Rich Americans Issue a Challenge to Rich Chinese
Published in Sina
(China) on 21 June 2010
by Tong Dahuan (link to original)
(China) on 21 June 2010
by Tong Dahuan (link to original)
Translated from
by Brian Tawney.
Edited by Gheanna Emelia.
On June 16, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and investment wizard Warren Buffet invited America’s billionaires and multimillionaires to give generously to charity by contributing half of their wealth and to engage in charitable service to the public. This pledge drive is called the “Giving Pledge,” and it begins with Forbes magazine's list of the 400 wealthiest Americans, with future plans to expand it to the rest of the world. Buffet says in his article that in 2006, he vowed to contribute 99 percent of his assets to resolving public welfare problems, an act that made him incomparably happy. Those wealthy Americans who responded to the Giving Pledge would be defying the words of the oil magnate Andrew Carnegie, who said “The man who dies thus rich, dies disgraced.”
In doing so, America’s wealthy have issued a challenge to the wealthy people of China! Not long ago, the Hurun Luxury Living Index 2010 showed that China already has 875,000 decamillionaires and 55,000 billionaires. Meanwhile, news from many reliable sources indicates that the divide between the rich and the poor in China has already far surpassed internationally recognized warning indicators.
At this dangerous juncture for the Chinese people, a report from the Economic Observer says that there is a fairly distinct trend of wealthy Chinese emigrating from the country to live overseas.
Upon investigation, the main reasons for wealthy people to emigrate overseas are for their children’s education and to seek a feeling of security. The educational motive is an ordinary one, but this “seeking a feeling of security” must make us consider our domestic social environment. On the one hand, the domestic investment environment has never been particularly good. For the last few years, the advance of the nation with the simultaneous retreat of the people — combined with the financial crisis — has worsened the environment for private companies. You may want to invest, but they don’t let you. They may let you invest, but the investment doesn’t make any money. All kinds of taxes and fees are too high. On the other hand, the gap between the rich and the poor has widened, leading Chinese society to scrutinize the “sin” of wealth and frequently leading to an attitude of “wealth hatred” that makes the rich feel like they are sitting on pins and needles. If social conflict were to arise, some of them could easily be sacrificed as scapegoats for those in power. They could be targets for attack and used to settle accounts by those in power.
Thus, the decision they have to make in order to survive is to quit while they are ahead and even flee abroad.
However, if one says that the benevolent works of the wealthy in the U.S. are a beneficial activity, then the emigration of China’s wealthy is a detrimental activity. Without a doubt, the former is more advantageous to the progress and harmony of society and is more advantageous to the stability of the lives of the wealthy and the fortunes of their families.
Even if China’s wealthy were to emigrate with their entire families, they can’t also take all of their relatives, friends and other kinds of social relations. For the majority of them, even if the whole family emigrates, it still becomes a life abroad with work and activities at home. The homeland is still the base of operations on which their fortunes are made. Thus, even if they emigrate and don’t have to worry about their material needs such as clothing and food, they still inevitably will take a big hit to the familial, mental and cultural aspect of their lives.
But if they could be like the wealthy in the U.S., it would not be a matter of asking, “Where is there freedom and safety? Where will my homeland be?” Instead, it would be a matter of saying, “This is my ancestral country and homeland, thus I must make it become free and safe.” It wouldn’t be a case of passive emigration but rather taking the initiative to change our society, culture and institutional environment. Only then would our nation become more and more beautiful.
China already has 55,000 multimillionaires, among whom 100 names have crossed the threshold of a billion or more. When a person’s wealth reaches the level of 100 million yuan, it is already so much wealth that it wouldn’t be used up in a lifetime. If they were to do as America’s rich people might and contribute half of it for all kinds of social benefit and service to the public, it would amount to a huge sum, surpassing one third of the revenue in our national budget. This piece of funding could be used for emergency relief for the poor or for the benefit of the educational and medical infrastructures, and to give the poor a chance to get out of their predicaments. At the same time, it could also subsidize independent research organizations and independent scholars and promote social fairness and institutional progress.
Wealth is also a massive form of social power. If, on the way to becoming a multimillionaire, one says that earning money is a kind of science, then after one has become a multimillionaire, the spending of money is a deeper, even more noble kind of science. This science is something the wealthy of China must study.
In doing so, America’s wealthy have issued a challenge to the wealthy people of China! Not long ago, the Hurun Luxury Living Index 2010 showed that China already has 875,000 decamillionaires and 55,000 billionaires. Meanwhile, news from many reliable sources indicates that the divide between the rich and the poor in China has already far surpassed internationally recognized warning indicators.
At this dangerous juncture for the Chinese people, a report from the Economic Observer says that there is a fairly distinct trend of wealthy Chinese emigrating from the country to live overseas.
Upon investigation, the main reasons for wealthy people to emigrate overseas are for their children’s education and to seek a feeling of security. The educational motive is an ordinary one, but this “seeking a feeling of security” must make us consider our domestic social environment. On the one hand, the domestic investment environment has never been particularly good. For the last few years, the advance of the nation with the simultaneous retreat of the people — combined with the financial crisis — has worsened the environment for private companies. You may want to invest, but they don’t let you. They may let you invest, but the investment doesn’t make any money. All kinds of taxes and fees are too high. On the other hand, the gap between the rich and the poor has widened, leading Chinese society to scrutinize the “sin” of wealth and frequently leading to an attitude of “wealth hatred” that makes the rich feel like they are sitting on pins and needles. If social conflict were to arise, some of them could easily be sacrificed as scapegoats for those in power. They could be targets for attack and used to settle accounts by those in power.
Thus, the decision they have to make in order to survive is to quit while they are ahead and even flee abroad.
However, if one says that the benevolent works of the wealthy in the U.S. are a beneficial activity, then the emigration of China’s wealthy is a detrimental activity. Without a doubt, the former is more advantageous to the progress and harmony of society and is more advantageous to the stability of the lives of the wealthy and the fortunes of their families.
Even if China’s wealthy were to emigrate with their entire families, they can’t also take all of their relatives, friends and other kinds of social relations. For the majority of them, even if the whole family emigrates, it still becomes a life abroad with work and activities at home. The homeland is still the base of operations on which their fortunes are made. Thus, even if they emigrate and don’t have to worry about their material needs such as clothing and food, they still inevitably will take a big hit to the familial, mental and cultural aspect of their lives.
But if they could be like the wealthy in the U.S., it would not be a matter of asking, “Where is there freedom and safety? Where will my homeland be?” Instead, it would be a matter of saying, “This is my ancestral country and homeland, thus I must make it become free and safe.” It wouldn’t be a case of passive emigration but rather taking the initiative to change our society, culture and institutional environment. Only then would our nation become more and more beautiful.
China already has 55,000 multimillionaires, among whom 100 names have crossed the threshold of a billion or more. When a person’s wealth reaches the level of 100 million yuan, it is already so much wealth that it wouldn’t be used up in a lifetime. If they were to do as America’s rich people might and contribute half of it for all kinds of social benefit and service to the public, it would amount to a huge sum, surpassing one third of the revenue in our national budget. This piece of funding could be used for emergency relief for the poor or for the benefit of the educational and medical infrastructures, and to give the poor a chance to get out of their predicaments. At the same time, it could also subsidize independent research organizations and independent scholars and promote social fairness and institutional progress.
Wealth is also a massive form of social power. If, on the way to becoming a multimillionaire, one says that earning money is a kind of science, then after one has become a multimillionaire, the spending of money is a deeper, even more noble kind of science. This science is something the wealthy of China must study.
In the states, the gap between the wealthy and what’s left of the middle class has become enormous, in no small part due to the large number of American industries that have moved offshore, which was facilitated by our government dropping, almost entirely, the tariffs that we have had in place since America’s inception.
American’s are thus being placed in direct competition with other workers in the world, to see who will work for the least amount of money…and unlike their overseas counterparts, Americans have no public services to help them survive, no government health insurance or health-care option, no old-age retirement funds (with the exception of Social Security, which is only supplemental & is only funded by the working poor & middle-class, as the wealthy are not subjected to it’s taxes).
You say the wealthy here feel “safe”…that is a concept that will not last much longer, I’m afraid, as more and more people become jobless, under-employed, and desperate.
And we are a very well-armed country…if there were an insurrection here involving a good percentage of the citizenry, the police would be immediately overwhelmed, and the military would not be enough to save the wealthy, or their government lap-dogs either…besides, most of our military is overseas right now, and many of them would side with the people, anyway.
How have things degraded this far?…the very thing you mention in your article…Reaganomics has allowed an enormous gap to occur between the wealthy and the poor & middle-class. Most of the GDP of the nation is being hoarded by a small percentage of the population, less than 20% of the citizens own 90% of all there is available to own in the U.S., and they have taken control of our government by simply buying it out. No doubt you’ve seen the wealthy start manipulating your government in China, in the same manner…it seems to follow a pattern.
This can’t end well.