The cynic might argue that the young people of China would be equally justified in putting up posters instructing their government how to behave. Don’t shoot people when they disagree with you, relax the old censorship a bit, let the dissidents out of prison and stop bullying tiny countries nearby, that sort of thing.

Lessons from the Chinese government in morals and ethics have about as much force as, say, a lesson from Peter Mandelson on humility. Or any senior British public figure called Tony Blair enjoining us all to be more honest and candid in our day-to-day activities.

But enough carping. The commies have identified a problem and set about dealing with it, which is what governments are meant to do.

Edict No 1 is: “Serve and do not disserve the people”, that subordinate clause a cumbersome attempt to plug possible loopholes, I reckon. Then there’s “Know plain living and hard struggle”, and “Do not wallow in luxuries and pleasure”. It’s only quite recently that the Chinese people have had much of a chance to wallow in anything more luxurious than the occasional flood — but, as we are forever being told, China is an economic powerhouse and the people are a bit better off than they were in the bad old days of the Gang of Four.

What the Chinese authorities are really trying to do is get to grips with the side effects of globalisation. They don’t want their young people to turn out like our young people. I suppose one can understand that.

One of the unfortunate by-products of a market economy is that people start getting a bit above their station; they become more acquisitive and, indeed, via the internet, inquisitive. Before you know it, they’re wallowing. Hence the stern official warnings.

Should we try to do the same thing here? It seems widely accepted that our young people are utterly appalling; feckless, idle, impolite, astonishingly ignorant, perpetually pissed or stoned, besotted with consumer durables, devoid of conscience, sexually incontinent and prone to public acts of rowdiness.

Although one would not wish to stereotype all young people thus, the fear is that they are too far gone to be stopped merely by a few posters pasted on the side of the bus shelter as they lurk about there in the gloom, mainlining “skag”, talking in cod-Jamaican accents and preparing to give the next passer-by a happy slapping, which they will then film on a Nokia stolen that very morning from Carphone Warehouse.

You might argue that the only recourse by now is to borrow another piece of legislation dreamt up by the Chinese government — fine people for having children. That would, in the long term, eradicate the problem and in the short term have the useful side effect of making life even more miserable for Mick Philpott, the unemployed chap from Derby with 14 children (and a 15th on the way), who was moaning last week about his local council’s inability to find him a larger house for his clamorous brood.

Things have got so bad for Philpott that he has been forced to name his recent children things such as Jesse James, Dwayne and Shareen. My guess is that he would have had somewhat fewer children had he lived in Xian or Harbin rather than Derby — and would have kept his big fat trap shut about it, too.

But I digress. New Labour has indeed started haranguing young people about their behaviour, but only on the most basic level. There are posters in public lavatories that tell you how horrible syphilis is and how to avoid it — and a new campaign, last week, which aims to tell the young that rape is against the law and you could go to prison if convicted.

The poster shows a female pudenda with a “no entry” sign on it: my worry is that if our young men encounter a pudenda that is not thus delineated they will think it’s okay to go ahead, despite the protestations of its owner. That’s the problem with telling people how to live their lives. The more you instruct people how to behave, through warning signs and posters and television ads, the less likely they are to think for themselves, to take care of the wellbeing and comfort of fellow humans.

We should not need to be told that raping people is wrong, any more than we need to be instructed at every turn, when entering a station, that we need a ticket to travel. Or that we shouldn’t punch the staff in the local jobcentre, or that we should eat more fruit and drink fewer pints of beer and so on.

We have never been more bombarded by such unsolicited advice from our rulers and — just as in China — it is a tacit admission of defeat, a counter-productive response to a society that is not working as one would wish.

Stripped down, those Chinese posters and the multifarious offerings from our own government are saying this: have some moral fibre and show consideration to others. But when you need to be told this by a government, the spiral of decline has already begun.

Times Recommends

• It’s the beginning of the affair
• Afghanistan: still a price worth paying
• Heroes of the downtrodden