Justice – Chinese Moral Leadership 361benefits one but harms the most, a gentleman won’t go after the benefit;
if it benefits the most but harms one, he would take the risks”. However,
it must be noticed that the leader’s decisions should be based on ade-
quate information, practical experience and highly rational analysis,
instead of reckless abuse of his/her position. Meanwhile, decisiveness
requires the leaders to bravely face the subsequent outcome and take
responsibility when things go wrong, otherwise they just become the so
called "Three-Pat Leaders" (Pat his head to decide, pat his chest to
promise, pat his bottom to leave) and expose themselves to ridicule.
28.5 Democratic Centralism
Democratic centralism is a sceptre held in the hands of the leaders.
When to conduct democracy and when to conduct centralism? To whom
and on which issue? These are both strategic issues and an art. A clever,
yet not wise, leader will make full use of democracy: when he has no
idea what to do, he will make decisions by pooling the wisdom of the
public in the name of democracy and then follow the principle that “the
minority should submit to the majority”. His democracy is in the form of
organising meetings and votes, and his centralism will be announcing
the voting results. In this way, the leader can take the credit for wise
decision while can get away with it if thing go wrong, with the excuse
that the failure resulted from “collective opinions”, in other words, from
respect to public voices. However, democracy carries with its own risks.
Firstly, democracy does not always bring the optimized decision. Indi-
vidual members often have limited vision for lack of knowledge or de-
votion to a grand mission. When they make decision, their natural incli-
nation to security and egalitarianism will very likely prevail over the
pursuit of efficiency and grander prospect as the latter two usually
means higher risk and temporary inequity. Time is dawdled over distrib-
utive fairness when decision is dominated by a static vision in the case