Zhu Changjun (
Huashang Daily): No one has suffered any loss from the test. However, if you use this test to judge whether a city’s residents have high moral standards, you might be assuming things.
This test has been carried out in a number of Chinese cities, with good results in all of them. Therefore, the conclusion is that residents in these cities have all passed this moral test. Meanwhile, social media has churned out articles praising the action. However, in my opinion, it has little actual significance.
Recent years have witnessed a rise in such moral tests. Some mean to find out whether the public is willing to help people who have fallen down; some want to see whether the public will help others in trouble; and some are designed to see how people will behave in unmanned stores. The results are different in various scenarios. In some places, unmanned vegetable booths operate well for years, with few people refusing to pay. In some places, people can pay restaurants as much they want, but such eateries do not last long.
Is this because residents’ morals differ so much from city to city? Of course not. An important point is that all these tests ignored the fact that morality is expressed in different forms depending on the conditions. These sorts of practices may lead to false conclusions and also reflect a shallow understanding of morality.
The moral benchmark here is that taking less than five coins or none is positive—taking more than that is not. However, if someone re- ally in need takes six coins, does that make that person immoral?
Blind faith in these kinds of tests is actually a reflection of the public’s anxiety on the whole. People are pleased to have an easy way to measure social morality. They rush to reach a black-or-white judgment based on such tests, but they rarely go deep into the phenomenon and reach an objective judgment based on analysis. It’s improper to measure people’s moral standard in this way, as it is unable to reflect the overall picture. It’s okay to see it as a game, but you may get tricked if you treat it as a real measure of moral standard. Yanzhao Evening News):