Li Xing

High marks in world survey not enough

By Li Xing (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-03-29 06:55

Things on the international scene have gone a little slower for some international news editors these days.

That may be the reason that a Chinese language evening newspaper in South China on Tuesday picked up a piece from the March 26 issue of the Time magazine, which, according to my search on the Internet, posted the same news on its official website on March 11.

In fact, the item in question, the BBC World Service poll conducted by GlobeScan, with 28,389 interviews in 27 countries, was made public on March 6.

Or maybe the overriding reason to run this story is that the Chinese public has become so much more aware of how the outside world views China that the headline is now flashing across some of the leading news websites in China saying that China ranks fifth among countries with the most positive influence on the world.

The poll has also been drawing the attention of some netizens across the country.

I believe that we Chinese should remain open-minded about what others say about our country. At the same time, what really matters is how we look at our own country and what we do to pursue our own development goals.

China's opening, reforms and growth over the past 28 years should have made us more mature in reacting to opinions and criticisms from other countries.

Many urban Chinese, especially those in their late teens or early 20s, are infatuated with the outside world. The continuous popularity of the Chinese language newspapers Reference News by Xinhua News Agency and Global Times by People's Daily is testimonial. Reference News is said to have a circulation of more than 3 million and Global Times more than 1.6 million.

I myself grew up reading Reference News during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), when its distribution was restricted. At that time, Reference News was arguably the only newspaper free of the dogmatic political jargon of class struggles. I remembered engaging in heated discussions with my classmates on what we knew about the world affairs, till late in the evening.

I don't remember that we cared a lot about how other countries viewed China. Maybe it was because we had always read about how good we were or believed in the world views of the late Chairman Mao Zedong, who taught us to do our own bit without caring about what others said about us.

Today, China is opening ever wider to the outside world, joining the economic globalization and playing a more prominent role in world affairs. With the Internet, the Chinese are getting more mixed views from the outside world about international affairs as well as about our own country.

We Chinese have also joined the world in shaping international opinion. In fact, some 1,800 Chinese joined the BBC World Service poll.

However, many Chinese have not learned to take it easy on others' opinions when they run contrary to our expectations. Some even go into a rage and discredit opinion polls that show some country not well liked among Chinese outranking China.

There is no need to dispute the credibility of others' work or the performance of other countries.

Mao's teaching to ignore how others look at us still has merit. At the same time, we should take more seriously what China should contribute not only to world peace and prosperity but also to the well-being of the earth. This applies to reducing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions and taking effective measures to protect the environment and biodiversity.

E-mail: lixing@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 03/29/2007 page10)