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Wealthy are not root of evil in nation's gap

By Zhu Yuan (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-05-13 10:03

Controversy surrounding the rich and poor has become a hot topic both in newspapers and on the Internet.

Behind the heated discussions is the harsh reality of a widening gap between the haves and have-nots.

The former can live in a villa, drive an expensive car or afford to fly around the world to sightsee and some even have their own private planes. In the meantime, the impoverished among the latter can hardly make ends meet.

This is not what the reform experiments the country has conducted in the past three decades were intended for.

How different interested groups look at the gap between the rich and poor makes a difference to the stability and future development trend of the country.

Those who detest such a gap and miss the good old days when almost all residents were equally poor from the early 1950s to late 1970s like to cite Confucius: "He (the head of State) is not concerned lest his people are poor, but only lest what they have should be ill apportioned; he is not concerned lest they should be few, but lest they should be divided against each other."

Many have omitted the "he" (the head of State) in using this quotation to justify their detest for the gap between the haves and have-nots.

Some have never read the original text and overlook the fact that the ancient sage considered such a gap a social problem.

Others have intentionally segmented the saying to mislead the minds of the public to the concept that such a gap is the root of all evils.

But it is quite clear that Confucius intended to remind those who rule a country that there should be concern about the disparity. And leaders should take measures to ensure the wealth is proportionally and reasonably distributed.

Confucius, on another occasion, also said, "Wealth and rank are what every man desires, but if they can only be retained to the detriment of the way he professes, he must relinquish them. Poverty and obscurity are what every man detests, but if they can only be avoided to the detriment of the way he professes, he must accept them."

These two quotations explicitly demonstrate that Confucius never claimed that wealth was something that should be detested nor did he say that there should never be a gap between the rich and poor.

Instead, he stressed that government must be concerned about the gap, and the wealth must be obtained and retained in a legal manner or it should otherwise be relinquished.

Back in the 1950s until late 1970s, the haves were detested by the entire nation in quite a funny manner, by which I mean there were not extremely wealthy residents at the time after the properties of capitalists and landlords had been either confiscated or incorporated into State-owned enterprises.

The luxurious life (left only in the memories of those who had enjoyed them before 1949) was denounced as decadent, and even the exquisite manners or tastes that used to be exhibited by the well-educated or wealthy people were labelled as belonging to a bourgeois lifestyle.

Wealthy people as a class had been annihilated and they had been driven to the bottom of social strata while poor peasants and urban residents without properties enjoyed high political status.

The labels of capitalists or landlords that had been attached to them became symbols of evil that the love of wealth might have brought about.

The political tarnishing of those capitalists and landlords had instilled a notion in the minds of the general public that there was a natural connection between wealth and evil. Therefore the pursuit of wealth in whatever manner was considered an unhealthy practice.

However, such a notion was only established and maintained when social structure was regulated in such a manner that no approach was available for anyone to obtain wealth and the state of being poor had become the only option for life.

Under such circumstances, all possible temptations for material comfort had been blocked. When everyone was wearing the same kind of clothes, eating the same type of food, living in houses of the same size and standards, there was no need to "keep up with the Joneses."

But it is human nature to pursue wealth and seek material comfort, just as Confucius said more than 2,000 years ago.

That explained why this notion that wealth is associated with evil shattered as soon as the economic reform and opening up provided people with chances to change their life for the better.

So wealth should never be the focus of controversy over the gap. Instead, the means by which the wealth is obtained should.

Wealth should, however, be regulated and so should the ways to obtain wealth. And the responsibility for doing these things lies with the government, as Confucius said.

The gap should not be the target that needs to be detested, but the policy or social mechanism that fails to function as a regulator or even function as a stimulator instead should.

A widening gap between the rich and poor may probably lead to confrontation between the two social groups. The grudges or even enmity from the latter toward the former pose a potential danger for social unrest.

The government must do something to make sure that the way the riches is legal and establish mechanisms be to reasonably and proportionally redistribute the wealth accumulated in the form of taxes, so that the basic living of the poor can be maintained.

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