Chinese cyber space has been seeing a new saying these days, "wealthy people are willful."
In the past few days, several cases involving seemingly incredible acts of the rich havecaused more netizens to leave comments online using the new catch phrase.
A village official in Tangshan, Hebei Province held a luxurious wedding for his daughterwith a motorcade of 30 Rolls-Royce Phantom cars; a Shanghai billionaire and art collectorLiu Yiqian paid HK$348.4 million ($44.9 million) for a xizangan tapestry at an auction and ayoung entrepreneur vowed to give out 100 million yuan next year as a bonus for hisemployees.
"Wealthy people are willful" does not look like a description soaked in the hatred of therich. Instead, the phrase is more of a joke. It does help people look at the wealth gap inChina, though in a mild way.
In a society that places social equality at a relatively high stage, the gap between the richand poor has always been a sensitive issue. It is important to narrow this gap. But it is alsoimportant for wealthy people to communicate with the public in a healthy way.
Among the above-mentioned cases, the luxurious wedding in Tangshan garnered thelargest number of negative comments. Most people will or have experienced their ownweddings, they can easily comprehend how boastful and willful the Tangshan wedding'shosts are, and will feel the imbalance.
Public opinion toward the art collector who spent hundreds of millions and the young bosswho promised huge bonuses for employees was more tolerant. The difference in reactionsshow that the public does not just simply hate the rich. The public are more resentful of theway some rich people flaunt their wealth or when the rich do bad things.
Like Chinese government officials who still have space and opportunities to improve theirimage, the collective image of Chinese tycoons also can be rebuilt.
Actually there are already many wealthy people who have become idols to the youngbecause of their positive reputations.
Traditional Chinese culture has always demanded a higher standard from the elite. Whenthe rich people overlap with the elite, they will also shoulder higher moral standards. Theirwillfulness needs a boundary, which is whether their acts can be accepted or even admiredby the public.
More rich people will emerge as the country heads further toward a market economy. Thehatred toward the government officials and the rich should be temporary. All parties insociety need to work hard to seek harmony between the rich and society as a whole.
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