Moral diversification and moral agency: contesting business ethics among Chinese e-commerce traders

Abstract

Scholarship on morality in contemporary Chinese society is divided. Some studies concur with the public discourse that a moral crisis is occurring. Others argue that there has been a continuity or revival of morality. By examining the divergent ethical trajectories of Chinese e-commerce traders in their business encounters, this study identifies more complicated moral states in these business people, who join a newly emerging industry but are undifferentiated from other ordinary Chinese people in terms of their political, social, and cultural backgrounds. The coexistence of moral, immoral, and morally divided personhoods indicates the diversification of the understandings and practices of morality in Chinese society. This article suggests that this diversification has roots in the moral agency of Chinese individuals, which comes into being in a relatively free space that has been created both by China’s changing sociopolitical structure and by people’s strategies and tactics in everyday life.