Disaster causes us all to feel that we live in an entirely different world. In the face of disaster, we all feel we must do something. In the aftermath of the May 12, 2008, earthquake in Sichuan, China’s open humanitarian attitude, courage and determination won the respect of the world. Now, once again, the earthquake in Yushu has stirred people’s hearts. The evening charity event on China Central Television on April 20 raised a total of 2.17 billion yuan, surpassing the 1.5 billion yuan taken in during the 2008 event that followed the Sichuan quake.
This show of broad concern is certainly moving. But we can also glean from these disaster relief efforts a taste of just how things have changed.
First of all, the attitude of the people and enterprises making donations has been “mixed with sand” (掺了沙子), so to speak. If you look carefully, you can see that some companies seem less attentive to the plight of those affected by the disaster than they are mindful of the opportunity to do a bit of public relations.
I use this word “seem” because there is no way to know whether they are genuine or not. But we saw with the Sichuan earthquake that it was the donors with star power that dominated the television lens, and no one was very interested in the rest. This time, companies doing their bit for the disaster relief effort are making a point of employing smart business strategies to demonstrate their “selfish” regard for the victims.
In both disaster relief efforts, we saw the media putting up donation scoreboards, thereby putting a lot of pressure on companies. The amount of money companies put up for relief efforts has become a test of how much they are willing to give back to society.
These scoreboards are updated daily and always changing, demanding the attention of anyone who cares about the donation effort. Who’s given more, and who’s given less. Who has stepped up in the rankings, and who has come down. These have become a focus of our attention.
We should understand that if we treat donors differently according to “who’s given more and who’s given less,” this will inevitably do harm to the sense of care and solicitude that donors feel. If these rankings continue to spoil the media with selfishness, the danger is that these “public instruments” will degenerate into snobbish tools “forcing charity” on others.
As for “forcing charity,” Web users have a lot to answer for themselves. In the face of large-scale disasters, people naturally find it hard to keep cool heads — there’s nothing remiss about that. But there are times when we see emerge a kind of “tyranny of the majority.” In the wake of the May 12, 2008, Sichuan earthquake, the Chinese public went on a moral crusade, which we saw in the so-called “Donation Gate” involving China Vanke, which was seen as having donated too little, while Wanglaoji Pharmaceutical was praised for its generosity. The prevailing ethic throughout all of this was force and pressure.
Whether or not public figures donate money, and how much, has been put under the spotlight. Yao Ming, Zhang Ziyi and other full-fledged stars have all been subjected to a game by which we decide their hero status on the basis of how much they donate.
In the midst of the Yushu relief effort, this game has once again prepossessed Internet users in China. Who is giving more — private enterprises or state-owned enterprises? Chinese companies or international ones? Why aren’t industry monopolies giving more money? And these rough-handed property development companies of ours — what are they up to? The stars, the rich, the prominent — where do they stand?
This whole process exposes our tendency as a people to set moral benchmarks too high. It’s not bad for a person to act as a selfless sage, but we cannot point to sainthood as the basic standard to which all people must adhere.
The end result of setting such impossible standards is not the general improvement of society, but rather greater hypocrisy and repression. This is a lesson the Cultural Revolution has already taught us.
There are a few distinctions we need to be clear about. First, social responsibility and charity are not the same thing. In the midst of disaster, we’ve seen many companies making donations, and that is their social responsibility. Bearing an appropriate degree of social responsibility is a basic bottom line for any company’s survival. But we have to separate this social responsibility from charity.
When foreign business owners make contributions to a cause, their means of doing so differs clearly from what we see in China. When they announce the amount of their donation, they make clear whether the donation is made in the name of a foundation (set up by the owner, with private funds), privately, or in the name of the company. In the first instances, the act can understood as charity.
By contrast, the vast majority of mainland companies are announcing the amounts of corporate donations. As I understand it, some even announce combined amounts comprising monies donated by the company itself and donations contributed from individual employees. Setting aside the contributions from employees, these corporate donations can be construed as acts of social responsibility. They are meant to make a favorable public impression, and the companies can count on social returns — although I would encourage them not to focus overly on what they get in return. Charity, on the other hand, arises out of my own personal moral convictions, and it cannot be done out of consideration for what I might get in return — lest it become hypocrisy.
Secondly, relief efforts made in good faith must not be subject to hype. To those companies who take part in the relief effort principally out of consideration for positive publicity, we must ask: in a normal market environment, companies are for-profit entities, but in the event of a disaster, can we not for a moment suspend market rules?
Third, donations should be made not out of duress exercised with enmity against those who have, but should instead be an act of gratitude. Disaster relief donations should come from a willingness to help. What we need from everyone at such a time as this is earnestness and care, regardless of how big or small a company is, or how rich or poor a person is.
As for those of us individuals who donate, we can make concrete calculations about how much material help we have provided to the victims of this disaster. But we cannot possibly estimate the effect the strength and spirit of those affected by the disaster has had on us. So perhaps it is more appropriate to talk not about what we have given, but about what we have received.
This article originally appeared in Chinese at Southern Metropolis Daily.

So long as there is a thread of hope, then we must give it one-hundred percent, never giving up.

“The 2010 Wangjialing coal mine flood is an incident that began on Sunday, March 28, 2010, when underground water flooded parts of the Wangjialing coal mine in Shanxi province, People’s Republic of China. A total of 261 people were in the mine when workers first broke through an abandoned shaft that was filled with water. Over 100 managed to escape, but 153 workers were trapped in nine different platforms of the mine.” —Wikipedia

Hangzhou’s Morning Express, a commercial spin-off of the official Zhejiang Daily [view on the China Media Map], reported on April 6 that the State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT), China’s top broadcast authority, had banned the use of English-language acronyms in television and radio broadcasts.
The news quickly spread through the Web, and the official English-language China Daily, a newspaper for foreign consumption published by the State Council Information Office, reported on April 10 that “Chinese people, both ordinary viewers and linguists, are split over the matter.” The paper, which reported that a “heated debate is underway,” said the action had been taken to “alleviate the concern [that] too many English abbreviations have mixed with Chinese and soiled the purity of the Chinese language and Chinese culture.”
On April 15, SARFT deputy inspector Gao Changli said the notice from his ministry had been “misunderstood.” The intention, he said, was not to ban certain language usages, but rather to standardize the practice.
“[We] don’t rule out alien culture,” Gao was quoted as saying.
Nevertheless, the supposed acronym ban provided media commentators an occasion to discuss such the importance of rule of law and criticize the often arbitrary and intrusive nature of governance in China.
Writing at Guangzhou’s Southern Metropolis Daily [view on the China Media Map] on April 9, CMP fellow and Renmin University of China professor Zhang Ming (张鸣) said that China’s inundation by these official bans showed that it remained predominantly a nation of “rule by men”, or renzhi (人治), rather than rule of law. [See a full translation in our “CMP Fellows Column“.]
“These bans that vary according to human caprice can be seen everywhere,” Zhang wrote. “For example, in this ban against the use of English-language acronyms.”

We’ve been shouting “NBA” for I don’t know how many years, and Yao Ming is so hot his temperature can’t rise. Suddenly, we’re not allowed to say it. Our leaders rack their brains and another ban comes into the world. After a while there will be a change in leadership, and this ban will become a ghost of the past. Then along will come the next new face with his own bans.

Writing on April 7 in Shaanxi’s commercial Huashang Bao [view on the China Media Map], columnist Jiang Debin (江德斌) said a “ban like this really leaves people speechless.”
“Foreign language abbreviations like ‘NBA,’ ‘F1,’ ‘GDP’ and ‘CPI’ have become conventional grammar habits, and they even appear in official English-Chinese dictionaries,” Jiang wrote. “Why must we have this ban saying they cannot appear in television programs?”
If acronyms were no longer acceptable for household staples like the NBA, Jiang said, then the acronyms commonly used to refer to China’s own state broadcasters should by rights get the axe too.
“If we want to get rid of these, then we should be consistent about it. ‘CCTV’ is also [an English] acronym for ‘China Central Television’. So should we put a stop to that too? That would mean the abbreviations for all television stations across the country would have to be changed.”
MORE COVERAGE:
“Should Acronyms be Banned or Not?” [in Chinese], Sanqin Metropolis Daily, April 15, 2010
“SARFT Ban on English Acronyms ‘Amuses’ the People” [in Chinese], Phoenix Online, April 17, 2010
[Frontpage image by Joe Gratz available at Flickr.com under Creative Commons license.]

According to recent news reports, announcers at television and radio stations are now prohibited from using English-language acronyms. This applies even to those that are rather familiar to us, like “NBA” and “WTO.” It is international custom to use acronyms for those international organizations and things that are generally familiar to the public. So as soon as this ban came out, the whole country was in an uproar. They even started speculating whether from now on the abbreviation “WC” [for toilet] would be similarly banned.
If a ban on this popular designation for the public toilet indeed comes, we will hardly have cause for surprise. We live in a land, after all, where we grow used to bans from our teachers and schools when we are young, and where we are surrounded on all sides by bans once we’ve grown up and entered society.
Government departments that have the power to do so issue bans, and other units [companies, etc.] that have no right to do so also issue bans. Bans are issued in every place where anyone with power or authority has the ability to control people.
There are bans that control officials. There are bans that control the public. Who knows how many bans there are — from the central party down to the local areas — against eating and drinking at the public expense? And still to this day, tens of thousands and even millions in hospitality fees (招待费) are spent each year even at the lowest levels of power in China.
Perhaps the most startling ban we have had was one from Hunan — a strict prohibition against teachers raping female students. And there was another from Guizhou — a strict prohibition against stealing police cars.
Clearly, if even the rape of female students and the theft of police vehicles necessitate government bans, these bans themselves must be of doubtful effectiveness. Some people say that bans directed at officials are essentially useless. Bans directed at the public, meanwhile, are quite effective.
It’s always the useless bans that they are fondest of issuing. With just a bit of power, one can set one’s seal to paper and release a document [announcing a ban]. Local areas have always issued a steady stream of documents setting down bans. And if these bans were all set end to end, I have no idea how many times they would encircle the globe.
Nor is there any concern about whether one’s own bans are appropriate or even legal — in fact, there have always been many bans that violate the constitution and even the law. Or in other cases government bodies come out with bans on activities that are already clearly unlawful or even criminal — like this joke of a ban against the rape of female students by teachers.
And then there are bans that aren’t even put down on paper, but are delivered by phone or through a simple spoken instruction.
It’s as though some [government] organs believe that only by issuing there own bans on their own turf can they flex their own muscles. Bans have become a way of expressing one’s own administrative identity and style.
I don’t know how many years we’ve been shouting this slogan about rule of law. But our organs of power at various levels [in the bureaucracy], and even our enterprise units and public organizations, still have no understanding of the law beyond the written page.
In terms of concrete governance [in accord with rule of law], things are still like the old days of the land lords — they have their own say on their own turf, and what they say goes. And one measure of how well they are keeping control is made by the bans they issue. The higher the organ [in the bureaucracy], the more bans they see fit to issue.
As for the law, it never enters their minds. When superior offices send down great big bans, subordinate offices follow up with their little tiny ones. When the former clash with the latter, no one seems to care . . . Even when bans are useless they still come out. For many [government] organs, issuing bans is a way of showing the attention they give to this or that issue.
When bans come out or are sent down, they feel they completed a task. If the ban has no teeth, well that’s not our responsibility.
This inundation of bans is in fact rule of man [or ‘autocracy’, versus rule of law] . . . These bans that vary according to human caprice can be seen everywhere. For example, in this ban against the use of English-language acroynms.
We’ve been shouting “NBA” for I don’t know how many years, and Yao Ming is so hot his temperature can’t rise. Suddenly, we’re not allowed to say it. Our leaders rack their brains and another ban comes into the world. After a while there will be a change in leadership, and this ban will become a ghost of the past. Then along will come the next new face with his own bans.
This article originally appeared in Chinese in the April 9, 2010, edition of Southern Metropolis Daily.