Young Chinese gather at an Internet cafe. Photo:CFP

Editor's Note:
After 32 years of reform and opening-up, Chinese society now has a wide range of voices. With the amplification of certain social groups' opinions by the Internet or other media, we are often at a loss as to what to believe or what to follow. In today's China, is there a mainstream social stratum? Are there mainstream social values? The Global Times invited a dozen scholars as well as representatives from business, the military and other groups to discuss these issues. This is the second part.

Jin Zhongwei (Executive Director of the Chunqiu Institute)

It is the responsibility of media to criticize society and supervise government. How media should do this is key to the forming and consolidating of the mainstream ideology of society. We hold this meeting because we are confused about identifying the mainstream ideology.

In my opinion, the media should take a big part of the responsibility here.

The critique could come from the inside or the outside. For example, the New York Times criticizes the Obama administration very seriously, but it won't criticize the root of the whole US political system. There is a bottom line.

These years, the critical and supervisory role of Chinese media is becoming increasingly strong. Especially with the development of new media, a lot of exterior criticisms have appeared which don't respect the bottom line.

And to some degree, the potential mainstream ideology of Chinese society is delegated by the exterior criticism that is seemingly advanced but actually aggressive, romantic and irresponsible. In other words, the mainstream population of Chinese society to a certain extent is "being denigrated."

Yang Ping (Director of Beijing Cultural Review magazine)

Looking back on history might help us understand the so-called mainstream values today, and predict what kind of mainstream values there will be in the future.

From the perspective of the change of values, I divide contemporary Chinese history into two periods. The first period is from 1919 to 1979. At that time the mainstream value was revolution.

From 1979 to 2009, China entered another era that I call the "de-revolution" era. During this period, there appeared waves in China marked by the restoration of the things destroyed by the revolution, from economic structure to social structure, from ideology to systematic structure. De-revolution became a mainstream choice.

Along with this is the US-led wave of neo-liberalism, whose basic idea of freedom, democracy, and market economy are popular around the world.   Neo-liberal values are inducing the mainstream of Chinese society. Such values will last for a considerable period of time here.

However, with the proceeding of devolution, today, the marketization of China has already resulted in the big gap between the rich and the poor, moral disorder, the loss of ideals, environmental damage and other problems.

At the same time, there also appeared big problems in Western society. The financial crisis made the US values less attractive than before. This made people calm down and look at US and revolution, de-revolution included of course, with new eyes.

Luo Yuan (Major General in the PLA Academy of Military Sciences)

The next value system is under construction. In my opinion, we should bring the martial spirit and dauntless revolutionary heroism into the national education system and make them an important part of the national spirit.

A nation that does not adore heroes is a nation short of heroes; a nation that does not have martial spirit is a nation without hope. Of course, the martial spirit is not equal to being aggressive. But we should end war with war, and end war with preparations for war.

Wang Hui (Professor of Chinese Literature, Tsinghua University)

China is very special as a nation. The end of Cold War marked the collapse of the socialist bloc, but in the process of pushing forward the market economy reform, China has not completely denied the heritage of Chinese revolution and the socialist system. The public often resorts to this heritage in fighting for social equality and justice.

However, in depicting political legitimacy, the elite media often reflect the post-Cold War ideology and values. It is generally believed that China needs political change, but as to the direction of change, the stand of some of the elite and the values of the main body of society are not consistent. This conflict also involves questions of representativeness.

The dependence theory of the 1970s mainly focused on the mainstream society in Latin America, Africa and the Third World countries. It was found that the dependence of these countries was related to the convergence of the political, economic and cultural elites.

The convergence between the political, economic and cultural elites resulted in a lack of check and balances.

We have not fully fallen into the plight of Latin America and Africa, but its ideology, economic interests included, obviously shows a trace of dependence. This situation of course comes along with the trend of depoliticization, and the prevalence of pragmatism and cynicism.

Therefore, it is necessary to make political debate open and expand public space. The media should not just promote their own values without contest. It is not good. The mainstream media today is in dire need of real debate. Only in this way can the main values of society be expressed in the public space.

Ke Yinbin (Secretary General of the Chahar Academy)

Commercial civilization constitutes today's mainstream values. Comparatively speaking, there are three outstanding features of the new age: market economy, the development of informationization, and the rise of civil society.

Given the situation, the future mainstream of Chinese society should be organized with commercial civilization as the center. So we should inherit the useful and discard the uselessness of our traditional official-oriented standard and meanwhile learn from Western commercial rules and integrate them together.

Zhang Yiwu (Professor of Chinese Language at Peking University)

It is difficult to define mainstream values. They should be formed by the consensus of the middle class in China. Now the consensus is split up.

In the 1990s, Chinese society built a relatively effective consensus, that is, China is developing and all people would benefit from this.

But now there is divergence in Chinese society. Chinese youth now are torn by two discourses: One is about Chinese dream, that is, you can realize your dream in China. So TV programs like Got Talent are always popular here. The other one is about complaints. This is characterized by inarticulate tirades.

Now the mainstream of Chinese society is actually a race between the two discourses.

I remember the question raised 30 years ago, "How come the life paths are becoming increasingly narrow?" The questions young people raised about Chinese society now have been answered - Chinese dream is running faster than complaints. The solution of the race lies first and foremost in a consensus. I think the Chinese dream should be shaped in mass culture. It is the mainstream spirit of Chinese future society and a new dream that can surpass the American one.

Ding Gang (Senior editor of the People's Daily)

I agree that we look at mainstream society and mainstream values separately. Mainstream values today are disturbed. The development of society is becoming more and more diversified, but cohesion and consensus are increasingly weakened.

The problem is that mainstream society is divided because of different interests, which further weakens mainstream society. Since the Internet developed, we have been living in two worlds: the real one and virtual one. Now the virtual world has messed the real one up, as if the complaints and critics on the Internet reflect reality.

China's mainstream public opinion is from the real world. It is from the grass roots, but it is by no means from the Internet.

A lot of people in the grass-roots level don't go on the Internet, or at least don't express their ideas on the Internet. There are few countries in the world that treat posters on the Internet as the mainstream of public opinion.

Han Zhu (Fellow of the Chunqiu Institute)

It is not proper to categorize people as mainstream and non-mainstream. But social ideology has to have a mainstream, otherwise it is impossible to build social cohesion.

A serious problem in China is now the disjunction between mainstream ideology and social reality, and the disconnection between public opinion in media and in reality.

Everyone who has a glimpse of China's media for an hour would feel that China is on the crater of a volcano. But the data from authoritative US survey organizations shows that the social reality in China is not like that.

As to the rebuilding of mainstream ideology in China, only when we persist in patriotism and common prosperity and development can we unite all members of society together and make them social mainstream ideology.