Road rage versus unfair criticism

Over the past three decades, China's reform and opening-up have helped many people become rich (and some, superrich). While these people's wealth has increased exponentially, there has not been much improvement in their haughty behavior and arrogant attitude. Many media reports show China's nouveaux riches are prone to showing off their wealth in public and making reckless remarks that irritate the poor, leading to simmering resentment against them among the public.

Although some media outlets have played a dubious role by twisting some rich people's remarks and thus misleading the people, the public resentment against the rich is perhaps rooted in the popular belief that they have accumulated wealth through dirty deals with the complicit help of corrupt officials, jeopardizing the general population's interests. Indeed, the central authorities have intensified efforts to fight corruption, but they are yet to root out such business-related corruption, which contributes to the public hatred against the rich.

Nevertheless, critics should distinguish between rich people who have suffered tragedies, such as road accidents, without committing any mistake from the haughty and nauseating nouveau riche.

Criticizing people like Duan and Hu even when they have committed no wrong is a dangerous social trend. It is detrimental to fostering a reasonable and constructive atmosphere for public discourse, which in turn will harm the healthy development of society as a whole.

In a society in which holding a rational public discourse is not possible, everyone's interest, including that of the poor, will be at risk.

To bridge the social chasm, however, we should not pin our hopes solely on the improvement in the sensibility of some irresponsible netizens. Instead, we must accelerate the pace of building a clean economy and fair society, where people can get rich through honest means, by the sheer strength of their hard work, and the rich-poor wealth gap can be gradually narrowed.

China's Gini coefficient, widely used to gauge the wealth gap in a country, is 0.47, much above the warning line of 0.4. Only when China makes substantial headway in bridging the wealth gap can emotional outbursts and unfounded criticism against the rich diminish.

The author is a senior writer with China Daily. xinzhiming@chinadaily.com.cn.

(China Daily 05/09/2014 page9)