In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god.

My comments:

God is a human created deity for all to worship. Different nations each with a different history and culture obviously may have very different gods to worship. And in a country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, people naturally can’t worship talent and virtue. Instead everyone in this nation worships money.

Hence, “money will be the national god”, or the nation’s god.

The counterbalancing thing is that in money worshiping countries, money usually keep getting cheaper and cheaper in value at an alarming rate due to overprinting of the currency, inflation and so forth.

Just so everyone is reminded that money is a cheap god to worship and it’s getting cheaper and cheaper still.

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本文仅代表作者本人观点，与本网立场无关。欢迎大家讨论学术问题，尊重他人，禁止人身攻击和发布一切违反国家现行法律法规的内容。

About the author:

Zhang Xin（张欣） has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.