This column is written to comment on some Chinese Internet opinions. I don't have sympathy for movie director Chen Kaige, because I think the way he reacted to a viewer who made fun of his recent release was not very wise. He offered the market a product, his movie Wu Ji (The Promise). And for the 80 yuan (US$10) that people paid for each ticket, they have a right to air their views and trying to stop them from doing so, online or offline, seems unfair, even childish. At the same time, I do have a lot of sympathy for Li Qingyuan, former department director of China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), for the criticisms targeted at her when her retirement was reported over the weekend. I have known Li since the late 1980s, when I was one of China's first journalists to cover the first meetings of her and her friends, as private citizens, to draft the nation's first stock market proposals. Those proposals might have been naive in one way or another, but all tended to make better sense than the market which later became the reality. I know she was being made a scapegoat for the losses that some might have suffered from problematic market. But she played no part, and made no personal gains, in problems of the domestic A-share market because she was outside the system. She joined the system much later, and since then she has in fact been among those who had been shaping the market's alternative plans. Yet still, I don't recommend Li to take legal actions against the forums or their participants for all the outrageous names they called her. She is a wise woman and is good at focusing on the bigger things. In movie director Chen's case, it may not be his movie itself, but his attempt to bring a defamation charge to a self-made multimedia producer who adapted his movie footage in a satirical way, that has aroused such widespread antagonism. Although the case could be more properly described as violation of intellectual property rights, because the footage of one movie is being recycled into another, the artist may have already incurred a loss of face, which is hard to measure in monetary terms, by challenging the sacred cow of the nation's online public opinions. In former CSRC official Li's case, it will still take many years, perhaps until the day when CSRC's old archives are declassified, before people can learn how vehemently she used to condemn the A-share market's problems and how hard she tried to bring it closer to investors' interests. But the difference will be that, by that time, her name wouldn't be in the headlines anymore. And her true contribution can only be related in some obscure memoirs, or seen in some deep corners of an online data search. Yet the Internet offers a lesson for not just these two individuals. Many of its opinions may be garbage, but as a collective forum, it deserves respect. And in a healthy communication process, in which the obscure are listened to and the powerful and famous are listening, it can also make sense. Those whose work has any public significance may have to learn to live with this new-age animal and not to rub it the wrong way. The Ministry of Health (MOH) has apparently learned the lesson more quickly. In its recent evaluations of the medical reform so far, it just admitted, in plain words, that it was "not successful" not "without ideal results," not "still with room for improvement," not "in need for further development." Such candour, as seen in Minister Gao Qiang's comments released yesterday, has not caused an Internet-wide upheaval on an issue that concerns every citizen's life and death. A check of the online forums, at least on sina.com, would find much more understanding and encouragement than movie director Chen could ever have dreamed to have. If the national financial authority could have learned as quickly as MOH, it might have helped their employees feel a much greater sense of reward when they retire. Email: younuo@chinadaily.com.cn (China Daily 02/20/2006 page4)
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