Currency of hero status for model workers is being devalued by dodgy aspirants, writes Clifford Coonanin Beijing
CHINA HAS produced all kinds of heroes in the six decades since the revolution, but the latest public servant to qualify for hero status, who died after falling off the toilet, is causing a major controversy.
The hero jury is still out on Zhu Jihong, a government employee working on a development park project for the local government in Luzhou in Sichuan province, who has been hailed as a hero following a fatal fall from the throne. He suffered severe head injuries after he fell in the cubicle on Saturday, July 24th, while texting his girlfriend, by some reports, apparently suffering from serious exhaustion.
He died of his wounds two days later. Because he was working overtime, on a weekend, when he suffered the fatal fall, and given his impressive work record – the man is said to have juggled three jobs without any complaint – the local authorities honoured him posthumously for “dying a hero’s death while carrying out his duties”. Zhu was also hailed as a “model party member”.
“No offence to the hapless Zhu, but the fact remains that the use of ‘die a hero’s death’ is a blatant misnomer,” wrote the Shanghai Daily newspaper.
“After all, compared with people who lose their lives trying to save others or safeguard public assets from being plundered, Zhu’s death doesn’t carry the same cachet . . . tragic as the death was, it is mind-boggling that a fall in a toilet should lead to the glorification of someone who clearly died of a cause other than work,” said the paper.
It was not always thus. “Iron Man Wang” was China’s first model worker and a great revolutionary propaganda hero, who was famous for digging for oil with his bare hands, or jumping into a cement mixer and using his body to mix cement to stop the machine from freezing.
Revolutionary hero Lei Fang was a soldier who died in 1962 when he was run over by a lorry while trying to help a comrade.
Against this backdrop, netizens have complained that the hero award is going to people who do not go through the proper procedures, although Zhu’s employers defended their decision. “Mr Zhu deserves the honours. He volunteered to work on weekends for a raft of urgent public projects. His collapse was a result of extreme fatigue caused by overwork,” said the local propaganda unit.
Giving public servants “hero” status is a cornerstone of China’s state system, a way of ensuring that soldiers or police officers who die in the line of duty are honoured, and that their families receive an adequate pension.
There are varying degrees of hero status. There are the great Communist party “model workers”, proletarian heroes one and all: bus conductors, coal miners and industrial workers who work hard and closely follow Marxist principles. In recent years the model workers award has widened to include entrepreneurs and sports stars – Yao Ming, multimillionaire basketball star for the Houston Rockets, has been named a model worker. But the principle of sacrifice and heroism remains mostly intact.
Other heroes clearly deserve their status. Shi Chuanxiang spent 40 years unflinchingly shovelling night soil, or human manure, from Beijing public toilets.
However, there have latterly been murmurs of disquiet about less obviously deserving heroes, especially since last October, when Chen Lusheng, a traffic police chief in Shenzhen, died after choking on his own vomit at a lavish banquet. His superior officer applied to have Chen declared a martyr and secure an ample pension for his family.
And regular reports of corruption among cadres and public servants mean that tolerance among the general populace for small acts of heroism, such as working long hours to set up a wine industry development park, is running thinner than it might otherwise.