An article about the Chinese labour force, of all things, has not just made me further question the ambiguous legacy of John Paul II but the whole relationship between “goodness” on the individual level and well-being on the mass level. The article, which appeared earlier this week in the New York Times, suggested that: The world’s most populous nation, which has powered its stunning economic rise with a cheap and supposedly bottomless pool of migrant labor, is experiencing shortages of about two million workers in Guangdong and Fujian, the two provinces at the heart of China’s export-driven economy.Of course, it’s not as if recruiters are trying to lure factory workers with promises of two-week vacations and signing-on bonuses, but in many cases young Chinese workers are beginning to realise that they have a degree of bargaining power. In effect, this means that a percentage is beginning to leave employers who pay rock-bottom sweatshop wages to work for others who pay slightly higher sweatshop wages. For example, some factories in the Guangdong province in the south of the country pay just $50 a month. Workers there are being attracted to outfits in the Yangtze Delta, near Shanghai, which pay $150 a month. Both seem like pitiful wages to a European but you can imagine the lure of a region where you could triple your salary.This situation has arisen, it’s argued, from two interwoven factors. The decades-old economic boom in China is labour-intensive and requires untold millions to staff the new workshop of the world. On the other hand, the one-child policy enforced by Chinese authorities and the general drop in fertility is putting a crimp on the supply of labour.Most economists and development experts agree that a crucial step in dragging a country out of poverty is to allow women to control their fertility. Less children means the ones that are born get a better deal: better nutrition, better education, and, probably, better jobs. A stable population also means that as the economy expands, individuals get a bigger share of the pie–GDP per capita is the true barometer of prosperity.The one-child policy was only one of a host of measures introduced by the Chinese leadership under Deng Xiaoping, who died in 1997. His “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” allowed elements of capitalism to thrive in designated areas while maintaining firm authoritarian control. When Deng died, I remember there was a lot of debate over the degree of official condolence that should be extended. After all, Deng was responsible for the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, not to mention the subjugation of Tibet. Yet according to a quote from journalist Jim Rohwer, that appears in the Wikipedia profile of Deng, “the Dengist reforms of 1979�1994 brought about probably the biggest single improvement in human welfare anywhere at any time.” The dilemma facing anyone who wants to look at world affairs according to some kind of moral framework is how do we view someone who was, for want of a better word, a tyrant yet whose actions produced an overwhelming good? Moreover, how can we approach a man such as Pope John Paul II, widely acknowledged as a “good” man with deep moral values, but whose effect on the temporal well-being of his followers is questionable? After all, although he became an eloquent critic of the barrenness of modern capitalism, the Pope famously clamped down on the liberation theologians in South America, who actually offered a program to challenge the injustices caused by exploitative capitalism. More significantly, his resolute objection to contraception means that poor nations with families that adhere to the church’s teachings on family planning are likely to have expanding economies but stagnant GDP per capita.*Of course, the whole debate could be resolved by a crude application of the philosophy of Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, who famously said “The greatest happiness of the greatest numbers is the foundation of morals and legislation.” In such a context, Tiananmen Square, the policy of fining people who broke the one-child policy, and the general corruption of civic life that comes with a totalitarian system would be balanced by the fact that a great swathe of the Chinese peasantry has been lifted out of primeval poverty. But the calculus of happiness is more complex than that–how many jobs are worth the end of free elections? Or are abortions of female fetuses (one of the side-effects of a one-child policy) an acceptable price for workers’ increased bargaining power?The only pat answer I can offer at the end of this blog (and what do you expect from a blog?) is that if you are going to change the world profoundly, as Deng did, you are also likely to do some nasty things that will make your funeral commemoration an uncomfortable affair. If on the other hand, you symbolize the values and practices that many aspire to but few actually live up, like Pope John Paul II, you will most likely be acclaimed as a modern-day saint in the wake of your death.*However, if you look at the charts for children born per woman, most of the nations considered Catholic have levels only slightly above or below the replacement rate of 2.1. Brazil, the largest “Catholic nation”, has a rate of 1.97 (Ireland’s is 1.87, high by European standards). This would lead to the conclusion that although the masses appear to listen to the official line in the churches, they are clearly following their own consciences in the bedroom.