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True leaders can sling hash
By Wang Yong |
September 3, 2011, Saturday
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CORRUPT is as corrupt looks.
A hilarious hallmark of local politics as well as urban planning in China today is lavish government office buildings.
It seems the smaller and poorer a city or a county is, the larger, more lavish and disproportionately sumptuous its government buildings tend to be.
On Thursday, Xinhua news agency quoted some of its online readers as saying that super-sumptuous government buildings that are rising across China amount to "a declaration of corruption."
On Tuesday, the People's Daily listed a litany of scandalous cases in which local governments in the recent past had littered precious arable land with luxury office buildings in their wanton waste of public money.
A case in point concerns a poor county called Wangjiang in Anhui Province. Thanks to media and netizen muckraking in March, this tiny county of only 600,000 residents, where hundreds of primary school students crowd into crumbling classrooms, shot to "fame" for building a government complex 8.5 times the size of the White House.
This and many other similar white elephants betray many a local official's lust for status in disregard of the public interest.
Ni Yangjun, a columnist of the People's Daily, warned on Wednesday in a signed commentary: "For the people, food is heaven, and for food, land is heaven. Sumptuous government buildings have eaten into arable land and caused tension between the government and the farmers deprived of land."
Worse, as Ni noted, many monstrosities in which corrupt officials indulge themselves are built with donations or diverted central government funds intended for poverty alleviation. "These officials have walled themselves further and further away from the public," Ni wrote. "It will be dangerous if all ordinary people have been walled off."
Contrast this contagious craving for comfortable offices with Chairman Mao Zedong's call on cadres to go to the countryside to be re-educated by poor farmers and on doctors to go barefoot in offering door-to-door service to humble villagers.
What a sea change in just half a century. Chinese cadres - and doctors for that matter - were once proud to be one with the poor. Now, the new generation of cadres and doctors takes pride in partnering with the rich.
Many officials defend their luxury offices by saying that China today is much richer than in Mao's time.
Certain cities and counties are richer indeed and thus can afford luxury office buildings without incurring fiscal debts. But abundance is no passport to abuse of power. Rich or poor, a city or a county should always maximize the benefits of the people, not of a few so-called "elites."
If you insist that Mao's moral lessons merit attention only in lean times, see what someone from the United States of America - still a fatter land than China despite its recent financial crisis - says about what makes a great leader.
Renaissance man John Maeda never hides in his office. As president of the Rhode Island School of Design, one of the world's best art colleges, he often works as a food server in the campus cafeteria, as a breakfast cook for faculty members, as a donut deliverer for campus security officers and as a luggage porter for new students.
In his book "Redesigning Leadership: Design, Technology, Business, Life," Maeda says: "The higher up you go in an organization, the less likely people are to say what's on their mind, for fear of retribution."
Althought the book published this year focuses on corporate and institutional leadership, much of what Maeda thinks and does pertains to the real politics of leadership.
As Maeda found, power depends on position, but leadership depends on who you are. To get genuine followers, forget your position and your office - the invisible and visible walls of alienation.
"The shortest communication path between two people is straight talk," says Maeda.
Hiding in an office stifles communication, and hiding in a sumptuous office stokes distrust. This has been proved time and again by falls from grace of those inclined to luxury offices - from the Middle Kingdom to Main Street to Wall Street.
Have a simple office, leave your door open, and listen. Such is the simplest way to great leadership.
Don't even trust e-mails or mobile short messages. "It's hard to read the emotion behind an electronic message," says Maeda, who would often offer free pizzas to attract people to meetings. If people share a common physical space, "they've assumed the basic stance of being a team."
And for a leader in a meeting, it's "okay...to be human," to show emotions. Don't wall yourself off behind a veneer of pretense, Maeda says.
If you hide your feelings or always smile as though you've been "hit by a poisonous dart by Batman's arch-nemesis, the Joker," your group will not coalesce around you as a leader.
Now that Maeda, a legendary leader, writer, designer, artist, engineer and computer scientist, can work as a food server and a luggage carrier for those "beneath" him, why can't our mayors or magistrates walk out of their Great Wall of Offices and reach out to the have-nots?
A hilarious hallmark of local politics as well as urban planning in China today is lavish government office buildings.
It seems the smaller and poorer a city or a county is, the larger, more lavish and disproportionately sumptuous its government buildings tend to be.
On Thursday, Xinhua news agency quoted some of its online readers as saying that super-sumptuous government buildings that are rising across China amount to "a declaration of corruption."
On Tuesday, the People's Daily listed a litany of scandalous cases in which local governments in the recent past had littered precious arable land with luxury office buildings in their wanton waste of public money.
A case in point concerns a poor county called Wangjiang in Anhui Province. Thanks to media and netizen muckraking in March, this tiny county of only 600,000 residents, where hundreds of primary school students crowd into crumbling classrooms, shot to "fame" for building a government complex 8.5 times the size of the White House.
This and many other similar white elephants betray many a local official's lust for status in disregard of the public interest.
Ni Yangjun, a columnist of the People's Daily, warned on Wednesday in a signed commentary: "For the people, food is heaven, and for food, land is heaven. Sumptuous government buildings have eaten into arable land and caused tension between the government and the farmers deprived of land."
Worse, as Ni noted, many monstrosities in which corrupt officials indulge themselves are built with donations or diverted central government funds intended for poverty alleviation. "These officials have walled themselves further and further away from the public," Ni wrote. "It will be dangerous if all ordinary people have been walled off."
Contrast this contagious craving for comfortable offices with Chairman Mao Zedong's call on cadres to go to the countryside to be re-educated by poor farmers and on doctors to go barefoot in offering door-to-door service to humble villagers.
What a sea change in just half a century. Chinese cadres - and doctors for that matter - were once proud to be one with the poor. Now, the new generation of cadres and doctors takes pride in partnering with the rich.
Many officials defend their luxury offices by saying that China today is much richer than in Mao's time.
Certain cities and counties are richer indeed and thus can afford luxury office buildings without incurring fiscal debts. But abundance is no passport to abuse of power. Rich or poor, a city or a county should always maximize the benefits of the people, not of a few so-called "elites."
If you insist that Mao's moral lessons merit attention only in lean times, see what someone from the United States of America - still a fatter land than China despite its recent financial crisis - says about what makes a great leader.
Renaissance man John Maeda never hides in his office. As president of the Rhode Island School of Design, one of the world's best art colleges, he often works as a food server in the campus cafeteria, as a breakfast cook for faculty members, as a donut deliverer for campus security officers and as a luggage porter for new students.
In his book "Redesigning Leadership: Design, Technology, Business, Life," Maeda says: "The higher up you go in an organization, the less likely people are to say what's on their mind, for fear of retribution."
Althought the book published this year focuses on corporate and institutional leadership, much of what Maeda thinks and does pertains to the real politics of leadership.
As Maeda found, power depends on position, but leadership depends on who you are. To get genuine followers, forget your position and your office - the invisible and visible walls of alienation.
"The shortest communication path between two people is straight talk," says Maeda.
Hiding in an office stifles communication, and hiding in a sumptuous office stokes distrust. This has been proved time and again by falls from grace of those inclined to luxury offices - from the Middle Kingdom to Main Street to Wall Street.
Have a simple office, leave your door open, and listen. Such is the simplest way to great leadership.
Don't even trust e-mails or mobile short messages. "It's hard to read the emotion behind an electronic message," says Maeda, who would often offer free pizzas to attract people to meetings. If people share a common physical space, "they've assumed the basic stance of being a team."
And for a leader in a meeting, it's "okay...to be human," to show emotions. Don't wall yourself off behind a veneer of pretense, Maeda says.
If you hide your feelings or always smile as though you've been "hit by a poisonous dart by Batman's arch-nemesis, the Joker," your group will not coalesce around you as a leader.
Now that Maeda, a legendary leader, writer, designer, artist, engineer and computer scientist, can work as a food server and a luggage carrier for those "beneath" him, why can't our mayors or magistrates walk out of their Great Wall of Offices and reach out to the have-nots?
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