Growing pains are no excuse for China's woes
Can we now have a period of silence from all those people who've been assuring us that mainland China's headlong pursuit of economic progress can be achieved without the frivolous trappings of accountability and democratic government?
Tell the people of Fenghuang in Hunan province that the dead and injured from a bridge collapse were victims of 'collateral damage' in the heady race for economic advance, and tell the mighty Mattel corporation, humiliated by one of the biggest product recalls in history, that it needs have no fear over the quality of toys made in China because regulations are in place.
Were these events an aberration, there would be no cause to suggest that something is deeply wrong in a nation that has embraced the world market, but still believes there is no need to adopt the other norms of behaviour that govern this market.
Bridge collapses and a string of stories about unsafe products from the mainland form a pattern that is neither accidental, nor excused by glib explanations that growing pains are to be expected in any fast-developing economy. Every time one of these scandals is subject to closer examination, there is evidence of corrupt officialdom turning a blind eye to safety, or political directives overriding other considerations. This is a system so immune from external monitoring that it is able to escape the kind of scrutiny that prevents disasters.
The central government dares not root out corruption among provincial officials, unless they are challenging the writ of Beijing, because they have signed a Faustian pact which turns a blind eye to corruption in return for loyalty to the centre; a pact that is only broken under the extreme pressure of international scandal.
Moreover, the Communist Party is so frightened of independent organs of civil society that it eschews the checks and balances they provide in nations where they act as a watchdog, keeping corporate entities and governments on their toes.
Even when tragedies occur, the first response of officials is to suppress the news rather than allow the public to know what has happened. Xinhua took six hours to report the Hunan bridge collapse. Reporters probably had to obtain high-level clearance before a tragedy of this kind could be revealed.
This cannot happen in an open society, where events occur and are instantly relayed to the public. Even on the mainland, the internet cannot be entirely suppressed, although Beijing has invested more than any other government in censoring it.
Of course, product-contamination scandals and corruption- induced faulty construction projects are not purely a Chinese phenomena. In the early stage of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, reports of shoddy and dangerous goods were legion, as they were in Japan before it joined the ranks of leading industrialised nations.
However, in both instances, the solution to these problems was provided not simply by tighter regulations, but by the development of civil society which produced many layers of responsible citizenship, as opposed to relying on the dictates of a one-party state to get things done.
The brutal truth is that Chinese people die no differently from others when they are caught in a bridge collapse, and Chinese children are no more immune to lead poisoning from toys than American children, but it is only when dangerous products are sold to America that tougher monitoring takes place.
The government in Beijing is no doubt seriously worried by these problems, but it seems to think they can be fixed by tighter control from the centre and maybe picking off a few officials for punishment, especially if they have shown signs of challenging the leadership.
The reality is this will not work: what will produce results involves the greater development of civil society and less central control, but that is not acceptable.
Stephen Vines is a Hong Kong-based journalist and entrepreneur
