Legal push for reading
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E-mail ChinAfrica, October 22, 2013
To encourage nationwide literacy, a law could indeed be useful, but what is even more important is fostering the proper environment allowing people the time to indulge in books. For example, schools should create encouraging atmospheres for reading and allow students to fall in love with books. Eventually this will spread to the greater society. Furthermore, it’s important to set up more libraries. At some existing facilities, most books are old, procedures outdated and borrowing fees unreasonable.
Con
Chen Mengxi, Beijing Evening News
It is necessary to boost the reading culture in a society where people are obsessed with making money. But it is not the responsibility of legislation.
Frankly speaking, the prime reason for this legislation is the low ranking of Chinese people’s reading rate in the world, 93rd in 2012. If we look at the top 20 countries where nationals are avid readers, it can be discovered that the reading rate seems to have a close relation with the nation’s economic development. The urgency of surviving outweighs that of reading. For a nation with unbalanced development and high illiteracy rate, reading is a kind of luxury. Encouraging the whole nation to read more under such circumstances by legislation is not wise.
Even if there is no need to worry that the legislation may interfere with personal choice, the effectiveness of it is questionable. To promote the reading culture, the government should provide more supports to the publishing industry and give people who cannot afford to read access to books of good quality besides building more libraries.
Pro
Peng Huifu, Teacher in Chongqing
I think ensuring reading by law is a good move to strengthen the nation’s soft power. Reading books is vital to an individual’s progress, a people’s qualification, and then to a nation’s prosperity. A nation is promising when its people have a strong thirst for books. A lack of reading could damage the advancement of an innovative culture or civilization. In this sense, reading is not a personal business but concerns the future of the country. Actually, many countries have upgraded citizen’s reading rate to a strategic level through administrative and legal means. China should do so as well.
Con
Peng Kefeng, China Science Daily
China is a nation boasting a long history of 5,000 years and valuing scholarly pursuits. Its cultural prosperity in the Tang (618-907) and Song (960-1279) dynasties was widely recognized across the world. But why have modern Chinese abandoned their long-held reading habit? It is complicated. In modern society, people are so squeezed by work that they cannot afford the time and energy to read. People are used to reading scattered information on the Internet and lose patience while reading longer works. Adolescents struggle through exam-oriented education with every bit of their spare time occupied by homework or supplementary after-school classes. There are also few influential books worthy of reading. In view of this dilemma, an encouraging law alone could not solve all of the problems.
The legislation attaches much attention on improving reading facilities by setting up more libraries and reading rooms in cities, rural areas and schools, but overlooks the importance of guiding the public to read qualified books. The law becomes defective because of this. For instance, if there were still no influential and fascinating masterpieces, the public would show no interest in reading, no matter what amount of funding the government offered schools and rural areas to purchase reading materials.
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