BEIJING - MANY ordinary Chinese are in a soul-searching mood these days, pondering the fallout from what one magazine editor terms the country's 'moral decay' and 'government negligence'.

It is not that the country's declining moral standards or the extent of official apathy is any news to the average Chinese, of course.

By now, most of them are practically numb to the daily barrage of stories in the domestic media about the ill-treatment of the downtrodden, abuses of power, environmental devastation and the lack of official accountability.

But there is a nagging feeling among many Chinese that the problems have sunk to a new low in the light of a recent spate of environmental and labour abuse scandals.

The one episode that drove home the full extent of the supposed 'decay' in their country was undoubtedly the slavery scandal in northern Shanxi province, where hundreds of migrant workers were enslaved and tortured in illegal brick kilns.

Many of the victims were mere teens or youths suffering from intellectual disabilities who were kidnapped from neighbouring provinces. The reports and pictures of the inhumane treatment they suffered shocked many Chinese, who found it hard to reconcile the brutality with the incessant hype about their country being a 21st-century global power.

'A basic question arises here,' wrote Ms Hu Shuli, the editor of the influential Caijing business magazine. 'Why did the brutality continue in these communities for such a long period, and why were the rights to life, freedom and dignity, especially those of children, denied in ways that violate humanity?'

Inevitably, commentators like her raise the same question: Can such incidents be prevented from happening again?

The quick answer is 'no', if the negligible political costs of these major scandals are anything to go by, observers here said.

Only a small handful of low-ranking officials have thus far been sacked or punished to take blame for the recent incidents despite clear evidence of widespread government incompetence and, in some instances, outright official collusion with the perpetrators.

In the Shanxi slavery scandal, the only official to have taken the fall is Mr Wang Dongji, the party secretary of Caosheng village where some of the abuses were first exposed. His son ran an illegal brick kiln next to the family home.

State media reports said dozens, if not hundreds, more such brick kilns could be found in Shanxi and other Chinese provinces. And the only reason that this illegal trade had been happening for years was that the unscrupulous businessmen had paid off or colluded with the local law enforcement agencies and government officials, the reports added.

But three weeks after the scandal first came to light, only two district-level labour officials from Shanxi have been arrested. Though Shanxi governor Yu Youjun offered a rare public apology for failing to stop the slave trade, cynical Chinese bloggers questioned if it was merely a public relations stunt aimed at deflecting public anger.

Shanxi officials are not the only ones good at dodging blame.

In Wuxi, a manufacturing boom town in eastern China, water supply for more than two million residents was shut down for days after Lake Tai, its main water source, was hit by a massive algae bloom in late May.

Officials blamed the unusually hot weather and low water levels for the algae bloom, and steered well clear of explaining why they failed to heed the pollution warnings from experts who have been sounding the alarm for years.

They also did not account for why they failed to clean up the lake, China's third-largest, despite spending billions of yuan in taxpayers' money to do so.

Instead, the Wuxi government trotted out five lowly officials from the nearby Zhoutie township to take the flak for the pollution at Lake Tai, blaming them for failing to rein in polluting factories and chemical plants in their backyard.

In Xiamen, 90 minutes by plane from Wuxi, thousands of people marched to the local government's office to oppose plans to build a petrochemical plant that would be located near villages, schools and residential areas.

Put on the defensive by the unprecedented display of 'green People Power', the Xiamen government suspended the project but did not apologise for the way it bungled the city's urban planning.

Talk is rife that the petrochemical plant might now be built elsewhere - a decision that would cost the government a massive 80 billion yuan (S$16 billion) in lost economic activity every year, or about 70 per cent of its current gross domestic product.

'In any other city in the world, the top official would be forced to resign if they made the kind of mistakes we have seen in Xiamen, Wuxi or Shanxi,' said a political observer here who asked not to be named.

'Sacking officials will not solve the problems right away, of course. But when the price for incompetence and mismanagement is so low, it sends out the wrong message that these mistakes are tolerable and can be covered up with the right number of low-ranking scapegoats.'

The problem is compounded by Beijing's politically motivated approach towards dishing out punishment to senior leaders.

In September last year, former Shanghai party boss Chen Liangyu was sacked for misusing billions of yuan in social security funds to bankroll illegal investments. On the surface of things, the punishment appeared to befit the alleged crime as tens of thousands of retired Shanghainese workers would be left in the lurch if the funds were wiped out through bad investment decisions.

But analysts believed that politics, rather than economics, was behind the decision to sack Mr Chen, a major political rival of President Hu Jintao's. The Shanghai official is said to have openly defied the central government's policies and even directly criticised Premier Wen Jiabao's handling of the economy - all blatant challenges to Mr Hu's authority.

In the slavery scandal and the Wuxi environmental crisis, however, it is hard to imagine the Chinese President calling for heads to roll as both incidents took place in provinces led by stalwarts in his power base, the Communist Youth League.

China's political paralysis is reflected, albeit indirectly, in the deluge of commentaries and editorials about the recent scandals. Every article noted the urgent need for political reforms, but none could or dared say with any clarity what the necessary changes were.

'Due to the lack of democratic and media supervision, the dereliction of duty by local governments and officials can go unchecked for years to the point that they collude with the mafias and form a 'privileged interest group',: wrote political commentator Hu Xingdou in an online essay.

'Institutional political reforms cannot be delayed for one more second.'

How the Chinese leadership goes about finding the political will to do that is something that deserves even more soul-searching.

chinhon@sph.com.sg