Spread of mind-numbing twaddle makes case for tighter grip over cyberspace
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CHINESE VIEWS
In a recent article, professor Zhang Guozuo reasserted the need to subject the Internet to guidance and control as a way to further the country’s ideological objectives.
Zhang, director of the Center of Chinese Soft Power Studies, wrote that this emphasis on ideology does not mean going back to China’s “leftist” era.
Given that we live in a complex world where different ideas and cultures frequently converge, diverge and clash with one another, indiscriminate advocacy of de-ideologization can be counterproductive. This attitude can result in a slackening of vigilance on our own part, wrote Zhang, who took the opportunity to stress the need for stricter control over the Internet.
Misleading ideas and views are often stirred up and spread online, where it can corrupt the minds of China’s intellectual elite and students.
This represents a grave threat to mainstream ideology, and calls for a heightened sense of urgency for active guidance and control of the Internet.
I cannot agree more with Zhang, albeit for reasons not mentioned by Zhang.
Junk food
It is relatively easy to suppress information that is explicitly disruptive to mainstream ideology, but more difficult to maintain a similar degree of vigilance against Internet content that is ostensibly innocuous entertainment and light-hearted fare.
Junk food is bad not just because it is rich in additives and lacks nutrition but also because it takes up room that might be used for good food.
As a result, we generally restrict our children’s access to junk food. Sadly many are much more careless in their ideological outlook and spiritual consumption.
Just look at those zombie-like individuals whose heads are forever bent over their flickering screens.
Everyone can read Buddhist sutras on their e-gadgets is they so choose, but if you look around, you’ll find most people checking their WeChat messages, watching soap operas, or playing video games. With the Internet, one can easily get lost in a labyrinth of graphics, videos, rumors and scandals.
As the author Wang Meng wrote recently in an article published by Wenhui Daily on April 23, browsing online is not true reading. Wang warned that the replacement of multimedia with real books might lead to “spiritual retardation,” as “serious reading is the only path to spiritual improvement.”
Serious reading
As browsing online becomes more popular, obtaining information becomes a two-dimensional affair: gossipy, and consumption-based. In time it leads to idiocy and mediocrity — a condition marked by an utter lack of judgment, perception and discrimination, Wang warned.
Wang encouraged reading more difficult books that require consultation with reference material or discussions with friends and teachers.
Wang exhorted readers to “attack some weighty tomes that are spiritually uplifting.” Such reading can lead to the ideological solidarity Zhang found lacking in our national consciousness.
A month ago, during the annual people’s congress, Premier Li Keqiang mentioned “books and reading as the main carriers of human civilization,” and hoped that “reading becomes a manifest national obsession in China.”
There is a long way to go. According to one survey, in 2014 each Chinese adult read an average of 4.6 books, compared with 40 in Japan and 64 in Israel.
I have written before of the need to increase accessibility to community libraries that are stocked with the right kind of books.
April 23 is World Book and Copyright Day, an event which encourages everyone, particularly young people, to discover the pleasures of reading. But on that day, the real sensation in this international metropolis was a car show.
Hopefully we can create a healthy social environment where people who watch idiotic soap dramas in public might feel uneasy or risk stigmatization.
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