A photo showing three construction workers suspended from a gateway in their safety harnesses has sparked discussion online over the use of Cultural Revolution-style humiliation, workplace discipline versus personal dignity, the abuse of ordinary Chinese by those who wield power over them, and the different standards of accountability to which people from different social strata are held. The workers were hung up on public display after failing to wear their safety harnesses, under a sign reading “Safety Harness Usage—A Practical Demonstration,” framed by more slogans: “Put people first; Focus on prevention; Follow the rules; Ensure safety.”
The post translated below—which currently remains online, but is archived at CDT Chinese—argues that the workers’ humiliation was disproportionate to their breach of workplace rules, and that the episode highlights how the powerful and powerless are treated differently when they do something wrong. From WeChat public account Unyielding Bamboo:
I never thought something this crazy could be widely accepted.
The picture above isn’t AI-generated, it’s real—three workers on a construction site, hanging up in a gateway as a “cautionary lesson.” Can you believe it? They’ve actually been hung up there for their own good.
Because they hadn’t been wearing safety harnesses.
As you can see, the camera angle happened to perfectly capture the slogan, at left: “Put people first.” It’s such perfect satire, like some meticulously choreographed performance art, worthy of first place in the end-of-year rankings.
But more than a few people in the comments below it think there’s nothing out of order in hoisting these three up, because this humiliation doesn’t amount to much compared with the risk they’d taken.
This kind of logic is common. I can say with confidence that a fair lot of you readers probably feel similarly. But my point is, this isn’t just a matter of “life and limb,” “safety,” or “dignity”—it’s also about another word, one too often overlooked: “power.”
Who has the right to hang people up—ordinary citizens who’ve broken no law—in a gateway on public display?
In theory, no individual should have this power in a society ruled by law—only the law has that right. Forget hanging them up in harnesses—if they broke the law, they could hang by their necks.
So this gives rise to a basic contradiction: did these three break the law?
No! So no person, entity, or power—the law included—can hang them up on public display. This kind of behavior is an assault not just on their dignity, but on justice itself.
To put it more plainly: hanging people up like this is a form of punishment. Only guilty people should be subject to punishment. What are these three guilty of? They were simply being careless—knowing it was dangerous, but doing it anyway. They didn’t put their own safety first, and for this you’re punishing them.
Are you holding yourself up as a Bodhisattva or saint?
By this reasoning, no one who’s climbed onto a rooftop could ever be talked down again, because as soon as they came down they’d be hung up as a punishment, or fined as a warning not to do it again.
Don’t question it—they’ll just tell you, “It’s for your own good.” After all, what’s a little fine compared to the risk of a loss of life?
I wonder whether so many people would be in favor if the workers had been fined 1000 yuan instead of being hung up on display.
> [In the original post, the following comments appear as highlighted screenshots.]>
> “Personally, I support this. Without safety harnesses, they could have died. This will teach them to take their own safety more seriously.”
>
> “Sometimes I think that compared with matters of life and death, all that stuff about ‘personal dignity’ isn’t worth a fart!!!”
>
> “I think this is a great way to handle it. Anyone who’s spent time on a construction site will understand the value of this solution.”
I know some people will disagree with what I’ve said here, and will insist that hanging them up as a warning was the best way to handle it.
For those who feel this way, I have one final question: if the cause of the danger was a manager, and not a worker, would you hang that person up?
If there’s a safety-averse worker dangling in a gateway, what about the managers who failed to provide adequate safety oversight? Should we hang them up, too?
We all know there’s “tofu-dregs” construction out there in highways, homes, etc. But no one should forget that these big projects will have involved government “supervisors” from the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, safety supervision offices, quality inspection stations, and so on. Even so, even after a building is finished and passes inspection, quality issues emerge, posing hazards to the public. Are you going to hang those leaders up for a bit as a warning?
We all know that could never happen—at most, they’d be removed from office. That’s all they think the risk to your safety is worth.
There are labor contractors who are perfectly aware of safety hazards but look the other way to save money, and managers whose first thought after an accident is about how they can shirk responsibility. The problems with these people are often far more severe than those three workers’, because the lives they put at risk are other people’s, not their own. How often have you seen them hung up as warnings?
Not that they should be, of course. It’s just an example to show that that kind of behavior is about displaying power, not emphasizing safety.
Those three workers found themselves in that predicament purely because they lacked power. So don’t try to tell me it’s for their own good. That supposed logic reminds me of the old expression, “Officials are too high for punishment; commoners are too low for civility.” When the powerless do something wrong, it’s their fault. When the powerful do something wrong, it’s generally a “misunderstanding.”
Safety shouldn’t be predicated on humiliation, and power shouldn’t become a weapon of humiliation. It was rope that kept them hanging in the gateway—what is it that made them hang their heads? [Chinese]
#Punishing #Workers #Literal #Suspension #Safety #Power
