Mainland morals, Taiwan

[Guest realmayo]

I guess it's very easy to find people of any country criticising the direction their country is going. In mainland China it's not too hard to find people talking about the apparent lack of 'morals' these days. Websites criticise the leaders for taking bribes, rich people for beating up anyone who gets in their way, girls for wanting to marry rich men, people who collect thrown-out slops from restaurants or drains for salvaging the cooking oil and selling it on to cheap restaurants or food stalls. And perhaps there's a perception of a sharp growth in muggings and rip-off schemes of all sorts. People seem concerned that there's a worryingly large chunk of their society which is driven by money at the expense of any other society-based concerns.

I just wondered if anyone here has come across these concerns, thinks they are valid, and finds them detrimental to enjoying life in the PRC? And what's the situation like in Taiwan?

[imron]

Things like food safety were a major concern for me, and this was a reasonably significant factor I took into account when I recently decided to leave China. Not just oil made from slops, but melamine in the milk, pesticides in the vegetables, hormones in the meat and a complete lack of faith in primary producers to act in the interests of the public rather than their own bank accounts, and in the regulatory bodies to both do their job effectively, and also let the public know as soon as possible if there is a problem. It's the latter two points about the regulatory bodies which are the kicker because it destroys any trust and faith you can have in the food-chain, and even if there is no problem you have no way to verify and trust that.

[Erbse]

Things like food safety were a major concern for me, and this was a reasonably significant factor I took into account when I recently decided to leave China.

I also had the plan to stay in China for a long time, however I discovered that I have asthma. I discovered that while in China, because back in Europe the air quality is so good I never had even the slightest problems. The only city in China that has sufficient air quality and good jobs seems to be HK, where my asthma problems seemed to be minimal. Quit mandarin? start Cantonese? I'm dumbfounded.

Can anyone tell me about the air quality in Taiwan? I've never been there.

[gato]

Taiwan's air is much better. Probably comparable to Hong Kong.

[Lu]

The air was never a problem to me in Taipei, and is probably even better in smaller cities. Do try Taiwan if you can't stay on the Mainland but don't want to quit Chinese!

[wushijiao]

It might be worth noting that "improving morals" is the time honored way the Party seeks to fight corruption, and other ills. So, they might have a big campaign of studying morals, or a senior official might give lower level officials a lecture about their morals. Some "local officials" are always accused of corruption due to their lack of morals. Others, within the government and in the media or dissident community consistently call for better supervision (监督), which could take the form of different independent branches of government or in the form of an independent media. This position is less popular, and the people who advocate it often talk in veiled language.

Anyway, the point is that talking about poor morals as the cause of society's ills is perfectly acceptable rhetorically, but is a bit of a cop out. With that said, morals can often be shockingly bad. Of course, some of the things you see are due to China's current state of development, or are due to other reasons, like human nature. And although I'd love to be a complete cultural relativist, but, I think it's safe to say that there are other particular things related to China's so-called 国情 that are also in play.

I have to say that I had lots of fun living in the mainland and I met countless numbers of friendly and hospitable people, and the Mainland is a fascinating place to observe right now - for its vigor, energy, and constant change, but with that said, the problems realmayo and imron mentioned did weigh on me. In the end, I just didn't want to live in an authoritarian country with a censored media anymore, (and where most people accepted or even justified that fact), and I think the pollution was a serious concern as well.

So, I'm generally optimistic about the Mainland, but it just was no longer the right fit for me.

[wushijiao]

Erbse, you might find this information useful about whether to move to Hong Kong (I think it's pretty accurate):

HK is not a good place at all for learning Putonghua. Most Putonghua CSL materials are in simplified Chinese, so the written language here will seem quite different to the beginner. Not many locals will speak Putonghua with an accent or vocabulary similar to what you would learn in class or from tapes. They will almost never speak it unless yo speak it to them first, so you will have no opportunity to learn from eaves dropping. IMO, for a foreigner to just avoid attrition in their Putonghua while living in HK, he would need to be at a high-intermediate level (i.e. 7 or 8 on the HSK). Anything less and the skills will go very rusty very fast. In order to handle transactional or social situations in Putonghua here, the foreigner often has to be good enough for the local person to "lean on" in conversation. You won't improve your Putonghua much this way, but at least you'll maintain it if you're already at a certain level. For me, speaking PTH to a HKer and to a Taiwanese or educated mainlander are very different experiences. With the latter group, I find much more complex grammar and specialized vocabulary coming back to me.

So, in other words, if you plan to continue Mandarin, and unless you have fairly advanced skills, I think it'd be safe to say that your Mandarin would likely deteriorate in Hong Kong, and so it would be better to consider Taiwan.

[Daan]

Yes, the air here in Taiwan is fine, both in Taibei and other cities I've visited. Of course, it gets better if you leave the bigger cities. I can wholeheartedly recommend studying here, it's been great so far!

[bhchao]

The air is much cleaner on the east coast of Taiwan. Hualien, Yilan City, Loudong, Taidong, are very pleasant places to live if you prefer slow pace, clean air, and proximity to natural recreational areas.

The cons of living in these small cities on the east coast are the lack of foreigner accommodations. So being fluent in Mandarin would help much more if you were to live in these small cities. It may also rain a lot during the winter. The summers are beautiful.

Taipei, Taichung, Gaoxiong have all the amenities of a big city, but the air is not as clean as the east coast. There are also air pollutants blowing eastward from the Mainland onto the west coast.

The high mountain ranges that split through the middle of Taiwan helps shield the east coast from pollutant particles blowing from the west.

Edited October 21, 2009 at 12:35 PM by bhchao
spelling correction

[Dawei1]

Chinese colleagues located in the US have offered me the most insight on morals in China. Regardless of how "pro-China" they are and how much they'd like to move back, they all want to wait until their kids finish school in the US. Why?

The almost universally say "Morals. In China, all that matters is money." In China, many people would like to change this. E.g., the melamine in infant formula outraged many. However, it's very difficult to change a culture in which strangers have no standing. The most troubling aspect of this is that the melamine adulteration wasn't done by dumb farmers, but in a highly sophisticated way by top companies. 22 of the 23 major milk companies diluted infant formula with melamine.

What I can't understand is the thinking behind the formula dilution, i.e., if you were just a businessman with zero morals, why would you continue to adulterate formula while the largest petfood recall in the history of the world was happening due to melamine adulteration?? In addition to being unethical, it makes no business sense. I can't understand the thinking (i.e., even if all that matters is money, it still makes no sense).

[gato]

What I can't understand is the thinking behind the formula dilution, i.e., if you were just a businessman with zero morals, why would you continue to adulterate formula while the largest petfood recall in the history of the world was happening due to melamine adulteration?? In addition to being unethical, it makes no business sense.

It was mostly the farmers selling the milk to the milk companies that were adding the melamine, not the milk companies themselves. The milk companies were guilty of not stopping selling the milk once they discovered the problem last year. The government was also to blame. Sanlu, the main milk company involved in the case, notified local officials of the problem after an internal investigation, but the local officials kept it under wraps because they didn't want the news to disrupt the Olympics.

See more here:

http://english.caijing.com.cn/2009-01-15/110048298.html

The Sanlu Trial: Diary of a Dairy Disaster

01-15 12:03 Caijing Magazine comments( 2 )

The State Council teams also concluded that Sanlu and the Shijiazhuang government tried to cover up the contamination and delayed reporting to higher authorities, violating regulations.

Caijing learned Sanlu officials had decided to recall tainted products secretly after discovering the contamination. But the move was rejected by Shijiazhuang government officials.

On August 2, senior city officials including former deputy mayor Zhao Xinzhao held a meeting with Sanlu management to discuss a possible recall proposed by Wang. It was decided that any measures were to be taken after the Beijing Olympics in August. Moreover, the government officials opposed the recall idea and suggested pacifying victims by paying compensation while keeping the issue secret.

[Dawei1]

Some news reports stated that farmers did the adulteration. However, the China Daily News, the journal Science and the World Health organization noted that the adulteration was done at milk collection centers by large companies. The China Daily noted it was 22 of the 23 major milk companies.

From Science (Nov 28 2008): "investigators established that workers at Sanlu and at a number of milk-collection depots were diluting milk with water; they added melamine to dupe a test for determining crude protein content. “Adulteration used to be simple.

What they did was very high-tech,” says Chen." Science noted that investigators said they were shocked at the sophistication of the adulteration process. Workers actually had to be trained to use the adulteration formulation.

From the China Daily (9/28/08) "Investigations found 22 manufacturers were involved in a melamine-tainted formula milk scandal, including leading companies, such as the Bright Dairy & Food, Yili Industrial Group, and Mengniu Group."

To the credit of China's central gov't, they were very open about reporting the melamine news and at times, had daily articles on the issue.

[wushijiao]

To the credit of China's central gov't, they were very open about reporting the melamine news and at times, had daily articles on the issue.

I'm not quite so sure about that. The local gov covered it up because of the Olympics, and the central gov. wanted nothing negative to happen during the Olympics, so you could argue (quite persuasively) that the climate the central gov. created resulted in increasing the amount of dead and damaged babies quite considerably. The central gov. also directly interfered in suppressing lawyers and individuals who wanted to sue the government and companies involved (依法治国 ?).

[Dawei1]

Wushijiao - You make good points about the environment created by the central gov't. And certainly, the local gov't was definitely at fault.

In writing my comment, I was mentally comparing it to SARS in which China actively suppressed news to the extent it fueled a global pandemic. In contrast, it seemed like once the initial news on melamine was released, it was discussed relatively openly.

The Science article was based on a closed-conference in China where US scientists were invited to participate. It wasn't an open conference, but at least they included some non-Chinese. However as you noted, this was after the Olympics.