Just give up. That’s the message Shaanxi province’s Zhaocun village is apparently sending its children, after government officials there kicked Yifu Elementary School students out of their newly-built school grounds to make way for an authorized car dealership (called 4S car shops in China).
In mid-May 2010, approximately 80 students began studying at the newly-built Yifu Elementary School. The school was named after Hong Kong philanthropist Sir Run Run Shaw (Shao Yifu (邵逸夫) in Mandarin), who donated a portion of the RMB1.9 million (about US$300,000) required to build a new elementary school. The students had previously been studying in a 1960′s-era tile-roof house which, according to one interviewed villager, has broken glass windows and gets unacceptably cold in the winter months.
Scarcely two weeks after students began to enjoy their new facilities, students were informed that they were to be moved back to their old grounds, as the new facility was being repurposed. Indeed, Shanxi Weinan Weida Automotive Service Company Ltd. (Weida) later signed a ten-year tenancy agreement worth RMB150,000 per year, or about US$24,000, with the Zhaocun Village Committee. While the blackboards on the walls are still visible, the company has already moved in; the boss’s office sits in a repurposed second-floor classroom.
Netizens are predictably outraged, and they find the local government’s various explanations unconvincing. The scandal has broken into the ten hottest topics on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter, as netizens call Zhaocun officials “wicked” (缺德) and a variety of other names which are not printable here. The government has argued that it moved the children back because nearby trains were disturbing classes, although the school’s proximity to train tracks was known in advance. The government also maintains that it still owed money for the school’s construction and so needed the cash from a “temporary” rental, but the contract signed with Weida was long-term.
To most netizens, the Zhaocun fiasco is another case of money trumping conscience in modern China. @我脑海de橡皮擦 lamented, “Economic benefit [is] number one … who is going to manage my homeland’s future?” @崔磊HOLD wrote, “Everything really is about the money.” To some, money is the only passport to a good life. @彦籽囬莳 complained, “To see a doctor you need to have ‘guanxi’ [an inside relationship], to send a child to school you need to give the teacher gifts. If you want to get things done, with no money there’s no way.”
Although numerous netizens confessed to being “numb” at wave after wave of scandal, many expressed deep disappointment at the government’s seeming willingness to mortgage children’s futures. First, the Sichuan earthquake exposed the shoddy construction at many schools; then, a wave of accidents involving school buses revealed the deplorably unsafe conditions in which many children are transported, especially in rural areas. And now this.
The issue appears to highlight a troubling trend in national priorities. “There are so many problems with China’s education [system],” @仓颉之手 wrote, “and it’s because we don’t value it that everyone feels they can abuse the students … Let’s not allow our youth to lose the race at the starting line.” @夏日的子瑜 added that if society is to change, “It will depend on students to change; we should not let them see when they are young how we currently worship money, then in the future ask them to be pure.” @一锤定音2413866031 tried to see it from the cadres’ perspective, and the view was stark: “In the village cadres’ eyes, the students are not only useless, but a loss … If they graduate, they’ll just be unemployed.”
Making matters worse, the incident constitutes another black eye for private charity in China. Recent scandals involving China’s Red Cross have already lowered the level of charitable giving in the country. As @canny_ny warned, “Without regulation, charity in China will end up enriching the pockets of bureaucrats great and small.”
Netizens have called for the children to be immediately moved back to their proper place, and for the offending officials to be jailed. In the meantime, observers have dark words for cadres thinking about similar profit-making schemes. @我只是执着 fumed, “I hope you all get run over and killed by the same broken-down school buses that your corruption has caused to rot.” @0207爱自己 wrote, “It’s really scary to live in a country with no beliefs. There’s nothing these cadres won’t do.”
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