What if a nation suffers credibility drain

By Li Hongmei People's Daily Online

A giant billboard, erected at the entrance to Hankou Railway Station in the Chinese central city Wuhan, is not designed to catch passengers' eyes as ordinary commercials or public service announcements but mainly acts as a warning sign with some pithy words printed on, which reads, 'Do not enter into conversation with strangers, and do not respond to inquiries from strangers, for fear that you should be taken in.'

Reminders of the kind are actually too commonplace to make a fuss in many of the Chinese public places like restaurants, recreational centers and market places, but mostly pointing to preventing theft. The appallingly serious way used to remind people of keeping away from strangers is somehow unique and, the sight of the notice inevitably arouses in people a subtle feeling. Whom do the strangers refer to? As a matter of course, everyone can be a stranger to others.

As far back as three years ago, a middle school in the southwestern Chongqing Municipality incorporated in its school regulations the article which demands students not have a talk with strangers, placing the school have-to at the center of debates and producing quite a few topics related to human relationships just in time for China's social transformation. It seemed that the time-honored Chinese tradition of hospitality and reaching out to each other would suddenly fall in obsolescence.

Why not speak to strangers? The explanation would be a slur on public education and social credibility. Now that no creature on the earth could virtually compete with humans, wilderness and bushes gave way to humanity, but the competition involving human against human still persists and may even escalate. Therefore, being strange somehow means being perilous or harmful. People tend to keep a close watch on what strangers would do to them, as they are constantly reminded by warnings in various forms and also by experiences and lessons of the potential hazards posed by strangers.

Youngsters could be abducted and trafficked by strangers; adults could be swindled out of their life savings; and dating agencies could smash your romantic dream by an elaborated rose ruse. More often than not, coming to the rescue of a stranger is in itself a risk which would possibly turn out to be a trick awaiting you to get hooked. Alas, life is not so long a path, but pitted with traps, and everybody needs to edge his way along in case of falling in.

Even more sadly, buildings put up by strangers would collapse; food sold to you by strangers would threaten your life; transactions concluded with strangers would put you out of business; and being credulous to strangers at any time would have your life work destroyed.

Not jokingly, at a time when fraud and shamelessness are pervasive, people would be often at loss as to who can be trusted. But sarcastically, no one can manage without dealing with strangers, granted, with whom people are being told not to even converse.

It seems unanswerable that China's public credibility is draining when people become more egocentric and, some public servants, getting more obsessed with the desire for power and material gains, have already alienated themselves from public interest. That explains why in public perceptions the society's credit conditions have been in a steep decline in the past decades when the galloping economic growth might eclipse the lurking credibility crisis. If the downward credibility record is not promptly reversed, the social morale as a whole would be eroded.

It is of no exaggeration if a public poll, conducted by the Research Center of the Xiaokang Magazine, can be taken as a reference, which says more than 91 percent of the pollsters admitted that they would take government data with a pinch of salt. The worrisome findings are enough to speak for themselves and also partially reflect a quite severe drain of government credibility.

Being trustworthy is desirable as a merit in developing sound interpersonal relations, and a society with high credibility rankings must be efficiently administered and will therefore have a promising future. Likewise, a nation will thrive on burgeoning public credibility, but will slip in anarchy if confronted with a credit vacuum.