Reason Number 47 - Micro-Faults

`Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 91

“More than any other country, China seems to be able to produce dozens of problems, unnecessarily created by inattention, greed and a lack of care, problems that perhaps would overwhelm other smaller countries. In this chapter we look at just ten such problems.

Official Fortune 

In 2007, nearly 60 years after ‘New China’ was founded, theoretically ending feudalism and superstition, more than half of government officials still believed in ‘reading faces and stars, predicting dreams and ‘qiu qian’ – casting lots at a temple to tell their fortune.’

Superstition may be more understandable among less well-educated communities. Many rural farmers, for example, are often reluctant to pay into heath care plans because they believe that since they have to be sick to see any benefit from their investment, they are inviting bad luck.

When leaders are guided by superstition – such as the official who moved his ancestral family tombs thousands of miles to the foot of the famed and spiritually positive Tianshan Mountain in northwestern Xinjiang Province to boost his career prospects – then China’s prospects of becoming a well-run and developed country may be questioned.”

`Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 92

“The Lovers of Rumor

In a nation like China where the news is directly controlled by the government, people have learned not to place much trust in the media. They rely on word of mouth and gossip, and due to the prevalence of mobile phones with text messaging and the internet with email sometimes a groundswell of dubious or fallacious information is created.

One such rumor that did the rounds in 2007 was ‘SARS in bananas.’ In early 2007 a mobile-phone SMS message spread across China saying that bananas in the nation’s southern island of Hainan had been found to contain a virus similar to SARS. Zhang Xingwang, deputy director of China’s Ministry of Agriculture’s market department, said ‘It is utterly a rumor. There has not been a case in the world in which humans have contracted a plant virus, and there is not any scientific evidence.’

But this had no effect. Prices for the fruit immediately plunged as credulous customers shunned it. Chinese media described a Hainan farmer, a woman surnamed Zhang, as saying that in 2006 she got two yuan (25 US cents) per kilogram for her bananas. But after the SARS rumor, the price plunged to 0.2 yuan per kilo. 

In a country where few people believe the official news, such rumors become part of life. But the ‘SARS in bananas’ rumor was particularly effective since the government had created a climate of fear surrounding the disease by covering it up in 2003.”