Selflessness and self‐interest: Public morality and the Xu Honggang campaign

The Chinese state has continued to promote a public morality based on self‐sacrifice even as it has advocated a market economic system which tolerates self‐interest. This paper looks at the Xu Honggang campaign of 1994 and argues that the state has been unable to prevent the leakage of market sensibilities into public morality. Despite its ostensible encouragement of crime intervention, the Xu Honggang campaign failed to provide models of citizen action and diluted selflessness by commoditizing it.