The destruction of Confucianism during the Cultural Revolution and the hollowing out of communism during the recent reform era left behind a vacuum of belief. This was quickly filled in by materialism.

Although materialism also is common in the West, religious values, along with well-developed regulatory frameworks and the rule of law, help define what is acceptable in business there. In China, the revival of capitalism has been driven almost entirely by the pursuit of wealth. In the words of Deng Xiaoping, “To get rich is glorious.”

This single-minded pursuit of material interests is now threatening China’s moral baseline. In a nationwide, online survey of nearly 23,000 adults last October, about 82 percent of respondents agreed that China has experienced a significant moral decline over the past decade. More than 40 percent attributed the slip to the worship of money (35 percent blamed it on development problems and inadequate enforcement of the law). Yet more than half of the respondents also said they did not think that complying with ethical standards was a necessary condition for success.

Ordinary citizens are trying to take food safety into their own hands. Farmers trust only the produce they’ve grown themselves. A Beijing taxi driver once told me that he avoids small grocery stores. Yet there is no guarantee that food sold in shopping malls is safer: the State General Administration of Sports forbids its athletes from consuming meat outside of official training facilities. As far back as 2008, the government started setting up Special Food Supply Centers to make sure the elite eats organic.

Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has invoked food scandals as examples of the “absence of integrity and a landslide of morality” in China, adding that, “It would be absolutely impossible for a state to become a truly powerful and respectful one if it did not see improvement of its national quality and moral strength.”

But his pleas for better business ethics have fallen on deaf ears. The Chinese elite doesn’t fully acknowledge the problem itself. In April an article in the communist mouthpiece Qiushi (“Seeking Truth”) denied that there has been any systematic decline in morals. Perhaps this should come as no surprise since many Chinese politicians and law-enforcement officials are the ones behind the moral landslide.