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Wealth and wellbeing

(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-07-25 07:30

The "near-universal optimism" of the slightly more than 3,000 Chinese samples, supposedly representing 42 percent of the country's adult population, in the 2008 Pew Global Attitudes survey has set many observers wondering.

It is indeed impressive that 86 percent of those interviewed were satisfied with the way things are going in the country, and 82 percent held positive views about the nation's economy. That made the Chinese the most optimistic among all the respondents in the 24 countries surveyed.

Six years back, the same project found only half of its interviewees, 48 percent and 52 percent respectively, were upbeat on the two counts.

The dramatic margin of improvement tallies with the conspicuous progress the country has achieved over the years, as well as with the prevailing sense that the state of our country is stronger, and that of our economy healthy. Six years is a time span long enough to render lots of comparisons meaningless, or nearly so in this rapidly changing country.

Such degrees of public contentment are precious political wealth for anyone at the helm of national leadership. But they should not be taken for granted.

Optimism is not the whole picture of the now well-publicized Pew report. The relatively lower levels of personal satisfaction it discovered reveal a potentially damaging weak link we cannot afford to overlook.

It would be sad if people are optimistic about the big pictures while too much less so when it comes to personal wellbeing.

The Pew report attributes the gap in part to the "still modest level of per-capita income" here. But that income is not everything. The pollsters heard complaints about inflation, environmental degradation, economic inequality, and corruption.

If rising commodity prices and polluted air and water are common headaches bothering everyone, concerns about wealth gaps and corruption in public and business institutions, though also widely shared in society, are particularly intimidating killers of the sense of well-being, especially among the underprivileged.

That is why we suggest Chinese decision-makers, if they bother to browse through such a report, focus on the parts on personal satisfaction, instead of the rosier aspects.

They do not have to worry about popular endorsement as long as they do big things right, and the economy remains on track. What truly matters is to make sure our citizens' level of contentment about their personal life does not lag too far bellow that about the national conditions.

The rosy big picture the Pew report presented is to some extent surreal in the sense that what people feel more dearly is how much more they would have to spend on feeding and clothing their families, instead of how much more has been added to the country's foreign exchange reserves.

(China Daily 07/25/2008 page8)