A pig rolling in the mud to cool off on a hot summer day. Most would see nothing out of the ordinary with this common spectacle in rural China. But recently a darker version of this scene has been unfolding across Chinese countryside – farmers spraying black paint onto regular pink pigs before taking them to market. Why would farmers go through this extra effort to turn their pigs black? The disturbing answer unveils a larger culture of deception that has taken root in Chinese society.
As extensively documented by China-based blogger Winston Sterzel‘s in his video exposé "China is Now Painting Pigs Black – Why?", farmers across Sichuan province and likely beyond have been coating ordinary pigs with black paint. Some are doing it for the sake of appearances, allowing them to fetch higher prices from customers seeking the premium black pork meat. But many also have more nefarious aims – to cheat the weight scales at recycling centers by making the pigs seem heavier with the added paint, resulting in substantially higher payoffs.
Sadly, this practice of literally painting a veneer of deception for economic gain is just one of many examples of the rampant culture of cheating, dishonesty and exploitation that has proliferated across much of Chinese society today. As Sterzel highlights, "It‘s a really big problem, big enough that it‘s a huge part of what China is right now". Encountering scams, low-quality fakes, and tainted food is so common that being cheated is almost expected.
Extent of China‘s Food Safety Crisis
Beyond painted pigs, China has been rocked by frequent food and consumer product safety scandals that suggest deep regulatory failures:
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Toxic Baby Formula – In 2008, milk and infant formula adulterated with melamine poisoned over 300,000 babies, causing 6 deaths and 54,000 hospitalizations.
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Recycled "Gutter Oil" – Massive underground networks filter waste oil from sewers, slaughterhouse drains and restaurant fryers then sell it to black market vendors to be reused in street food stalls and supplied to major fast food chains.
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Watermelons Exploding from Growth Chemcials – Farmers injected overused growth stimulators to swell watermelons into irresistible giants, causing some to blow up after shoppers brought them home.
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Cardboard Steamed Buns – Unscrupulous vendors augmented the meat content of pork buns with ground cardboard powder to reduce costs, selling them to popular Shanghainese restaurants.
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Plastic Rice – Industrial resin and potatoes were formed into fake grain indistinguishable from rice to ordinary consumers without scientific testing.
| Year | Scandal | Details |
|---|---|---|
| 2008 | Melamine Milk Powder | 300,000 infants sickened, 6 deaths |
| 2011 | Leather Milk | Industrial leather hydrolyzed and added to milk |
| 2011 | Glowing Pork | Swine fed phosphorescent drug to mimic marbling |
| 2012 | Formaldehyde Tofu | Preservative used to improve tofu texture |
| 2016 | Exploding Watermelons | Growth chemicals made melons unstable |
While the Chinese government invariably promises crackdowns after such scandals emerge, the systemic roots of lax regulations, lack of accountability, deficiencies in rule of law, and official corruption have remained largely unaddressed. When profits drive unscrupulous businesses to substitute cheap industrial synthetics for real food ingredients to cut costs, humanity loses.
Drivers of China‘s Culture of Deception
Several key factors have coalesced to create this toxic culture that tacitly condones and enables nefarious behavior:
Moral Decay – The traumatic experiences of certain generations in China also partially explain this cultural shift. Those who lived through the tumultuous Cultural Revolution and subsequent period of unprecedented economic growth at all costs saw moral integrity and principles sacrificed for political and financial security. When official policies demolished traditional value systems and incentivized informing on your neighbors, cynicism and distrust became necessary for self-preservation. As citizens witnessed or experienced horrifying injustices while the perpetrators often enjoyed impunity, the ethical foundations of society corroded over time. The Great Leap Forward famine also weakened the centrality of truth and ethics to overcome adversity.
Government Policies and Censorship – Experts highlight how Chinese citizens have lost trust in government institutions and regulations to protect their interests after frequent consumer safety scandals involving everything from poisonous baby formula to lead-tainted toys. When profit-driven businesses can routinely flout food safety laws without accountability due to lax enforcement or corrupt officials accepting bribes, citizens rightly believe cheating the same system is justified for self-preservation too. Simultaneously pervasive government censorship and crackdowns on dissenting voices and food safety activists have eroded checks and balances from civil society.
Obsession with "Face" – Social anthropologist Ger Duijzings explains how across Chinese culture maintaining surfaces and appearances matters immensely, encapsulated by the concept of “face” (mianzi) – one’s image, dignity and prestige. Consequently, employing any means, ethical or not, to get ahead financially, socially, or politically and present a veneer of success is tolerated and even implicitly admired. This emphasis on wealth, status and power fuels selfishness over selflessness. It propels an ends justify means mentality across both interpersonal dealings and business practices.
Rule of Law Vacuum – While market reforms have transformed China’s economy over recent decades, political and legal reforms have severely lagged. The authoritarian governance model still concentrates power in opaque party organs without adequate checks and balances. There often seems to be one set of informal rules for Communist Party officials who enjoy vast privileges and another for common citizens. Judicial systems inadequately enforce laws and contracts, fueling everything from intellectual property theft to routine business transactions depending more on extensive personal connections or guangxi rather than rule of law. This institutionalizes corruption and moral hazard across the system.
Fraud & Deception Permeate Daily Life
The culture bred by this system permeates daily life to the point where virtually every transaction and encounter involves suspicions of fraud.
As a small example, prominent philanthropist Chen Guangbiao made international headlines announcing ambitious initiatives like buying a major US newspaper and giving tens of millions to underprivileged Americans. Later investigations by Western media uncovered his entire reputation was built on falsified data, exaggerated claims and photoshopped images to presenting a veneer of extraordinary generosity promoting his business empire. In reality, independent audits of his firm’s accounts and tax records exposed only tiny fractions of the promised philanthropy materialized.
In my years living across China, I‘ve listened with amusement and horror to both locals and expats share creative stories of remarkably brazen cons and counterfeits they suffered firsthand – everything from "Foreign Teacher" job scams, landlords disappearing mid-lease with 3 months rent, prolific cloning of sharing economy startups like ride-shares, to fake rice made of plastic pellets. While authorities occasionally crack down on the most egregious violations when scandals erupt, the endless creativity of Chinese fraud beginning from gas station water pumps rigged to cheat customers to industrial ghost cities built to boost local GDP seems endemic.
Just as covering pigs in black paint fails to transform their essence as fraud intended to cheat recycling centers for higher profits, superficial solutions cannot address the depth of China‘s challenges.
Societal Consequences
The downstream impacts have been profound across society:
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Chinese citizens overwhelmingly don‘t trust each other or societal institutions like regulatory bodies, expecting instead to be regularly cheated as routine.
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Competitive pressures mean Chinese parents often do not trust caregivers or schools with their own children, installing cameras to monitor activities and bribing teachers to ensure favorable treatment.
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Recurring scandals have caused tremendous reputational damage for Brand China overseas too. While initially dismissed as isolated incidents, the consistent pattern demonstrates institutional flaws rather than a few bad apples.
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At times even national propaganda organs like state media have featured glowingly positive but falsified content about China later revealed to be sponsored elaborately faked news rather than actual journalism.
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Trade partners increasingly use issues like intellectual property theft, unfair trade practices, and human rights as evidence of China‘s duplicity, directly impacting diplomatic tensions and economic relations.
Nationalism Substitutes for Responsible Governance
Rather than address endemic governance and food safety crises fueling social distrust domestically, the Chinese Communist Party has aggressively unleashed state-sponsored propaganda and nationalism to defend China‘s image internationally while dodging responsibility for recurring domestic scandals.
Any objective criticism or investigation by foreign media into issues like Xinjiang internment camps, the origins of Covid-19, or longstanding discrimination against Africans living in Guangdong province elicit reflexively angry responses. An army of paid trolls and useful idiots flood comment sections across the web with whataboutism excuses defending the motherland.
Yet the furious nationalist defense of China‘s image abroad seems contradictory when Chinese citizens themselves overwhelmingly expect daily life to be characterized by deception and danger regarding basic food or medicine safety domestically. Resolving this cognitive dissonance between victimization narratives promoted externally and lived realities internally remains critical for China‘s future, but cannot happen while censorship and thought control stifle authentic self-reflection.
Path Forward: Transparency and Rule of Law
While the deep complexity of societal conditions enables some Chinese to rationalize unethical business practices or looking the other way from fraud as necessary for financial survival, the downstream costs have become existential. What may have appeared a tolerable necessary evil to propel economic advancement has mutated into cancerous corruption now threatening civilizational foundations domestically and reputation internationally. Most Chinese citizens do eagerly yearn for substantive governance reforms to incentivize integrity over appearances. But as long as authoritarian systems lacking transparency and accountability remain calcified, eroding moral hazards will continue metastasizing across society.
The universally necessary prescription centers around checks and balances on unconstrained power. Substantially strengthening transparency, free press, rule of law, democratic accountability, protections for marginalized groups, freedom of expression, information access – these medicines benefit the health of all nations. Chinese culture traditionally had a strong moral core before several generations endured horrific extrajudicial persecution and societal turmoil. The centrality of family, education, community and truth can be restored by courageous systemic reforms.
Many leaders across Asia, Africa and Latin America once argued benevolent authoritarian systems were essential to overseeing rapid developmental progress in early stages. But they also recognized the time comes when civil society must expand roles in shaping national priorities. As Singapore‘s founding Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew highlighted, this transition remains challenging but necessary evolution all countries must undertake towards mature developed nation status, because no one person or party has enough wisdom to solve exponentially complex modern governance challenges alone.
While some relativists may defend China‘s culture of deception as justified by unique national conditions, other developing East Asian economies like Japan and South Korea prove societies can harmoniously blend economic prosperity, rule of law, and social welfare under alternative governance models that distribute rather than centralized power. Just as patients healed by traditional medicine still seek medical expertise when cancer spreads, China must have the wisdom now to acknowledge governance cancers that became toxic distortions of sustainable cultural values. Seeking collaborative support from international well-wishers rather than attacking criticism as attacks on China itself would be true confidence and strength. Prescribing transparency and accountability for the systemic issues exposed by black painted pigs remains the healthy prescription Chinese citizens deserve.