The Useless Tree

Han Feizi on the Economic Crisis

A long story at Bloomberg (hat tip CDT) on the vicissitudes of China's billionaire class brought Han Fei Zi to mind.

The article chronicles some lurid stories of corruption and shady-dealing that have produced very, very large sums of money for certain "entrepreneurs" and bureaucrats.  Sounds rather like the robber baron days of early US capitalism.  But what goes up must come down and in China of late there have been some high profile prosecutions, even some death penalties, for the worst offenders.  It's the old notion of "kill the chicken to scare the monkey" – making negative public examples of a few criminals to scare others away from transgression.

The Confucian disdain for wealth-obsessed business people is well known – and perhaps historically overemphasized in explanations for China's late industrialization.  I have referred to it many times on this blog – here's one and here's another.  But I want to mention, instead, the Legalist perspective on merchants, which is quite simply remorseless.

Han Fei Zi writes of the "five vermin," classes of people who he believes are not only useless in terms of strengthening the state but are downright dangerous.  The fifth of the five are: "…merchants and artisans [who] spend their time making articles of no practical use and gathering stores of luxury goods, accumulating riches, waiting for the best time to sell, and exploiting the farmers." (117).

And what does Han say we should do with such scoundrels?  No waiting around for rehabilitation and self-improvement for him:

"If the rulers do not wipe out such vermin, and in their place encourage men of integrity and public spirit,then they should not be surprised, when they look about the area within the four seas, to see states perish and ruling houses wane and die." (117)

And he means that literally: wipe them out.

Of course, a full fledged Legalist response would be too brutal even for the most hardline CCP leader.  But when we see chickens being killed and monkeys diving for cover, we might remember which philosophical tradition undergirds the most draconian practices of the Chinese state.

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One response to “Han Feizi on the Economic Crisis”

  1. isha Avatar
    isha

    Some reality-check on this side of the pond. Yes, Chinese legal system is brutal, commie or not. It has been so and it will be that way. Yes, killing chicken to scare monkeys, it has been so and it will be that way, especially to the new-minted billionaires, many of them steal their way to the top.
    Is it so fair, though, to keep their equivalents, the Madoffs, the Ken Lays, the Greenspan’s who collectively live up the mottos of speakspeare’s cutthroats “ to steal, to steal and steal” while locking up many comparatively innocent people in jail?
    if Hanfe is too brutal to the enlightened and civilized Americans,let Chinese keep his memory whenever it is useful. Chinese rulers know it is a sure way to appease the masses and forestall the revolution from below, especially in an economic crisis and many people are hurt.

    http://uk.reuters.com/article/marketsNewsUS/idUKN0240756920090302

    WASHINGTON, March 2 (Reuters) – One in every 31 U.S. adults is in the corrections system, which includes jail, prison, probation and supervision, more than double the rate of a quarter century ago, according to a report released on Monday by the Pew Center on the States.
    The study, which said the current rate compares to one in 77 in 1982, concluded that with declining resources, more emphasis should be put on community supervision, not jail or prison.
    “Violent and career criminals need to be locked up, and for a long time. But our research shows that prisons are housing too many people who can be managed safely and held accountable in the community at far lower cost,” said Adam Gelb, director of the Center’s Public Safety Performance Project, which produced the report.
    The United States has the highest incarceration rate and the biggest prison population of any country in the world, according to figures from the U.S. Department of Justice.
    Most of those in the U.S. corrections system — one in 45 — are already on probation or parole, with one in 100 in prison or jail, the Pew study found.
    Those numbers are higher in certain areas of the country, and Georgia tops all states with one in 13 adults in the justice system. The other leading states are Idaho, where one in 18 are in corrections and Texas, where the rate is one in 22. In the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., nearly 5 percent of adults are in the city’s penal system.

    This was the first criminal justice study that took into account those on probation and parole as well as federal convicts, Pew said.

    http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=f00e7bab2bbaf5f8de88792c1194ee25
    Crime is Down But More People in Jail
    Washington Afro, News Report, James Wright, Posted: Apr 07, 2008
    Crime has steadily declined over the past three decades but there are more people in jail for reasons that have nothing to do with the severity of their crimes, according to a new report.
    The study, “Jailing Communities: The Impact of Jail Expansion and Effective Public Safety Strategies” was released this week by the Washington, D.C.-based Justice Policy Institute.
    Co-authored by Amanda Petteruti and Nastassia Walsh, the report said that communities are bearing the cost of a massive explosion in the jail population and that jails are now warehousing more people – who have not been found guilty of any crime – for longer periods of time than ever before.
    “Sean Levert died in a jail in Cleveland because he did not pay child support. I know that we have to hold people accountable, but do we have to put people in jail for that?”

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