33
" For the Communist Party, the return of class presented an opportunity: the Party came to believe that co-opting those with property would buttress it against agitation toward democracy. Officials took to quoting the ancient sage Mencius, who said, “Those with a constant livelihood have a constant heart, those lacking a constant livelihood lack a constant heart.” But relying on prosperity to ensure a “constant heart” posed a problem that would grow into the Chinese Communist Party’s essential paradox: How could the heirs of Marx and Lenin, the rulers of the People’s Republic, who had risen to power denouncing bourgeois values and inequality, baldly embrace the new moneyed class? How could it retain its ideological claim to rule? "
― Evan Osnos , Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China
36
" I once dropped by the home of Mao Yushi, a liberal economist who happened to live near the headquarters of China’s powerful planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission. He pointed out that the commission was surrounded by gift shops selling alcohol and porcelain. Citizens seeking help knew to stock up before going in for their meetings. “All these people from out of town enter the building carrying big bags and small bags, and they leave empty-handed,” the economist observed. “When the cadres get off work, they leave the building carrying all the big bags and small bags, but they can’t possibly consume everything, so they sell it back to the gift shops, who in turn sell them to yet more people on a mission to Beijing. That’s what our street has become. "
― Evan Osnos , Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China
39
" I had come to expect that Chinese friends would make financial decisions that I found uncomfortably risky: launching businesses with their savings, moving across the country without the assurance of a job. One explanation, which Weber and Hsee call “the cushion hypothesis,” is that traditionally large Chinese family networks afford people confidence that they can turn to others for help if their risk-taking does not succeed. Another theory is more specific to the boom years. “The economic reforms undertaken by Deng Xiaoping were a gamble in themselves,” Ricardo Siu, a business professor at the University of Macau, told me. “So people got the idea that taking a risk is not just okay; it has utility.” For those who have come from poverty to the middle class, he added, “the thinking may be, If I lose half my money, well, I’ve lived through that. I won’t be poor again. And in several years I can earn it back. But if I win? I’m a millionaire! "
― Evan Osnos , Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China
