Kevin McGeary

    ANYBODY born in China after 1980 has known nothing but progress: technological, societal, and economic. China Merchants Bank president Ma Weihua saying that the rise in house prices was due to common people having “too much money,” echoes former British Prime Minister Harold McMillan telling the British people that “they’d never had it so good,” in the 1950s, a time of rising living standards. China is continuing to deliver the impressive economic figures that it has promised.

    But increasing GDP does not always make for a good society. When asking people what their idea of a good society is, British journalist Dougald Hine found that the answers, across the spectrum of political beliefs and cultures, are remarkably similar. Particularly common were the words, “family values,” “interdependence,” “fairness” and “accountability.”

    For people to provide for their families, and for communities to have enough resources to share, a level of economic strength is required. But economics is taught as a science and, economists know, as do physicists, that what goes up must come down. This growth, just like Japan’s growth throughout the 1970s and 80s, cannot continue forever. Although Japan’s economy hasn’t grown since the 1990s, their people have not descended into anarchy, regressed to the Middle Ages, or elected an extremist of the left or right. So perhaps this fear of a faltering economy is misdirected.

    Economics Nobel laureate Amartya Sen invited controversy when he pointed out that the Indian province of Kerala had a literacy rate of 93 percent and an infant mortality rate of just 12 per 1,000, which belied the per capita GDP, just US$380. Life expectancy in Kerala is now 75 years for men and 78 years for women, similar to the developed world. The “Kerala model” is often used to illustrate the point that GDP growth does not, in and of itself, make housing, health care, or education better or more affordable.

    The young have inherited a global economic challenge that is accompanied by seemingly intractable ecological problems. Ireland, Greece and Iceland face economic meltdowns that will impact the lives of people who haven’t been born yet. But breakneck economic growth is no more essential for a good society than steroids are for a nice body. Compare Ireland with one of the BRICS economies such as Russia or Brazil. Where would you rather be in hospital? Or in a police station? Or send your children to school?

    The Irish poet Michael Longley put it best when he said: “The opposite of war is not so much peace as civilization.” And creating a genuinely civilized society is not just up to officials and economists. It’s up to everybody.

    (The author is a Shenzhen Daily senior copy editor and writer.)