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Lijia Zhang

Last month, a startling incident in Kunshan, Jiangsu province, captured nationwide attention. Someone hurled human waste from a high-rise residential building, splattering it onto a ground-floor window.
In a bid to force the culprit to come forward, estate management, in collaboration with local police, ordered DNA tests for all residents of the building. This sordid story quickly spread across social media, once again igniting debate about the decline of public civility and moral standards in modern China.
Throwing rubbish from tall buildings has become disturbingly common. According to reports, from mid-2016 to 2018, Chinese courts heard 31 criminal cases involving high-rise littering, half of which resulted in deaths.
Some people online used the term quede, meaning “unethical” or “morally wrong”, to describe the Kunshan incident. I also see it as immoral and in violation of the accepted code of social behaviour. In another egregious example, two bike repairmen in Chengdu were caught deliberately placing blades on the road, in the hope of profiting from motorcyclists’ misfortune.
The situation seems equally dire online, with news being distorted to attract attention. Last year, a headline misleadingly announced the death of director Zhang Yimou when it was actually his teacher who had died.
As online fraud and financial crime proliferate, in-person crime is also on the rise. On the eve of National Day, a 37-year-old man armed with a knife attacked random shoppers in a Shanghai supermarket, killing three and injuring 15 more. Reports suggest his rampage was fuelled by personal grievances.


China has engaged in an extended public reckoning over the state of its moral compass since the 2011 “Yueyue incident”, when a two-year-old girl was run over twice and left to die on a busy street in Foshan, Guangdong province. In 2013, a blogger named “I am Pockmark Zhang” coined the term zui quede, or “most immoral”, which swiftly gained traction on social media.
It is hard to make a definitive judgment on whether the nation’s moral crisis has deepened over the past decade. Some optimists argue that it has not. They might point out that social media amplifies and spreads news of immoral acts quickly, giving the illusion of widespread ethical decay. Personally, I believe the situation has, at the very least, not improved.
Professor He Huaihong, an ethicist and philosopher from Peking University, has been an outspoken critic of China’s moral decline. In his 2015 book Social Ethics in a Changing China, he attributed the erosion of traditional values to the rise of materialism and utilitarianism in society.
His arguments resonate with me. However, this ethical decline is not intrinsic to Chinese culture. Societal changes breed some level of disorder. In the reform and opening up period, China has undergone a dramatic transformation, from a highly egalitarian, centrally planned economy into a market-oriented one.

As capitalism took root, people became more materialistic and focused on personal gain. Meanwhile, moral standards eroded under the weight of collusion between government officials and businesspeople who amassed wealth at the expense of society. As a result, public trust withered, corruption spread and the fabric of society’s ethics frayed.
President Xi Jinping’s high-profile anti-corruption campaign has recorded many successes in hunting “tigers” and swatting “flies”, or stamping out corruption among high-ranking officials and low-level functionaries. However, the problem persists, largely because of a lack of transparency and independent oversight.
The rise of digital technology, including social media and e-commerce, has only accelerated the shift towards individualism.
Social media offers platforms for self-expression, encouraging people to share their lifestyles and opinions. It has also cultivated a culture of instant gratification and fuelled consumerism, especially among younger generations. Many younger Chinese were raised as only children, quite apart from the traditional values of collectivism.


Of course, China is not alone in grappling with declining ethics. For a nation that has long taken pride in its foundation of moral values and Confucian philosophy, its current state is deeply unsettling. Improvement is necessary.
There is no quick fix. Moral standards do not automatically rise alongside economic development. It is unrealistic to expect spontaneous growth in individual ethics without intentional efforts. A revival of morality must be rooted in education and promotion of traditional values, such as maintaining social harmony, fulfilling one’s responsibility in relationships and upholding ethical standards as well as strengthening modern law enforcement.
In April, a court in Changzhou, Jiangsu province, sentenced a woman to three months in prison for repeatedly throwing bags of excrement from the window of her 10th-floor flat. The law can curb the stench of moral decay, but true moral renewal depends on us all.


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Whether the country’s ethical decline has worsened or not, the current situation is dire and must be addressed through education


Whether the country’s ethical decline has worsened or not, the current situation is dire and must be addressed through education.


Crime in China

Corruption in China

Expresses the views, ideas and conclusions of the author. (Eg. Enough of Crazy Rich Asians, think of crazy poor Hongkongers.)


Can China find a way out of its moral crisis?

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Whether the country’s ethical decline has worsened or not, the current situation is dire and must be addressed through education

Whether the country’s ethical decline has worsened or not, the current situation is dire and must be addressed through education