This article explores the ways in which the Korean Chinese intellectuals and middle class residents in the Yanbian Korean Chinese ethnic autonomous prefecture (hereafter Yanbian) associated the pursuit of economic wealth with the state of moral crisis, so-called money fever (don yeolbyeong), and further l inked it to not only the cultural degradation, but also the political downfall of the Korean Chinese ethnic community. Unlike most critiques of the discrepancy of wealth in other regions of China condemned the new rich in the beginning of the economic reform era, the Korean Chinese scholars and public in general in Yanbian disparaged the lifestyle of the working-class poor and urged them to regain traditional ethics and morals to salvage the Korean Chinese communities in China. In addition, they viewed the South Korean capitalism as a main source through which indigent Korean Chinese gained impaired moral senses. This article is based on my analysis of scholarly writings from the early 1990s to the end of the 2000s and semi-structured interviews I have conducted during my ethnographic fieldwork between 2005 and 2007 on the topics of moral degeneracy. I argue that the money fever discourse was a class-based exhibition of the emerging social inequality in the beginning of the post...