By Wei Yingji (魏英杰)
Economic Observer Online
Oct 13, 2011
Translated by Laura Lin
Original Article: [Chinese] 

Last week Caijing, a bi-weekly business magazine, published an official apology on its website in regards to an article from China Radio International that it had republished, the article claimed that in a recent ranking of the happiest countries published by the OECD, China ranked eighth and the US 19th. In fact, according to the life satisfaction data included in the report, China ranked last and the US 12th in the list of 40 countries.

Although Caijing's apology was only about the factual errors in the report, a lot of online commentators were more interested in the rankings themselves.

It's been reported that the OECD report ranked the quality of life in 40 countries. In the 280+ page report, China was ranked last in terms of life satisfaction, and came in eighth in terms of "affect balance" - which basically means asking people to say whether, on balance, they felt more positive or negative emotions over the course of a day.

The fact that China is at the very bottom of the list immediately set off a buzz among the Chinese digerati, with blogs and the country’s equivalent to Twitter lighting up with commentary.

Given the report comes from the OECD, it therefore has a certain authority. However, it is after all just a survey based on data from a Gallup poll, so it can't be regarded as necessarily true.

The How's Life? report relied on a range of 11 indicators ranging from income, jobs, housing, education, environment, health and security as indicators to attempt to measure and compare the well-being of people around the world. Since each country has its own unique character, the way its people measure their satisfaction with life will be different as well.

More precisely, what is neglected in the report is the comparison of different countries' social and cultural backgrounds.

One can distinguish certain different aspects of people's lives among countries, however, it is difficult to give a true account of people's feelings about their lives using the same ruler. Calling the report a living standards survey is perhaps much closer to what it really indicates.

It's much easier to quantify quality of life than one's happiness, which is a subjective self-assessment. One can be miserable in a marble villa, and happy in a stinking slum.

From this perspective, what the list embodies is actually the gap between people's living standards. If this is true, then it also better explains why China is right at the bottom of the rankings.

Although China has become the world's second largest economy, it's still lagging far behind developed countries in terms of the living standards of ordinary people.

The incomes of ordinary Chinese people is lower that those living in developed countries, whereas (some) prices are often higher. Take housing as an example: many Chinese people will probably never be able to afford to buy their own house and even if they do, for the same cost, the quality of construction, decoration and even the neighborhoods in which they live, will unlikely be at the same level as those in the developed world.

Many Chinese people have perhaps eaten, or are still eating "gutter oil", contaminated milk powder or dubious pork, whereas most of the citizens of developed countries have no need to be concerned with such issues.

What we should have been celebrating is probably that there were only 40 countries included in the survey, otherwise China would probably be still at the rear end of a much longer list.

The real point that I want to make is that a simple ranking is not the most accurate way of judging quality of life issues or of establishing whether ordinary people are satisfied with their lives.  

Polls are based on samples. Choosing the wrong sample can lead to mistaken conclusions.

There is a much more scientific and direct standard for measuring satisfaction - voting. The ballot will truly reflect public opinion, or is at least is the best mechanism we have for expression of public will.

As long as every citizen has a vote in his hand, no matter whether the question is about living standards or a life satisfaction indicator, the answer will be very clear and precise.

This is like buying merchandise on the web through websites like Taobao or Ebay. No matter how many promises the online merchants make, only the rankings that the consumers award really count in determining if a seller is reliable.

Han Han, one of the most renowned Chinese bloggers (and a racing car driver), once referred to the online ratings system by saying that, "If I were a representative at the National People's Congress (NPC), I would definitely propose a bill that taxpayers will use Paypal each time their taxes are due. And it's only when the government has fulfilled its promises that the taxpayers will confirm the payment, otherwise they'd be refunded! This is ultimately the only way to make sure that the government satisfies the public.”

The more people pay attention to this kind of classification, the more it indicates how people feel about their lack of rights. The more government officials care about these rankings, the more it shows their weakness, and encourages them to produce their own rankings in order to strengthen their authority.

If the citizens held in their hands the right to evaluate their government, why on earth would they need to look for illusionary satisfaction from such a list?

They hope for a day when the government will approach them like a seller on Taobao, politely asking them whether they're satisfied with their life.

News in English via World Crunch (link)

Links and Sources
OECD: How's Life - Measuring well-being (Full Text)