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Chinese town guarantees happiness
by Scott Gilbreath ~ December 29th, 2008
On Saturday, 20 December, a sample of residents of Shiqiao, a town near Nanjing, China, received a call from the provincial Statistics Bureau and were asked questions about personal happiness and income and other fascinating stuff. The survey found that they were exceedingly happy indeed. Shiqiao residents reported a satisfaction index of over 96% (60% is considered acceptable).
Why are the townspeople of Shiqiao so insanely happy?
Town officials, who had been informed of the survey weeks in advance, had distributed a sheet of “correct” answers to everyone they could contact and arranged for local bureaucrats to impress upon residents the necessity of reading those answers back to surveyors. This is the “correct” answer to the happiness question:
Item 16: “If you were to measure happiness on a 100-point scale, how many points would you give yourself? Answer: between 90 and 100.”
Local officials also spread the word that a cash prize of 2000 yuan would be given to everyone who conveyed “the standard answers” to surveyors. The average annual family income in the town is believed to be less than 8000 yuan.
Even though students usually attend classes on Saturdays, they were given the day off with instructions to stay home, answer the phone, and give correct answers if their family was chosen for the survey.
Also, on the morning of 20 December, telephones in over 100 homes of poor rural families and known malcontents mysteriously went out of service until after the survey was completed.
In an interview, an official identified as Vice-Secretary Zhu immediately admitted that government-supplied answers were distributed in order to ensure that the town met its target for improving social well-being.
However, he refused to admit that the town had offered any cash incentives. That, he said, must have been the work of overzealous lower-level functionaries. He also denied that the town had anything to do with selective telephone failures on survey day. “The government”, he insisted, “would never do that”.
h/t: Global Voices
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