What Is the Standard for a Good Society? 16 Scholars Answer

Perhaps we should know: What is good? What is it we long for? What should we hold to more firmly?

"Sometimes what matters is not changing the world, but explaining it."

At a critical moment, when the questions are how to explain this world and how to live with the future, we need to hear wise, independent voices.

We asked our questions to more than 20 specialists in economics, law, sociology, communication studies and other fields.

The questions are many and complicated, but all of them bear on the future lives of the younger generation. Our interviewees hope that the world left to the young of the future works well and keeps moving toward civilization — and that in a complicated, bewildering world, people can stay independent and rational.

Why don't we trust doctors anymore? Why has healthcare reform become something almost nobody is satisfied with — patients and doctors alike?

Talking about healthcare, Zhang Bin, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said medical care is a peculiar kind of service:

"If I spend 2,000 yuan on a television, I have a rough sense of its quality and performance, so it's easy to judge whether I'm being overcharged, whether the price is fair. But with medical care, measured against the service itself, sometimes a doctor fleeces me and I still think he's been good to me. And sometimes he really is being good to me, and I don't understand that either. That's perfectly normal. Take an elderly cancer patient who is, in fact, beyond saving. One doctor tells you there's nothing more to be done, go home — and you may feel badly treated. Another doctor tells you to spend another million yuan, throwing the money away, and you feel instead that this doctor is very conscientious. It's precisely because of this information asymmetry that medicine has another peculiar feature: nobody knows how to price the service. You don't trust me, I don't trust you — so what do we do? What comes of that?"

Zhang Bin is not a specialist in healthcare reform, but from the standpoint of economic institutions he laid out for us what happens next:

— It naturally produces a strong demand for regulation, for a third-party force. Once that third party steps in, it can watch the doctor for overcharging. Did you charge me more than you should have? I don't know — but this supervisory force might. That third party can act as a check.

— This regulatory force may resolve the information asymmetry between doctor and patient and let us complete the transaction. But there's another possibility: it eats the plaintiff, then eats the defendant, and the whole thing sinks into a vicious cycle. It constrains the doctor, and it also saddles me with a lot of inconvenience, and a vicious cycle forms between doctor and patient.

— It becomes an independent interest group. The existence of this third-party interest group makes people feel they can't manage without it, as though it were helping us both. Is it really helping us both? In fact it is the reason things got this bad for both of us. We could have struck a deal at 100 yuan; instead it charges me 50 and I pay 150, you never get your 100, and you have to pay it rent as well. That's how it can end up.

There are several ways to curb the appetite for regulation, Zhang Bin said, and one of them is building trust.

Which makes this more than an economic problem. It is a problem of society, and of the systems by which society judges itself.

"Japan is short of doctors. Relative to demand, there aren't many of them. Starting from medical school, the supply it produces is very limited. And every doctor is extremely dedicated — Japanese doctors work far longer hours than doctors elsewhere. Yet when Japanese patients go to a doctor, they never doubt him. Through professional self-discipline, and through some genuinely unusual rules, Japan has built strong trust in the medical profession. You simply trust him and don't overthink it. Through the reputation he has built up over a long career, the patient comes to feel he is worth trusting, that he won't cheat you. That's how Japan solved the problem of asymmetric information."

This series is nearing its end. We left almost every scholar we spoke with the same open question: What do you think is the standard for a good society?

Zhang Bin's story already comes close to the heart of that question. Behind the vast issues of institutions, values and ideology, what we are finally pointing at is whether a healthy society exists, whether it is encouraged, and whether it helps every one of us — and we all live inside society — grow more inclined toward good.

Ma Yong, who traveled often by high-speed rail in the autumn of 2017, drew on his own experience to describe a trade-off between administrative control and the public mood. "It was only a meeting — it should have been a warm, friendly meeting. More than 2,000 delegates plus support staff; I don't believe the people directly involved numbered more than 10,000. But the security checks were terrifying. I never expected it to come to that. And what does that actually produce? It makes a lot of people sick of politics, even hostile to it, because you've disrupted their lives. That's the situation that worries me. I think good politics has to keep society as a whole in a fairly warm, friendly state," he said.

"What kind of society is the most stable? What is the most appropriate cost for running a society? For the great majority of people, politics isn't the whole of their lives, and out of China's 1.3 billion people, perhaps a billion have nothing to do with politics at all."

Just as society is made up of every individual, a good society is made jointly by everyone who takes part in it. Nobody can say exactly what the future holds; for all the learning of the scholars we spoke with, they cannot really tell us how to face it. Only when the future has arrived — whether we meet it with delight, anxiety, disappointment or shock — will we truly understand what "living with it" means.

But some things are certain.

Perhaps we should know: What is good? What is it we long for? What should we hold to more firmly?

We hope their answers push our own thinking further.

1. The standard for a good society is that a society exists

Lei Yi, researcher, Institute of Modern History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

The standard for a good society is that a society exists. Since ancient times, society in China has been undeveloped, and modern civil society especially so. As long as there is a baseline, a foundation, the rest can be worked out. I've written many articles about this.

2. The lowest standard is not having to censor yourself before speaking

Wang Xiaoyu, associate professor, Department of Chinese, Tongji University

For a good society, the lowest standard is not having to hesitate for ages before you speak, working through a long self-censorship over which words may be said and which may not.

3. Being able to find the books you want, read them undisturbed, and argue them over with a few kindred spirits

Hong Tao, professor, School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan University

As a reader, I think a good society is this: you can find the books you want, read them undisturbed, and argue them over with a few kindred spirits. That isn't asking much — it doesn't require achieving communism — but it is hard to get. So the good society I imagine is one that helps, or at least tolerates, every individual in it becoming better. Someone may ask: should reading poisonous books be tolerated too? To a degree, yes — because people have never been good at judging what is poisonous. When I was learning to read, Confucius's books were called a great poisonous weed; when I was in graduate school, Qian Mu's books were called reactionary. Which shows that people's judgments, like fashions, tend to follow whatever is current.

It follows that the precondition for a good society is this: those who hold the power to coerce others by various means must admit the limits of that power, must grant others freedom, and must trust others. Freedom is the necessary precondition for people to become better. Pursuing good by coercion is more likely to produce bad. Down the ages, those in power have coerced people into goodness on the surface while in substance luring them into badness. What they really care about is their power to coerce and the pretexts that let them use it. If it is admitted that people have a nature capable of self-improvement, one that can be perfected through society's own self-governing activity, then their power mostly loses its reason to exist. So those in power tend to corrupt the people. Aristotle pointed out long ago that whether a political system perfects people or corrupts them is the standard for telling a good one from a bad one.

4. Normal is enough

Guo Yuhua, professor, Department of Sociology, Tsinghua University

My standard for a good society is in fact very low: normal is enough. I have a book that has gone three or four years without being published. It's called Normal Is Enough.

Tsinghua University's School of Economics and Management puts out a journal, China and World Observation, which convenes scholars several times a year to discuss China's problems. Usually they set a topic and invite scholars of different positions to take part.

The discussion at the end of 2016 was called "the China Solution" — what should your China solution look like? In my remarks I said the China solution I have in mind has no special characteristics and is very simple: this society needs to become normal.

I think we should hold to constitutional democracy and rule of law, and act on it. Since "governing the country according to law" and "governing according to the constitution" have already been proposed, I said we should simply act on them. Rulers and ordinary people alike should obey the law and act according to it — I want to take that seriously. So I said my solution is very simple, with no special characteristics.

5. If there is freedom of speech and freedom of expression, it is a good society

Sheng Hong, economist

If there is freedom of speech and freedom of expression, it is a good society. Why? Because bad things get exposed, condemned, criticized and corrected through freedom of speech and expression. That comes first. Zhang Qianfan once said something to the effect that freedom of expression is the diamond in the constitution's crown. It is the most important thing, because without freedom of expression you have no way of knowing whether the other constitutional principles are being carried out or violated. Stressing anything else is useless.

6. Individual freedom

He Weifang, professor, Peking University Law School

Individual freedom. That is the most important measure. Individual freedom is inseparable from strict limits on power. Through separation of powers, through democracy from outside, through local self-government, the expansion of government power is held in check. At the same time, one must find ways — through an intermediary role such as the judiciary — to place proper limits on the powers government confers, limits more in keeping with law and with the ideal of the rule of law. I think that is the most important thing.

7. A society under the rule of law, a free society

Wei Sen, professor, School of Economics, Fudan University

A society under the rule of law, a free society. The 24 characters of our socialist core values are all fine — freedom, justice, democracy, rule of law — all fine. The point is that they must be more than slogans.

Freedom can be put in a sentence. Go back to Mill: Yan Fu translated On Liberty as On the Boundary Between Self and Group, using the rule of law to mark out each person's boundary of rights. As long as I break no law, you cannot interfere with me. Rule of law and freedom are one and the same. Without rule of law there is no freedom.

8. A good society is an unusually plural society

Zhang Bin, researcher, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

As I see it, a good society is an unusually plural society — a coexistence of many kinds. It must have diversity. In any system, diversity is the most basic guarantee of vitality. For an ecosystem, diversity comes first.

9. The standard for a good society is that everyone does their own job

Ma Yong, researcher, Institute of Modern History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

The standard for a good society is that everyone does their own job and doesn't overstep to think about matters above their station. I don't concern myself with what goes on in Zhongnanhai. When people meet, they talk about their own field. Go to an American university and start talking about Chinese politics and they find it tedious — you're a history professor, why are you talking to me about politics? Everyone should stick to their own role; what each person cares about is his own profession, his own family, not great affairs of state, and certainly not what is going on in Zhongnanhai. That's a healthy society — a state of mind with no tension and no fear.

10. Every form of life is respected

Wu Fei, professor, College of Media and International Culture, Zhejiang University

If I had to put a good society in the simplest terms, it would be that every form of life is respected. That is my standard for a good society. So long as every idea of life, every way of life, every form of living, and life itself get sufficient respect, that society is good. This is a little arbitrary, of course — I haven't thought the question through carefully.

11. A strong sense of safety, and respect for one another

Yan Fei, associate professor, Department of Sociology, Tsinghua University

A strong sense of safety, in which everyone living inside it is respected by the others. By safety I mean: you go home today without worrying that tomorrow you'll be thrown out of your own house; you walk down the street without worrying that you'll be hit by a car while crossing on a green light; you send your child to kindergarten without worrying that they'll be given injections or force-fed medicine. Everyone keeps to these most basic moral norms.

Besides safety, there is respect for one another. By respect I mean that nobody is discriminated against or harassed for being of the weaker gender, or for being weaker in economic or other social standing.

12. Members of society have fairly equal opportunity and a basic safety net, and can still talk to one another, forming their own ethics and social rules

He Fan, professor, Peking University HSBC Business School

Opportunity is relatively equal; society provides every member with a basic safety net; and members of society have the chance to talk with one another. Out of that dialogue a healthy interaction can form, and a society's own ethics and social rules can evolve. That is a good society.

13. Freedom, order, vitality

Wang Jianxun, associate professor of law, China University of Political Science and Law

First, this society must be free: everyone's basic rights and freedoms are well protected, people can speak freely, associate freely, hold any religious belief freely, property is quite secure, and so on. I think that is the basic precondition. At the same time, I hope this society is orderly, calm and peaceful — that is the minimum.

Beyond that, I also hope this society is a lively one, not lifeless and uncreative — a society where everyone's creativity can be released into it as fully as possible.

That is probably my understanding of a good society. Not only in material terms, but in spirit and soul too, people can find something to rest on. That is the society I long for.

14. The value of freedom, three separations of power, and relative calm and rationality in social life

Ren Jiantao, professor of political science, Tsinghua University

For a modern state there are at least three broad categories of indicators you have to stress.

First, in the realm of ideas, it takes the value of freedom as the highest value. Take freedom as the highest value and build out democracy, the rule of law and constitutional government from there, and that whole system of values is a modern one. If a country is against these modern value systems, it cannot be a modern state. Suppose we still imagine that adopting a Confucian stance would make us a modern state — that is sheer fantasy. Or that going back to the classical model of ancient Greece would make us a modern state. These all flow, in the end, into the same current of values that runs against the modern state.

Second, the basic indicator of a modern state in institution-building can be called a structure of three separations of power. One: state and society must be separated. Two: in the structure of power, the bodies that lay down the rules, enforce the rules and settle disputes over the rules must be separated; no single monopoly of power can command the machinery of the state. Three: in the control of resources, whoever holds the resources — what we used to call capitalists — must also be separated from managers and operators. These three separations make up the basic structure of a modern state. This is, of course, an ideal model. Any actual country can only approach it; none becomes that structure itself.

The third basic indicator of a modern state is relative calm and rationality in social life. Once state and society are separated, society stops worshipping revolution, stops hoping to reach the sky in one step, stops hoping that a single decisive stroke will solve every problem, stops hoping that men will become gods. Today we can no more become a sage like Confucius than we can become Socrates, Plato or Aristotle. We are ordinary people. This is a fallback position, but a very important one. We pursue excellence — that is the individual effort of citizens in social space, and we should encourage it — but we cannot force citizens to become towering historical figures, or turn men into gods.

Building such a basic modern state is extremely hard work. In a sense, it is difficult to get all the relevant conditions to fit together.

What does that take? You raised the building of a good society. The term "good society" comes from America in the Progressive era — Roosevelt and others wanted to build a great society, a good society. A good society is, of course, one that keeps good order and cultivates good customs. But a good society is built by the gradual push of many social forces, which give society moral conduct, mutual aid, an atmosphere of mutual care, the goodwill to help the weak, and so on. It does not come from a national leader climbing a height and waving his hand. A good society needs citizens to keep working at it, keep building it, and slowly close the distance to the goal. A society with a vigorous, upward-looking spirit also has an atmosphere of mutual care and fellow feeling, and alongside a good material life it has a great ambition to keep developing upward, a great impulse toward excellence, a heroic impulse. These, of course, are some of the basic marks and basic indicators of what is called a good society.

But even when the basic conditions are in place, a good society and the building of a modern state still come down partly to luck. Among the more than 200 countries and territories in today's world, not many have managed to build a modern state, and fewer still a stable mechanism of the modern state and a good society, and fewer still have kept that good society going. Which is why these great nations and great societies, or good societies, become models the whole world admires. It proves that such a country is still hard to build, very hard — which is exactly why it becomes a model, an ideal, a beacon. But the fact that these countries are genuinely willing to set up the modern state and the good society as a beacon, a goal, an ideal, proves that building a modern state and a good society is a matter of deep social soil. No society is willing to be a degenerate society; no country is willing to be a failed state.

So there are two poles: at one end an idealized modern state and good society, at the other a wretched failed state and a chaotic, degenerate society. Where does your country stand between them? If we could reach a middling state, that would already be very satisfying — and it would take generations of hard work. On one hand we have to keep hold of the ideal; on the other, we may have to pay a very long price in time.

Building a modern state and a good society requires everyone, in their own job or in whatever situation they are in now, to do their best. Great nations and great societies do not depend on everyone becoming a great figure. If everyone became a great figure and there were no modern society — Adam Smith's basic principle, the division of labor and exchange, the division of labor and cooperation — that society would be an outright disaster, because nobody would cooperate; there would be conflict, hostility, even killing.

So what it asks of us is not anything grand. Doing the everyday things well matters enormously, especially for us Chinese. From ancient times to today we have never been short of lofty aims, but we have rarely turned those aims into our daily lives. Closing the distance to our life's goals amid eating, drinking and sleeping — that is where the real difficulty lies. Don't let a great impulse turn into empty gesture; fantasizing every day about how great you will become is nothing less than a great disaster.

15. Everyone is reasonably satisfied

Zhang Qianfan, professor, Peking University Law School

Push the standard for a "good society" far enough and it turns a bit ontological; a more surface-level standard is that everyone is reasonably satisfied. We often talk about "satisfying the people." If a country is full of resentment, and extreme, radical acts happen from time to time — violence set off by land seizures and forced demolitions, migrant workers who can't get their wages threatening to jump off buildings, people "committing suicide" in detention centers — if a society sees this sort of thing every day, it can hardly be called a "good society."

16. There is no standard

Ian Johnson, journalist and writer

There is no standard. Among Western societies I think Germany is somewhat better, because Germans are still fairly serious and rigorous — at the very least they wouldn't elect a Trump. In 10 years they might, but not now.

(More reporting to come, updated as we go.)

Interviewees in this report:

Graphics: Feng Xiuxia

Cover image: a still from the film Burnt by the Sun, via Douban