it to everyone. I’ve read about every aspect of the GLF but never saw so much of the story captured on film. Don’t watch it if you have high blood pressure.

“It is better to let half the people die so the other half can eat their fill.”

Mao Zedong, 1959. Seventy percent good, indeed.

I’ve already posted about how much I love this new blog. Go now and read their ominously hilarious post about how China manages to shoot itself in the foot whenever it comes to its neverending quest for soft power. An example is a business conference in the city of Leeds that gave a speaking slot to the king of jackals, the Dalai Lama. China’s leader were not amused. As is so often the case, they resort to threats, a very poor strategy in the quest for soft power around the world. They did the same with Norway after Liu Xiaobao won the Nobel Peace Prize and they still do). Rectified.Name comments:

But today an op-ed appeared in the nationalist rag The Global Times which made it quite clear that anybody who messes with China’s dignity should expect a flaming bag of cat hurled in the general direction of their front door sometime in the very near future:

“They must pay the due price for their arrogance. This is also how China can build its authority in the international arena. China doesn’t need to make a big fuss because of the Dalai or a dissident, but it has many options to make the UK and Norway regret their decision.”

You get the idea.

This is China at its soft power worst, scoring goals in its own net and making it exponentially harder to convince the rest of the world that the country is being run by grown-ups.

Need further proof? Take the case of the new documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, produced by Alison Klayman. It’s gotten some decent buzz at Sundance and other stops on the festival circuit, but that wasn’t sufficient for the Chinese government who apparently want EVERYBODY to go see this movie.

Faced with the possibility of appearing at the same film festival as Klayman’s documentary, a Chinese delegation, including representatives from CCTV, pulled out of a planned appearance rather than validate the promoter’s decision to…I don’t know, show films. Anybody not high from inhaling industrial solvents could have predicted what happened next, because as sure as cows shit hay the festival organizers then called a press conference, chastised the Chinese delegation, and reaped a bonanza of free publicity for their festival, Ai Weiwei, Klayman and her film.

Seriously, if the powers that be really wanted to kill this film they’d have SARFT publicly give the documentary its seal of approval.

“Many options.” That is really scary.

I really would like to write a post praising the CCP for its soft policy efforts. They seem to try so hard, but then they seem to try even harder to offend just about everyone. I see so many glimmers of hope, and then they just switch the lights off. There’s a way to express your dissatisfaction without sounding like a snarling bully. Why do they keep getting soft power all wrong? It’s not just that they fail at establishing soft power, it’s that they create exactly the opposite effect from what they set out to achieve.

For bloggers on China, this is a gift that keeps on giving. Same story over and over again, each time with some added bells and whistles. This is supposed to be a government run by engineers employing scientific methods to solve the country’s myriad problems, and in many ways they’ve done a damn good job. Why can’t they apply this scientific approach to the pursuit of soft power instead of setting the laboratory on fire everytime they try?

Update: Be sure to read this one, too!

China Digital Times has collected a series of directives from what Chinese journalists, in true Orwellian fashion, have dubbed the “Ministry of Truth.” These guideline start with the death of Chinese activist Li Wangyang who recently “died” in police custody and has made international headlines. This and other topics are off limits in China:

Regarding the news of Li Wangyang’s death in Shaoyang, Hunan and the foreign media reaction: all media outlets must without exception refrain from granting interviews, reporting or commenting, and must not reprint relevant information from foreign media and websites….

Central Propaganda Department: Yili Milk Powder and Shaanxi Forced Abortion

Regarding heavy metals found in certain batches of Yili Brand milk powder and the seven-month pregnant women in Yuping Village, Cengjia Town, Zhenping County, Ankang City, Shaanxi Province who underwent forced labor: if any media outlet reports on these stories, only Xinhua News Agency’s wire copy may be used. Do not hype these stories, do not exaggerate them, and do not offer in-house reporting or commentary….

Central Propaganda Department: India Arrests Eight Chinese Citizens

According to the Indian media, on June 12 Indian police arrested eight Chinese nationals. No media outlet may report or comment on either this or related incidents, nor may any reprint relevant information or commentary from foreign media and websites.

Back and forth, A freer press, a more restricted press. Nothing new. It even reminds me of some memos I’ve seen distributed by the masters at Fox News telling their “journalists” to cover Republican-related scandals with kid gloves while going after Democrats with everything they’ve got, slanderous or not. The difference is Fox News is not America’s monolithic overseer of the media and cannot dictate what all media in the country can and cannot cover.

There have been moments when I wondered whether the US was creeping toward becoming a police state. For many minorities in poor neighborhoods, America is a police state, where they can be pulled over and searched at random and then thrown into jail for years for possessing a little pot. For innocent detainees at Gitmo whose “crime” was being in the wrong place at the wrong time, America must indeed look like a police state.

A key difference between the US and certain other candidates for the dubious title is that the victims often get to tell their story and in some instances justice is served. Not always. Not even usually. And that in no way exonerates the fucked-up system that allowed such abuses to happen in the first place. But people’s voices can be heard, and we can debate openly, as I’m doing now, whether something is just or unjust, and we can donate money to the victim’s cause and lobby for justice. The most harrowing descriptions of Gitmo’s victims, such as the brutal treatment of Jose Padilla, can be told on the front page of our newspapers, not that that is much consolation to the permanently traumatized Mr. Padilla.

I was thinking about this as I read this shocking (but not surprising) article in today’s NYT on just how dire the consequences can be for officials in China who win the negative attention of those above them, as Bo Xilai did. I urge you all to read it.

We’ve heard the stories of China’s black prisons and decades of solitary confinement and the lack of any meaningful rule of law to make appeals. (At least the Gitmo inmates managed to get their case heard by the Supreme Court — and by all the major media — though that didn’t help very much.) This article is a grim reminder of just how brutal China can be to detainees who in at least some instances have committed no crime other than to “violate Party rules.

Few who have been dragged into the detention system emerge unscathed, if they emerge at all. Over the last decade, hundreds of officials have committed suicide, according to accounts in the state news media, or died under mysterious circumstances during months of harsh confinement in secret locations. Once interrogators obtain a satisfactory confession, experts say, detainees are often stripped of their party membership and wealth. Select cases are handed over to government prosecutors for summary trials that are closed to the public.

“The word shuanggui alone is enough to make officials shake with fear,” said Ding Xikui, a prominent defense lawyer here….

Shuanggui (pronounced shwang-gwei) is rooted in the ancient imperial justice system and was used by the Red Army to punish wayward soldiers during the civil war. Over the past decade, it has become increasingly institutionalized through party-issued guidelines that have scaled back some of its excesses.

Nonetheless, secrecy, isolation and harsh interrogation techniques remain hallmarks of the system, according to Flora Sapio, a visiting scholar at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Unchanged as well are the main objectives: to extract confessions from those accused of violating party rules, most often through financial corruption.

The secrecy, Ms. Sapio said, is intended to shield the public from details that might harm the party’s image and to limit any collateral damage to those higher up the food chain. If history is any guide, many of the accusations against Mr. Bo are unlikely to be made public or lead to formal charges.

“It’s as if you’ve fallen into a legal black hole,” Ms. Sapio said, noting that those in custody are not allowed to see family members and do not have access to a lawyer. “Once you are called in, you almost never walk out a free man.”

The Dui Hua Foundation, an organization in San Francisco that promotes changes to the Chinese prison system, says simulated drowning, cigarette burns and beatings are common tactics for getting detainees to talk. “The system is just Kafkaesque,” said John Kamm, the group’s executive director.

One former propaganda bureau official from Zhejiang Province who was subjected to interrogation a decade ago said he spent nearly two months confined to a series of hotel rooms. He was whipped with a TV antenna and kept awake for 12 days until he began to hallucinate. The windows were papered over and a red light bulb was kept on 24 hours a day, heightening the disorientation.

And it goes on. I was careful to point out the atrocities in the US penal system and places like Gitmo. A national disgrace. Inexcusable. But I at least understand why monsters like Cheney and John Yoo rationalized torture and barbarism: they felt they were fighting a righteous war against terrorism. They were/are depraved, but at least they can say why they did it (not that I’d ever believe a word of it).

These instances in China are so troubling because they represent a widespread pattern of breaking down perceived enemies, torturing and driving them mad, and leaving them with no recourse such as access to an attorney or even with contact with their family. Their cases will never be on the front page of the People’s Daily, their appeals to the courts will never be covered on television and radio (that is, if there actually were such appeals), their attorneys will never appear on 60 Minutes.

The article points out that many of those interrogated and kept in secret jails were indeed found to be guilty of graft and corruption, and there is little pubic sympathy for them. It also points out how ineffective shuanggui is in deterring corruption: “Shuanggui is useless because corruption is everywhere,” a young official said. “They might shuanggui some leaders, but the new leaders will be as corrupt as the old ones.”

Corrupt officials should be exposed and punished. None should go through prolonged periods of torture and misery to extract confessions. I condemn it in the US and I have for years, just as I do in China.

Read the whole article.

All of the Sinica podcasts are outstanding, but the latest is one where you want to stop what you’re doing and listen to it with your complete attention.

To talk about a lack of morality in China that results in people’s driving away from the victim they’ve driven over, or even going back to run them over again so they don’t have to pay the medical bills, is playing with dynamite. Trolls will automatically produce a list of dreadful things Americans have done, leaving scenes of accidents, failing to help a woman, like Kitty Genovese, after she had been stabbed in front of them, etc. But stories like Kitty Genovese are iconic, seared in the public memory and covered in all the media because they are so shocking and outside the norm of the typical response. They are also far less common than those stories of heroism,in which someone risked their life to save another.

The podcast notes wonderful examples of Chinese acting with incredible bravery to save the lives of others, such as a bus driver mortally wounded who “pilots his bus to safety and manages to get everyone off the bus before expiring himself.” And there’s no doubt stories like that abound. But they seem to be outnumbered by stories of extreme selfishness and an unwillingness to come to the aid of others. When I first moved to China, one of the first things my new boss told me was that if I walked down a busy Chinese street and saw someone unconscious on the sidewalk most people would walk right by and offer no assistance.

There could be many reasons for this, as the podcast explains. Maybe China simply has so many people that being a Good Samaritan is impractical. Maybe it harkins back to the brutal nature of the Cultural Revolution, or to the new spirit of selfishness that came with reform and opening up. But it is nothing new. Luxun famously criticized the Chinese for their lack of values and morality 80-some years ago, writing about “the man-eating society where the strong devour the weak.” The Chinese people themselves believe today’s China is in many ways a moral vacuum, and the government in the past has launched campaigns to heighten awareness of adhering to moral values. But the government may also be a source of the problem, with its corruption, where in order to get ahead you often have to be cutthroat. The podcast also looks at the traditional Chinese mindset of caring for one’s family, not for society as a whole.

The point being that many, many Chinese themselves have been critical about their society’s lack of morality. That’s why the recent recent photo of a Westerner sitting down with an old woman beggar and sharing his French fries with her created such a sensation even in the Chinese media, including social media, where he was hailed as a hero, with questions raised about the lack of Chinese who would do the same. Xinhua reported:

In fact, the story of the “French Fry Brother” and the poor granny has not been the first “wake-up call” prompting Chinese to reflect upon a general tendency to be apathetic toward those in need.

A two-year-old girl who was hit by two vehicles on a market street and subsequently ignored by 18 passersby died in hospital in October 2011.

The nineteenth pedestrian, a migrant woman collecting trash, pulled Wang Yue to the side of the street and alerted the girl’s mother.

The death of “Little Yue Yue” triggered a nationwide wave of mourning as well as public outcry for mutual love and concern.

“We should offer our helping hand to those in danger or trouble, and, of course, with less hesitation,” microblogger “Nuannuan” wrote. “Others may give the granny some money, but a foreigner offers respect and warmth.”

Of course, this triggered a wave of counter-arguments about how the media is fawning over examples of foreign kindness and ignoring the virtues of the Chinese. This was, however, Xinhua.

The Sinica roundtable discusses whether religion, like Buddhism or Christianity, might provide a set of guidelines, like the Ten Commandments, that might steer the Chinese in a moral direction. This is a surefire way to infuriate nationalistic Chinese who see Christianity as a tool of imperialism. And of course, at least some branches of Christianity come with their own built-in lack of morality, such as hatred toward gays and denying a woman the right to choose to end a pregnancy, and more.

They also note that social media like Weibo have thrust examples of immorality and selfishness into the public limelight. Perhaps there is no moral vacuum, just a new fixation on high-profile examples that win public attention? (I don’t think so.)

I would step into this minefield and make my own argument, but the podcast does it for me. I have to congratulate the bravery and forthrightness of the panelists, who delve into this incredibly divisive and explosive topic. In no way do they ignore the many acts of courage, selflessness and the willingness of heroes to put themselves in harm’s way to help others. (Many of these Chinese are Christians, for what that’s worth. For the record, I am an atheist and no great champion of Christianity.)

Do not miss this podcast. It touches on a super-charged topic that many of us are unwilling to discuss, and looks at the many possible reasons for why morality in China is where it is today.

My blog has discussed the concept of mamu many times. The phenomenon of Chinese people being so splendid as individuals with their family members and friends, and then becoming quite different people out in public, where it’s purely dog eat dog and where cheating and stepping on others can be the norm. This podcast is the best discussion of the topic I’ve ever heard.