Illustration: Liu Rui

There's been a statement circulating on the Chinese Internet recently, allegedly pulled from Low-IQ Society, the latest book by famous Japanese management guru Kenichi Ohmae, "When traveling in China, I found that there are massage parlors everywhere, but few bookstores. On average, each Chinese person spends less than 15 minutes a day reading, and the per capita amount of books brought in China is tiny compared to that of Japan. China is a typical low-IQ society, there is no hope for it to become the next developed country."

But this statement is nowhere to be found in Ohmae's book. It was made up to make a point by people online. Yet, at the same time, it reflects real fears about the level of intellectual curiosity and general literacy in modern China.  
If we look at statistics around literature, it does look as though China is sinking into the "low-IQ society." In 2010, each person in China read, on average, 4.25 books, less than half the number in developed countries. In Israel, Denmark, and Sweden, the number of books read per capita annually is 40 or 50.

Reading is a complicated mental activity and one of the best ways to cultivate our intellectual abilities. A nation which reads more not only knows more, but also thinks better. 

Although China has become the world's second largest economy, how many world famous brands do we have and how many products with independent intellectual rights do we have? How many great inventions have we produced? 

The lack of creativity is China's great hidden flaw that prevents us from joining the ranks of developed nations. There are many reasons for it, but one clear cause is our lack of reading. Creativity doesn't grow on trees, but takes hard work, study, and absorbing the works of others.

It's not an easy matter to change the public's reading habits. 

From my point of view, the most realistic way is the expansion of university enrollment, still a contentious issue in a country facing an ongoing graduate jobs crisis. If the number of graduates grows, so will China's reading habits. 

Take Beijing, for example, where in 2009, each resident bought 24 books. Beijing is China's higher education center, and has the highest proportion of university graduates in the country, so it's not surprising that the city's residents read more than anywhere else. 

According to the 6th national census, 119.6 million people in China in 2010 held a college degree. That's 8,930 out of every 100,000, compared with 3,611 in every 100,000 just 10 years previously. 

Doubling university enrollment is a huge achievement, especially for a country which once had high illiteracy rates. Although there have been many criticisms of expanded enrollment, such as a drop in the quality of college education and the difficulties recent graduates are having finding work, in the long run more people going to college will certainly improve the quality of the Chinese population and fundamentally change the nation's cultural habits.

Some people may ask why, since the proportion of the Chinese population with higher education has been doubled in the past 10 years, reading hasn't increased proportionately?  Although the population of graduates is increasing, other social groups are reading less, so the average is still roughly the same. 

And many college graduates don't keep up their reading after finishing their education. 

But in general, the more time one spends in education, the more one reads. Eight successive national reading surveys have all shown that college students and civil servants are the two groups that read most. 

More time in education means better reading habits, which China needs to cultivate its potential creativity and move into the ranks of developed nations. 

As long as China doesn't fall short in education, fears of it becoming a "low IQ society" will remain unrealized.

The author is a current affairs commentator. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn