OPINION> Columnist
Reflecting on rescue mission
By Li Hongmei (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2008-12-01 16:28

With five more flights sent yesterday ferrying home another 1,400 Chinese tourists stranded in the sealed airports in Thailand, where tension escalated between government supporters and anti-government protesters, all the estimated 3,500 Chinese tourists trapped in the Suvarnabhumi international airport and the mostly-domestic Don Muang airport have got back safe. This marks  a notable triumph in the Chinese government’s efforts to organize charter flights for rescue mission, as a spokeswoman for the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said it was ‘one of the biggest efforts’ made in chartering flights to bring back Chinese stranded overseas.

Even though it is a heartening news across China and also a successful showcase mirroring humanitarian concerns the government renders to its people, the general public at home are not necessarily singing in concert praises on the historic victory. Some netizens posted opinions on the websites, pointing those who can afford to go abroad for sightseeing are generally rich people, so the government is not supposed to pay for their trip back. More over, they said, the Foreign Ministry had warned many times not to risk venturing to Thailand for the time being, but they had not taken this seriously, and thereby, it was they themselves who should bear the brunt if something unexpected did occur.

More poignant remarks also emerged in the netizens’ postings, which said the state coffers are contributed by the tax payers, and shouldn’t be used to pay for the safe return of these affluent guys. ‘They insisted on going there disregarding the repeated warnings issued by the government, and they are all adults with mature thinking, sane enough to weigh risks against benefits before going, so they themselves are to blame for the plight they got stuck in,’ reads a posting.

This is quite an unsettling mindset, although it cannot represent the national mentality as a whole. Any government has commitment to the safety of its people, and should be around when they are in danger. The governmental protection is undiscriminating and covers all the people, poor or rich. If a government, in offering protection, discriminated in favor of an orderly group and against another group of people as a result of their failure to follow its instructions, it would be totally out of the question that the government functions in a normal way by presenting the people with  necessary and effective protections. The reason is simple, for people’s needs would vary according to their circumstances.

Those who grudged paying for others’ safe return might one day find themselves in a desperate need of others’ help, but say they would prefer to give anything they possess for their lives. The din over the Thailand rescue operation has also shed light on the weakness and brittleness of the relationship between the State and individuals. The knot might lie in our historic and cultural legacies in which the concepts of ‘people’ and ‘individuals’ tend to be blurred. Although China enjoys a long history of paying tribute to collective wisdom and strength of the people, it has yet to fully realize that the organic ‘build-up’ of people depends on the healthy ‘cells’ of individuals, as the idea of ‘individual’ tends to be confused with ‘individualism’, which has never gained ground in the Chinese culture.

The past thirty years have witnessed a double-digital economic growth in China, but the popular education still lags behind, and the uneven population quality thus caused has created a vacuum of social morality. People’s senses of both responsibility and obligation toward the nation and the community are far from satisfaction. The state policies of reform help a great many people rebuild their life from rags to riches in a short period, and the ‘new riches’ begin to boast themselves as ‘tax payers’ or ‘contributors’ to the state wealth. Some of them even go to such extremes as to ask for privileges from the government, claiming they have done enough for the nation and should have been treated as the national heroes or elites.

This helps explain why the noble cause of charity is always given the cold shoulder in China, but ‘problem tycoons’ pop up from time to time throughout these years. It is wildly improbable to expect these so-called elites, rich but indifferent, to be responsible for the nation and sympathetic to others’ sufferings. Instead, the cold and detached stereotype depicted by the public opinions of the Chinese business tycoons, plus the widening rich-poor divide persisting in the Chinese society, has already made the ‘get-quick-rich’ few repulsed and even abhorred by the ordinary Davids.

Be that as it may, the cynicism merely hankering after the faultfinding game while heedless of others’ safety and danger is by no means encouraged, as it proved useless in the general improvement of social morality. In the ongoing efforts to build up a harmonious society, the government needs to take into account rebuilding and streamlining the basic relationship between the state and individuals. And only when the individuals undertake an arduous journey seeking after a general betterment in mentality, can the society at large savor a general progress, and breed a real harmony.