Capitalism and China's Morals

From the endless scandals of dubious milk or poisonous capsules made of recycled leather, the moral climate has become one of the most pressing concerns among the Chinese media and academia. Some call it “social defeat,” others talk about China’s “collapse of morality.” Whatever they call it, the subject is basically the same. Yet what is also worrying is how programs produced by CCTV, the Chinese official media, all come to the same conclusion about these scandals: it is the fault of the market economy, driven by a bunch of greedy and unscrupulous businessmen who have lost sight of their moral bottom line in the pursuit of profits. This corresponds perfectly with Marxism, still the Chinese Communist Party’s ideological education guideline, where private profits are seen as the driving force to make people willing to trample over the law and the lives of others.