Personal <I>Suzhi</I>, Social Expectations, and a Good Society: A Formal Analysis of Two Tales from China

Abstract

The concept of suzhi (素质), which roughly means human quality or character, features prominently in public and intellectual discourses in China on the country’s social and political development including democratization. While the previous literature treats the suzhi discourse as an ideology or discursive reality, this study analyzes suzhi from the way Chinese society think about it, i.e., a descriptive reality, in order to see if suzhi is really the root cause of the many social issues that have been attributed to it, and whether raising citizens’ suzhi will necessarily solve the relevant problems. Through game-theoretic analyses of Han Han's influential high beam light argument and the frequent phenomenon of “good Samaritans” being sued, the paper shows that the current predominant focus on suzhi or individual morality is misguided and misses the crucial role of social expectations in multiple-equilibria social interactions. In fact, without good social expectations even “high-suzhi” people would behave as if they were of “low suzhi”, which perhaps best characterizes many social phenomena in contemporary China. The study thus generates theoretical insights with critical policy implications for a successful social transition.