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The moral decay of China has been greatly exaggerated
Anson Au says that while the bout of Chinese soul-searching in the wake of the recent vaccine scandal is understandable, social science research actually shows a China with a healthy respect for modern cosmopolitan values
Reading Time:4 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
This summer, a safety scandal involving vaccine maker Changsheng Bio-technology rocked China and made headlines around the world. The Chinese company has been accused of fabricating quality control records and selling substandard, dangerous vaccines to inoculate over a quarter of a million children.
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Many Chinese see this as but the latest in a long line of public health and food safety scandals in the country – from expired vaccines and contaminated milk powder to even the production and distribution of fake food – incidents that have left up to thousands ill or dead in recent years.
For many critics, health and food safety scandals reflect the moral values – or lack thereof – in China. But the incidents also highlight an angst over moral decay that has festered since China’s economic miracle: a deep-rooted concern about whether the country has embraced pragmatic capitalist principles at the expense of ethics and lost its way after abandoning spiritualism and Confucianism during the Cultural Revolution.
However, social science research does not really support this view. It’s far from the truth that modern China has succumbed to moray decay.
Watch: Vaccine scandal is latest in China’s history of substandard infant products
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