Moral regeneration is the need of the hour

The tainted-milk scandal is by far the most widespread food safety problem that has hit China. It affected babies throughout the country, leading to several deaths. As milk is a very common ingredient in many processed food products, ranging from biscuits to drinks, it seems that nobody can totally escape unconsciously consuming some melamine. Many of the tainted milk, milk powder, as well as numerous food products are exported, leading to a worldwide frenzy to test all suspected products, and take them off the shelves once tested positive. Needless to say, in some parts of the world, babies and children are lining up to check their kidneys, and quite a few were alarmed to find stones there. A part of the positive image generated by our successful holding of the Beijing Olympics and the Paralympics has now been tainted by melamine.

Many pundits have rightly pointed out that the root of the problem is greed. Greed has just destroyed the American capitalist system, and is now leading the whole world into a deep recession comparable to the Great Depression in the 1930s. For the past 30 years, making money and getting rich has been a dominant theme for China. If we are not careful, and continue to let greed grow practically unchecked, this is going to destroy our socialist system before we know it.

Having said this, the next logical question is: how can we rein in greed? Conventional wisdom will advocate administrative check and balance, and a legal framework to punish the lawbreakers. But throughout history, our ancestors knew a far more effective way: moral ethics. There is simply no way that we can practice check and balance on all people at all times, catch the offenders and punish them. But everyone is with himself all the time, and if each of us is trained to reflectively exercise self-checking and restraint, and to automatically refrain from doing anything improper, all the external mechanisms will become secondary.