Chapter 13 Folk is a good thing

On May 12, 2008, when the news of a strong earthquake in Sichuan came out, Chen Guangbiao, chairman of Jiangsu Huangpu Renewable Resources Utilization Company, which ranked first in the 2008 China Charity Ranking, immediately made a decision to go to the scene for disaster relief.It was only two hours away from the disaster in Wenchuan, and when the severity of the disaster was still unknown to most people, Chen Guangbiao led 60 excavators, cranes and other large construction machinery and more than 120 operators to form a disaster relief team. The team set off.Traveling day and night, at 3 am on the 14th, the convoy arrived at the disaster area almost at the same time as the army, becoming the first civilian team to spontaneously fight the disaster and arrive in the earthquake-stricken area.

Chen Guangbiao's immediate decision opened the prelude to this large gathering of folk forces, and also showed the world how Chinese folk forces have grown in the past thirty years.For this reason, the author published the article "National is a good thing" on "Southern Weekend", applauding the performance of the social rescue force represented by private entrepreneur Chen Guangbiao at that time, and emphasized that the key to a country's strength is not the country, but the Society lies in the cultivation of civil forces; and whether a country's politics is civilized also depends on the attitude the government adopts towards civil society.

It is undeniable that a significant progress in China today lies in the growth of civil society, and in the fact that more and more people inside and outside the system are beginning to realize that "the civil society is a good thing" and realize the existence of a spontaneous, free and self-sufficient civil society. , is the source of strength for a society to keep its creative spirit forever, to seek progress in daily life, and to resolve crises at critical times.Because the folks are always on the cusp of the times and in the deepest part of life; the folks perceive the progress and decay of the society in their daily lives, and through bit by bit transformation, the society keeps saying goodbye to despair and moving towards new life.Generally, any country with ideals must first ensure the rights of citizens, make citizens a complete subject of rights, and on this basis realize the "union of free people". .

Later, the magazine "Together in the Same Boat" in Guangzhou made a special issue on "Folk is a good thing", which can be regarded as an echo of this article.The columnist Ten Years of Chopping Firewood brought the meaning of Chen Guangbiao's move to the Spring and Autumn Period in "The Different Destinies of Three Folk Businessmen".The State of Qin sent troops to attack the State of Zheng. At the border, they met Xian Gao, a businessman from the State of Zheng who was driving a herd of cattle to sell.Knowing that his country was unprepared, Xian Gao drove the cattle to the Qin army barracks in a hurry, and lied to the commander that Mr. Zheng Guo had ordered him to reward the Qin guests who came from afar.Qin Jun believed that Zheng Guo had been prepared for a long time, and returned home immediately.In this way, a businessman resolved a crisis in his country.

Ten years of chopping firewood noticed that although the two incidents were separated by more than 2,000 years, and the social situation in China has undergone earth-shaking changes during this period, the sense of responsibility and wisdom of the two businessmen to relieve the national crisis are the same.Compared with the merchants in the imperial power period after the Qin and Han Dynasties, the distance between Chen Guangbiao and the string height of the Spring and Autumn Period is closer in terms of the degree of freedom and autonomy of merchants.Just imagine, what would happen if the story of Xian Gao's rewarding teacher happened in the Ming and Qing Dynasties?Afterwards, Xian Gao is likely to be convicted of "coordinating edicts", even though he has done a good thing that benefits the country and the people.Unofficial history records that after Zhu Yuanzhang established Nanjing as his capital, Shen Wansan, a wealthy man in the south of the Yangtze River, not only donated money to build the Nanjing City Wall, but also paid for the imperial army in order to please the conqueror.Zhu Yuanzhang was furious: You are a businessman, what is your intention to reward the royal army?So the Shen family was raided, and Shen Wansan died on the way to exile in Yunnan.Whether this story is true remains to be verified, but the background of the story is true. In order to maintain the unity of imperial power, Zhu Yuanzhang spared no effort to suppress society and capital, and crack down on industry and commerce.

In contrast, in the Spring and Autumn Period, although rituals were broken and music was broken, and countries continued to attack, the old order still played a huge role in maintaining it. The whole society was still in the era of former imperial power, or the era of former subjects.Zhou Tianzi was only the nominal co-lord of the princes of the world, and could not interfere in the internal affairs of each country. Within each country, the monarchs were entrusted with doctors, and the government affairs and finances were relatively independent within the fiefdoms, and the common people also had considerable freedom.Under such circumstances, the monarch's control over the nobles and common people is limited, and the flow of people between countries is frequent. Vote with your feet" and go to other countries to be guest ministers, such as Su Qin and Li Si.Under such a political environment, commerce must be prosperous and thinking must be active. That's why there is a prosperous commercial city like Linzi, and there is a golden age of ideology and culture where a hundred schools of thought contend. The simple concept of community can consciously make protective decisions without the need for propaganda and mobilization by the monarch.

However, after Qin Shihuang unified China, especially during the 2,000-year imperial era from Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty to the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, the most talented Chinese businessmen lived the worst lives, and they dared not have their own opinions on public affairs. Advocate, must rely on the breath of the government.Looking at the big businessmen in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, all of them succeeded in the government and lost in the government.The construction of a civil society must have two major freedoms: the freedom of the person and the freedom of capital.If people and capital are completely controlled by the government, and political power takes everything, where is there room for civil society?After the fall of the Qing Dynasty, China struggled to transform from an imperial society to a modern society. Accompanying this process was the rise of national industry and commerce with modern significance and different from traditional official business.In the past 100 years, there has been such a rule: when the government's control over industry and commerce weakens and national industry and commerce prosper, this must be a period when civil society has a larger space and the press is relatively free.

Due to decades of political reasons, by the beginning of the reform and opening up in 1978, China's private industry and commerce had almost started from scratch, and the space for civil society was squeezed to the extreme. During this period, there were almost no businessmen.The pre-reform era was not a subject society, but it was not a civil society either. The government managed and highly controlled the society through the urban unit system and the rural people's commune system. Most ordinary people were given a collective noun with a high ideological color --"people".This term obliterates the individual differences among citizens in that specific historical period, and also obscures some rights that individual citizens should have.But history tells us that if the rights of the people are to be guaranteed, the legal rights of every citizen must be protected through a specific legal system.Since the reform and opening up, we can see two complementary threads: one is the continuous growth of the private economy, and the other is the gradual establishment of a legal system to protect citizens' rights.It is these two forces that continuously promote the benign development of civil society, allowing the Chinese to see the embryonic form of civil society.

The above is a wonderful exposition of wood-cutting in the past ten years. Interested readers can review "Burke's Problem and Saint-Simon's Awakening" involved in the first chapter of this book. Similarly, in the article "NGO: The role of cells is more solid than slogans", Liang Xiaoyan, one of the founders of "Friends of Nature", recalled the origin of the organization and the development of Chinese NGOs.Liang Xiaoyan pointed out that in the 1980s, there were civil free associations to participate in public affairs, but people did it instinctively at the beginning, and did not give it a clear historical position.

"In the early 1990s, the public sphere of the whole society was very quiet. In Beijing, quite a few people cared about the country, society, and public events, but they didn't know how to gather them together. I chatted with Mr. Liang Congjie, then a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, Discussing what we can do, talking about environmental protection, I feel that this is an issue that many people care about and it is suitable to express, and it is convenient to speak out in a public place like the CPPCC. Mr. Liang told me that we cannot just be the two of us, There must be such a group of people. You are familiar with young people, can you find a few people to plan and plan together. I found Yang Dongping and Wang Lixiong. In March 1993, we met for the first time. Concentrate public concern to the greatest extent. This is the embryonic form of "Friends of Nature"...Many people feel that the world is declining and morality is degrading. Indeed, the unsound market economy and the unsmooth social speech situation quickly broke the constraints of this society. The original morality, but the process of building a new morality is extremely slow. But at the same time, we must also see that the human heart is immortal. There are always some people who respond positively to this society. With these people, there will be more and more people. With more people, civil society organizations will grow.”

Liang Xiaoyan thus emphasized that the river of love in China is hidden "underground", and an open channel needs to be dug to gather it.As for the spirit and performance of the Chinese volunteers during the Wenchuan Earthquake, she was even more moved: "The disaster came suddenly, and the enthusiasm of the volunteers also suddenly rose. Wherever the place was reported by the media, everyone went there to rescue the disaster. Go and go in a swarm. If volunteers form a non-governmental organization and maintain routine activities, when encountering emergencies If there is an incident, there will be more planning, more direction, more efficiency, and less blindness. This earthquake relief shows that the Chinese people do not lack the spirit of volunteers, charitable resources, and enthusiasm for public welfare, but they lack good The function of self-organization cannot form a horizontal organic connection. This requires a long time to build, and it also needs an institutional environment that enables the normal development of civil organizations. In the past, the restrictions on the legal registration of civil society organizations were too strict. After the earthquake relief work, the opening is still not open .Many NGOs participating in the aid are organizing fundraising and activities with trepidation. The needs of the victims and the needs of the local government are not necessarily consistent. Volunteers act to meet the needs of the victims. In case they do not match the needs of the government, will face great difficulties. In addition, there is still a lot of room for volunteers to serve the victims, which is far from being filled, but encounters some resistance from administrative control. At the same time, from an effective and sustainable perspective, NGOs and volunteers The self-organization ability and the ability to do practical things are also far from expectations." Zhou Ruijin, a famous political commentator, pointed out in the article "People's Power: The Hope of China's Reform and Development": From the experience of 30 years of reform, opening up and modernization, the power of the first stage comes from the strong desire of hundreds of millions of people to get rid of poverty. The ruling party's sense of crisis of "no reform will lead to a dead end" promotes each other.After entering the initial moderately prosperous period, the driving force for reform and opening up comes from the strong demand of the ruling party to focus on GDP growth and improve political performance, combined with the strong desire of entrepreneurs to occupy more and better production factors.At this stage, some people have been marginalized, and the three major differences between regions, urban and rural areas, and rich and poor have been enlarged. Zhou Ruijin believes that the real driving force for China's reform and development comes from the people, and the important power to resolve the economic crisis comes from the people.That is to say, the resistance to further deepening reform lies in distrust, discouragement and even suppression of the drive for reform among the people; and for the so-called new round of ideological emancipation, it is not the general public that needs to emancipate their minds most, but the backwardness of the ruling philosophy and the loss of the desire to deepen reform. Officials are those vested interests who have gained huge benefits in the second stage of reform and development. In the past thirty years, whenever the reform faced major progress or a certain partial reform made an important breakthrough, it almost always revolved around such clues—the adventures and “violations” of small folks who “did not act” and achieved staged results, became enlightened. The acquiescence and even encouragement of local leading cadres, through sharp-eyed media reports, sparked heated discussions and controversies, and finally gained high-level approval, promoted it to the whole country, and institutionalized it with policies or laws. The prelude to the rural reform began, and the "initiators" were 18 poor farmers in Xiaogang Village, Fengyang, Anhui.They signed the "big contract" life and death certificate at the risk of being imprisoned and beheaded, and reaped a big harvest in one fell swoop. This spark gradually spread across the country.However, the "migrant labor tide" from the countryside to the city, which was first called "blind flow" by the press and wanted to be strictly banned, and later called "migrant workers", promoted the loosening of the dual structure of urban and rural areas, promoted urbanization, and became a trusteeship. The cornerstone of the "Made in China" miracle.This tide has repeatedly impacted the old land system, urban and rural barriers, and the "scissors gap" between industry and agriculture.In terms of industry, the small rural agricultural machinery factory quietly set up by Lu Guanqiu in Xiaoshan, Zhejiang Province has gradually become popular in the cracks of state-owned industries with rich wealth and almost all resources.Numerous "Lu Guanqiu" and tens of thousands of "self-employed" who were once despised have worked hard and worked hard to grow the rural industries and small stalls that were once "stalked and intercepted" by the system and policies into disgrace. The red-headed document went from negation to acquiescence, to encouragement and praise, and finally the spectacular private economy, which ranks second in the Chinese economy.The appearance of Nian Guangjiu, the owner of "Fool's Melon Seeds" in Anhui, broke the iron law that "employing more than eight workers is exploitation and must be cracked down"; And letting go has become part of the price paid for the legalization of the private market and multiple distribution channels; Zhejiang Haiyan, a "little tailor" who cut the curtain of state-owned enterprise reform with a pair of scissors, and Hebei Shijiazhuang boldly contracted a small business department of a loss-making paper mill Chang Ma Shengli... Representatives of IT professionals and new technology professionals from the young intellectual class... Regardless of their subsequent fate, they are all impacting the institutional dam of the decades-old planned economy at different levels. No need to list them all.Folks are a good thing, and it is the consensus of countless virtuous people.The most admirable thing in this world is the fertile fields, thousands of miles away, full of vitality.No matter how hot or cold it is, civil society is still the land on which all civilizations take root, blossom and bear fruit.