Today, I’ve been pondering this question: Is what’s yours truly the best?

From an economic standpoint, most Chinese people would undoubtedly agree that what’s yours is the best. Otherwise, why would we have moved away from the era of communal living?

The household responsibility system is indeed remarkable, but it also brought about a significant downside: the lack of guaranteed fairness!

The reason why most Chinese people believe that what’s theirs is the best is primarily because, during the era of communal living, order was maintained solely through spiritual motivation and class struggle. Initially, this model was successful. After several five-year plans, China did improve significantly, but the fundamental issues were not resolved. This eventually led to the Cultural Revolution, a period that remains incomprehensible to later generations. Of course, many attribute this to individual, systemic, or ideological issues. I believe it’s none of these. It’s a clear and serious issue of legal thinking. The root cause lies in the absence of legal thinking, leading to lawlessness, which rendered the societal systems of fairness and efficiency weak and ineffective.

Apart from the rule of law, there is no other system in the world that can sustainably balance fairness and efficiency, whether it be political parties, religions, or imperial rule. Hence, the following discussion.

The primary contradiction in China today is no longer about efficiency. Our efficiency is already high enough to make foreigners envious. However, the growing public demand for fairness has become a significant aspect of contemporary social conflicts. To achieve fairness, we must break away from the notion that “what’s yours is the best.”

For example, what does “what’s yours is the best” mean? It means that only when I own the land will I work hard to cultivate it. If I am more diligent and skilled than others, I will have a better harvest and greater profits. But if the land is public, I will be lazy and may not even work because, whether I work or not, the outcome is the same. So why should I work hard?

Is there a problem with this notion?

At first glance, it seems flawless. More work leads to more rewards, less work to fewer rewards, and no work to no rewards. Isn’t that fair and efficient? However, upon closer examination, this is a rather muddled way of thinking.

Firstly, it sidesteps the main issue. The reason why people believe in “getting something for nothing” is not because of whether the property is private or public, but because the distribution system is flawed. It is arbitrary, changeable, and lacks legal constraints. In such a highly autonomous era, why would anyone want to be a workhorse? If I don’t work, I can still live comfortably, right? When most people think this way, problems arise, but they are not enough to trigger a nationwide revolution. It’s only when triggers like famine or plague ignite the situation that the government realizes the need for change.

The signal of famine and starvation is profoundly impactful in any era. Any ruler should be acutely aware that the bottom line of their rule is to prevent large-scale, non-natural starvation events. If such events occur, history has shown that the regime’s days are numbered!

In the early stages of socialism, our country successfully avoided this issue. In fact, avoiding problems is also a way of dealing with them. But the problem is that you can only avoid issues for so long; you can’t avoid them forever.

What are the consequences of avoiding problems? If the land is given to you, what will you do? You will do everything in your power to profit from it, or even sell it outright (Wen Tiejun’s theory on the three rural issues suggests that the government restricts land transfers to prevent farmers from selling their land. If farmers sell their land and then fail in their ventures, leading to starvation, they will inevitably turn to the government. To avoid such troubles, the government prohibits the transfer of agricultural land.)

Selling land is a natural human tendency. If something is mine, I can do as I please with it, and no one can interfere! But when everyone thinks this way, and everyone tries to profit from their small plot of land, problems arise. This is the root of the social fairness issues that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s and have now reached a large-scale crisis.

The household responsibility system temporarily diverted people’s attention, but the underlying contradictions remain. If these issues are not addressed and resolved, they will inevitably resurface. This brings us to the current issue of the rule of law. When everyone is self-centered, keeping the good for themselves and pushing the bad onto others, and there are no laws to restrict such behavior, it inevitably leads to large-scale societal imbalance, which is the situation we face today.

Of course, after all this discussion, I believe there is another path to solve this series of problems. However, this path is essentially another way of talking about the construction of the rule of law—the establishment of a system of integrity and responsibility.

Whether a person is honest and responsible is not only influenced by personal morals but also by the law. If integrity and responsibility are only constrained by morals, it is clearly unreliable and will lead to people criticizing public ownership and communal living. Integrity and responsibility should be closely linked to the law. If the law is strict and effectively enforced, a society of integrity will naturally form. The often-cited examples of Singapore and Hong Kong are living proof.

The reason I thought of this issue today is that I was discussing the future of this website with a high school friend. He urged me to post and repost more to increase traffic. However, I have no interest in that. I told him that even if only I visit this site every day, I will continue to run it without hesitation.