Why do we often treat individuals and companies so differently? If a person makes a mistake, this will be remembered for a very long time. But if a company did something wrong, people tend to forget it quickly. Or at least such is the case with Ferrari, which damaged an important Chinese cultural heritage just two months ago, an event that has been completely forgotten already.

Indeed, this last May, Ferrari damaged the City Wall of the ancient Chinese capital, Nanjing. The monument was built 6 centuries ago, when Emperor Zhu Yuanzhange founded the Ming Dynasty, and took more than 2 decades to built, only to be damaged in a just few seconds.

The incident happened during a publicity event, when a Ferrari car was caught wheel-spinning on the ancient Chinese wall 'by accident', creating black tyre marks on the ancient structure and damaging it permanently. Ironically, the car was part of a celebratory ceremony for Ferrari's arrival to China's car market twenty years ago. Of course, nobody knows exactly how this happened, and Ferrari apologised for the incident. The carmaker said it felt 'deep regret' and that what had happened was 'unacceptable'. An accident, perhaps, but the lack of Ferrari's control over its own shows is not so forgivable, especially that an ancient cultural heritage is now everlastingly damaged.

More alarmingly though, there were some rumours that Ferrari had paid 80,000 Yuan, the equivalent of about 8,000 pounds, to use those city walls in the first place, although the Nanjing Municipal Administration of Cultural Heritage said that using this site had not been approved by archeological authorities. 'No enterprise or individual is allowed to use the city ramparts in Nanjing for commercial purposes,' said the Nanjing Cultural Relics Bureau Captain Wu Jing. Can big names like Ferrari simply permit themselves anything they want? Should we just forgive Ferrari for having completely disregarded local cultural policy and for having found a way to have what it wanted?

This however would also mean that the Chinese are equally guilty of the 'accident' as, if the rumours are true, someone did accept the money offered. One Chinese Internet user said: 'Ferrari put out the cash, Nanjing put out the city walls. In the end, Nanjing won because Ferrari helped advertise it globally.' So who was using who is not clear anymore, but either way, the extent to which culture will be used at the service of business is very sad…

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