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The Central Civilization Office of the Chinese Communist Party, the Education Ministry and the Communist Youth League said in their announcement that they wish to highlight the noble acts of teenagers in the disaster zone, to touch and inspire the young people of the country.
The candidates for the young heroes award are to include youth up to the 12th grade in the disaster areas of Sichuan, Gansu and Shanxi provinces and the city of Chongqing, and will be selected by the public. The campaign is scheduled from June 6 to June 29. The public will first submit recommendations to the Provincial Campaign Committee, and the provincial committee will select and pass on the finalists to the National Campaign Committee.
Following this, the national committee will select 50 finalists and widely publicize their deeds through the mass media. The public will then be asked to vote for their preferred young heroes through the Internet and by mobile phone text messages.
In the end, the national committee will determine the final winners based on the public votes and the evaluation of a group of judges. The results will be announced during a TV special broadcast by the state-run China Central Television at the end of this month.
The intention behind this campaign is good, and this kind of recognition is very necessary. Conducting a public evaluation to determine which young person should or should not be honored, however, is very inappropriate.
This could have serious impact on the children involved in this competition, and thus I strongly urge the termination of this inappropriate campaign, and ask the authorities to consider an alternative method of commending the children who performed with courage in the stricken area.
I oppose this approach because, firstly, it ignores the basic psychological need of children who have endured a disaster. They must first of all be consoled and comforted.
The catastrophe has inflicted terrible mental wounds on many children. Thus we cannot adopt a public appraisal of their deeds, as is sometimes done for adults. We must consider the consequences for those who fail to be chosen. We could never heal the hearts of the brave children who are not chosen to be named as “heroes.” In the face of the continued suffering of the children, adults should be very cautious about wounding them further.
Secondly, heroism should not be quantified according to an artificial index.
It should be recognized that all who assisted in the rescue effort are heroes. It is not wise to set up an index allowing the commendation of only some heroes, leaving others out in the cold.
All soldiers who perform bravely in battle are granted medals after a victory. There has never been a limitation or a quota for such medals. This is, after all, an effective means of encouragement. If an army can award only 10 medals to its soldiers, for example, they no longer serve the function of encouraging acts of bravery.
Furthermore, when considering the urgent need to console children who have experienced a calamity, we can never take such an approach.
Thirdly, we should truly liberate our thinking and flexibly manage the relationship between awarding prizes and carrying out propaganda.
On the one hand, all the youngsters who deserve recognition should be commended; none of them should be missed. The more children who receive recognition, the more opportunity there is for other youth to learn from them.
On the other hand, “recognition” and “propaganda” fall into two different categories. The goal of recognizing young people is separate from the goal of propagandizing their good deeds. Rewarding noble actions is important, but the propaganda department and media should responsibly handle the publicity surrounding the deeds of the young heroes and their awards, with sensitivity to the children’s situations.
Finally, all parties concerned would do well to listen to the voice of the public, respond to the people’s opinions, and immediately correct any mistakes to avoid unnecessary conflict between the authorities and the people. In fact, quite a lot of netizens, worried that those who lose in the hero campaign would be discouraged, have expressed their disapproval of this approach.
“Caring for the mental health of the kids in the disaster zone is more critical than anything else!” one netizen wrote. “They’re all little heroes; don’t let those who fail in the campaign feel sad. Would they ever think of such an appraisal while rescuing someone during the disaster? ” asked another. Moreover, “They’re all very brave, including many who weren’t discovered by the media, and I have no idea which to vote for,” another lamented.
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(Wang Zhanyang is the director of the Teaching Research Office on Politics Studies at the Central Socialism School in Beijing. He is also a guest researcher at the China Society of Economic Reform. His research covers the theory of world history, theory of new socialism and history of China’s modern political thought. His work has had major impact on combining the theories of socialism and capitalism. This article is edited and translated from the Chinese; the original can be found at http://www.chinaelections.org . ©Copyright Wang Zhanyang )
