Westerners tend to say China lacks transparency. But at least in one aspect China is quite transparent, namely debate over its general reform policies. This debate focuses primarily on how big a role the market should be allowed to play and the different preference by different groups in different parts of economy.

No one is able to count how many articles have been published about the ongoing reform, and how many words have been said in all media. The same subject surfaces millions of times each day in official media, blogs and overseas Chinese sources.

I am not trying to suggest that Western media are deliberately trying not to cover this debate. Even I myself don't feel interested in many of the things said.

Except for occasional straightforward ones, most criticisms are generally difficult to follow, not just because of their constant reference to China's past experience, but also because of the "Chinese characteristics" of debating.

You can tell when people are in disagreement over certain things and at times when they are arguing against each other. But more often than not, the way people say things makes a bystander struggle to make any sense of it all.

It is like a game of mass shadow boxing, in which they don't seem to be attacking a real target, but have endless energy to attack in empty space.

First of all, when people do not like a particular thing, they say a lot of nasty things about the person who did it regardless of whether he did it by mistake or on purpose. And if there is something that people particularly hate, they call it a conspiracy, designed by people who are morally corrupt.

But once the conspiracy theme becomes the dominant interest of the debate, people quite naturally split into two camps to either defend or attack the personalities of certain people involved, leaving the real issue aside.

So, when there is a widening income gap (which I think is primarily a political issue and also shows a lack of urban job supplies), critics start attacking all economists as advocates of the evil.

When listed companies lose all the money they have raised from investors (which I think reflects a failure of the regulatory system), critics want to hang their managers.

When housing prices in Beijing and Shanghai keep going up (which I think is because a lot of rich people are moving into these cities from elsewhere), critics say there's a plot by property developers.

When large sums of money are stolen from the State-owned banks, people seem satisfied once the bosses are locked up in prison and never bother to demand the banks effectively improve internal control.

Such attacks can go on forever. But China will never be able to find a solution to its problems, economic or political, if its economists, corporate executives, property developers and bankers are all killed. Society's general welfare would not advance at all.

The same kind of debate, highly morally and emotionally charged, was seen many times in Chinese history from the one about the state's salt and iron monopoly in Western Han Dynasty 2,000 years ago, to the one about the state farm credit experiment in the Northern Song Dynasty 1,000 years ago. Not in a single time did the debate help China solve problems.

Such a way of debating is a remnant of the non-analytical ancient way of thinking, something that is only remotely connected with modern China. It only leads one to ask why it should continue.

Email: younuo@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 03/27/2006 page4)