From Malaysia's MH370 to China's stock crisis, bad governance is compounding problems
Lack of transparency in the way crises are dealt with exacerbates public frustration and distrust
What do Malaysia's missing flight MH370, the deadly blasts in Tianjin and the stock market crisis in the world's No2 economy all have in common? Incompetent governance.
The whole world was shocked when the Malaysia Airlines flight went missing on March 8 last year. But that shock quickly turned into frustration, especially for the Chinese families of missing MH370 passengers, due to the weak crisis management and bad communication of the Malaysian government.
The recent chemical explosions at Tianjin port, one of the busiest ports in the world, are another example of incompetent governance. Hours after the explosions struck a warehouse storing hazardous chemicals on August 12, the authorities put the initial death toll at 14, but the figure was quickly raised to 44 as news of the disaster spread and its scale became apparent. In fact, local officials initially tried to block media coverage.
According to a report by the last week, the Communist Party's top leadership was infuriated with the Tianjin government's attempts to underplay the death toll of the twin blasts, which has now risen to 145. The punishment? Eleven local senior officials and port executives were detained last week for alleged negligence in connection with the disaster.
If Beijing could move faster, and make public communication and crisis management more transparent, then the government would instil greater confidence in its people and the rest of the world.
While many global investors see the volatility in China's stock markets, the worst market crisis in more than a decade, as stemming from weakening economic data, in reality the uncertainty results from policy missteps, incompetent supervision and weak crisis management when the market situation worsened.
The stock market began to crash in late June but we still haven't had any specific public announcement from the top leadership including premier Li Keqiang explaining what exactly caused the turmoil.
Li hosted a cabinet meeting last week to discuss "changing international financial market situations" and the impact such changes would have on the Chinese economy, Xinhua reported, without a single word to elaborate on the domestic stock market.
While we are facing many different kinds of crisis around the world almost every day, the biggest issue is how governments and organisations manage these problems and whether they can help to minimise the negative impacts.
When people lose confidence in governance, then that creates a much bigger problem for governments than can be resolved by just pouring money into stock markets in the hope it can restore global investor confidence.
George Chen is managing editor of SCMP International Edition. For more Mr. Shangkong columns: facebook.com/mrshangkong or follow @george_chen on Twitter
