Business Ethical Issues
Issue
The primary business ethical issues concerning the Chinese government were empathetic decision making over transparency concerning its citizens, which resulted in a conflict of interest. For instance, through the empathetic decision-making process, the government knew that once they would reveal about the epidemic, its people would go in panic, which instead of protecting them, most were likely to get infected as they sought health check-ups and safety. In return, the government turned their back to any person who had tried to whistleblow about the situation leading to government action in overlooking transparency issues. In as much as the government cared about its people’s welfare, being transparent on the pandemic at that juncture would have resulted in panic all over the country. Therefore, they avoided revealing the truth, which was unethically right and wrong at the same time, thus presenting it in a sophisticated and dilemma-like in nature. Hence, the government, in such a case, was trying to be empathetic with their citizens even in the conscious wake of COVID-19 contagious and seriousness. The complexity that the government would face afterward due to its decisions concerning transparency depends on the way that people will interpret the government’s social responsibility critically.
Resolution
In our case, the conflict of interest arises when the government tries to put appropriate measures once they realized that the disease was in contact with its people by concealing the truth that would lead its people in a panic mode. The government was empathetic with its people. Therefore they saw that coming out boldly to warn its people concerning the epidemic would cause mayhem, and it would take time to control its people towards understanding what the disease was all about. Therefore, to avoid that, they ended up denying any reports by the whistleblowers who were also interested in ensuring that the people were aware of the deadly disease and its seriousness. Also, during the early stages of COVID-19, despite the government dismissing any person that had a clue of the happening, the government had to use the right channels to identify and come up with a concrete answer regarding the fear. As well, the government had to follow the Chinese law on how information concerning infectious diseases is revealed where the State Council has to approve on its matter. Therefore the resolutions tend to seek the relevance of the Chinese government upholding its empathetic decision-making procedures against information transparency for the sake of its people.
Argument
The argument for the above resolution, the argument states that ‘in the early stage of the epidemic represented by Coronavirus to avoid panic; the government concealed the facts, seriousness, and contagious behaviors.’ The main reason why governments are put into place is to ensure that it safeguards the welfare of its people. In other words, governments act as the eyes and ears of their citizen. In that line of thinking, most people expects that the government should always tell them the truth at any point but at some circumstances, the government overlooks such business ethics to protect the people. At a point, it may sound ironic since most people would have preferred to know about the issue to take caution as early as enough, for instance, the whistleblowers. When the government classifies information, it is usually seen as a bureaucratic convenience which helps to curb other malicious issue that might affect the country’s national security. For example, people in other countries would start mistreating its citizens as well the government might have faced diplomatic lockdown, especially if they had not identified the cause and the possible way of minimizing the effect of the disease.
The Covid-19 disease was and has been a threat to humankind not only in China but to the whole world. In as much as the whistleblowers would have preferred that the government to come out as early enough to alert the people, the government had to get the right fact about the causes and the spreading rate. Therefore, despite having a conflict of interest among those that wanted the government to put the issue in public, the empathetic nature of the government would not allow that since it would have put so many people into the risk of getting affected. Since obviously, people would have started evacuating from the affected areas towards those that did not register any corona case. During such moment, the disease would easily spread since there were no primary ways that the government would know who was affected and who was negative. Our argument is supported by Huang (2020), whose article indicates that when the Chinese government noted the rising toll of the new Coronavirus cases and through working closely with the relevant stakeholders. After getting the whole information, they formulated an effective mechanism that would intervene about the situation, which is lockdown of places like the ban of public gatherings and closure of entertainment venues, thus addressing the initial concerns of the whistleblowers.
The whistleblowers were right since they risked their lives informing the truth, which somehow puts the government reputation at stake while, on the other hand, the government was trying as much as possible to avoid exposing their citizens in panic mode. In a real sense, panic mode leads to some other sort of dangers, which may lead to more serious health complications such as anxiety and depressions, especially for individuals that lived in the affected areas. Hence, the government was willing to take things slow in a way that its people would not involve fear in trying to protect themselves. Therefore, it can be said that the government tried all it could in playing its corporate social responsibility at the local level, just like everyone would have responded to daily outbreaks. Consequently, since all choices have consequences, the government is at risk of facing ethical irregularities from critics. Most of such critics argue that if the government hid to the information that the first whistleblower had instead of confiscating it, then the virus would not have spread to other regions of the country leave alone the world Xiong and Gan (2020). Therefore all the factors discussed are addressed by the issue of conflict of interest that led to a heated debate on why the Chinese government would conceal important details of such a killer disease.
Work Cited
Huang, Y. China’s approach to containing Coronavirus cannot be replicated (2020). Retrieved at: https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/china-approach-coronavirus-replicated-200323080154581.html (Accessed on 25th March 2020).
Xiong, Y. & Gan, N. This Chinese doctor tried to save lives but was silenced. Now he has Coronavirus. (2020). Retrieved at: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/03/asia/coronavirus-doctor-whistle-blower-intl-hnk/index.html (Accessed on 25th March 2020).