Professor Yu Jianrong is head of the Rural Development Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Born in Hengyang, Hunan Province, in 1962, he studied politics and law at Hunan Normal University in the 1980s, and in 2001 received his post-doctorate in legal studies from Huazhong Normal University. Professor Yu’s writings include “Change in Political Structures at the Village Level in Transitional China,” “Rights Defense and the Modern Rural Population: An Investigation of Hengyang, Hunan” and “Class and the Contemporary Chinese Worker.”

According to recent news coverage, ten domestic websites have been chosen to make forays with A-share listings in order to promote the development of new media in China, and at least one or two news websites aim to complete successful listings this year. Included on this list of 10 websites is Zhejiang Online.
Our market economy has allowed private internet portals to flourish, and it has also provided opportunities for a number of “official” and “state-funded” websites. This is beneficial for China’s political, economic, technological and cultural development. But we cannot forget that the market economy assumes an economy ruled by law, and the market economy cannot stomach rampant illegal activity. There is no reason whatsoever why major national priority websites with [government support and] all the advantages of the system backing them up should be exceptions to the same rules that apply to commercial websites.
The way things should be, however, is not always the way things actually are. There have been a number of times in recent years when internet portals have found themselves plaintiffs in lawsuits for re-publishing articles without permission, and most of these have ended in out-of-court settlements that were agreeable to both sides.
But the recent case brought by The Beijing News against Zhejiang Online in the Hangzhou Intermediate Court should make people turn their heads. Two years after The Beijing News brought its case, the Hangzhou court has still not rendered a verdict, but instead demands that The Beijing News bring a separate lawsuit for each of the 7,706 articles [for which copyright was allegedly violated]. The Beijing News has said it cannot agree to this, and so the Hangzhou Intermediate Court has rejected the suit outright.
Commentators have already pointed out that in this case the Hangzhou court has stepped way beyond the maximum trial period of one year. As to the Hangzhou Intermediate Court breaking this case into 7,706 separate cases, the former head of the intellectual property office of the Supreme Court, Jiang Zhipei (蒋志培), has said that “judicial organs should not commit such errors of common sense.” For Zhejiang Online’s part, their grounds of opposition have run as follows: all of the articles were “reasonably used,” and they are part of the “national team” (国家队), [in other words, state media], and “an important priority website of Zhejiang Province.”
When the local court decision has been infected by local protectionism even as these instances of widespread intellectual property violation are so plain to see, this means, I’m afraid, that Zhejiang Online, which refuses to acknowledge its own illegal activities but is now on a list of 10 websites preparing to go public, must deal with the problem of “credibility” before it can hope for a successful market listing.
When a website that serves as a public information platform, or for a commercial organization, has such an awful record of dishonesty and yet stubbornly refuses to recognize and rectify its errors, I’m afraid it must face questioning by the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) and the public, and cannot be allowed to enter China’s stock markets, which have already suffered so much “hurt.”
In less than a month, China’s first official law concerned with internet regulation, the Tort Liability Act (侵权责任法), will take effect. Article 36 of the law clearly states the responsibilities of internet users and those who provide internet services: “Internet users and providers of internet services who use the internet to infringe the rights and interest of others, must assume legal responsibility.”
Even though Zhejiang Online cannot be pursued for its liability under the Tort Liability Act, it is very possible that the website’s credibility will suffer as a result of the recent case and reports in the media. After so many crises of integrity, the regulators of China’s stock markets and the public will watch and examine much more closely the records of integrity of those companies seeking public listings.
This article originally appeared in Chinese at The Beijing News.

A: So if you only have 50 yuan in your pocket, but you use all kinds of numbers to show you really have 100 yuan, what kind of person are you?
B: A cheat.
A. Wrong, you’re a statistician.

In recent years, we have used the internet to resolutely organize and develop positive propaganda, actively strengthening public opinion channeling, and serving an important role in advancing the major objectives of the party and the nation. This has become a major innovative achievement of party news and propaganda work in the new era.

For quite some time now, bulletin-board sites (BBS) have been a favorite destination of Chinese internet users. BBS sites and forums in China are essentially social spaces built on discussion, and there you can discuss entertainment, relationships, sports, politics, technology and other topics. The wide-reaching interest in these social communities has become one phenomenon distinguishing China’s internet from the web in other markets.
Sage Brennan, an analyst of China’s new media market has said: “Given the fashionability of blogs and online gaming, people have found it easy to neglect the fact that BBS networks are the true center of activity on China’s internet. For a number of reasons, BBS networks have developed steadily, and they are increasingly vibrant. Internet companies, university campuses and even individuals have set up BBS communities.”
China’s most famous online forum in the beginning was “Shuimu Tsinghua,” which was set up in 1995 [at Tsinghua University] and was representative of the cyberculture on China’s university campuses. In general society, the BBS was best represented by the sports-related forum SRSNET (四通利方), which in November 1997 became famous for a post called, “No Tears in Dalian’s Jinzhou,” [which offered a subtle and caring description of an embarrassing soccer defeat for China and the affect it had on Chinese fans].
From 1998 to 2000, “Xi Ci Hu Tong” (西祠胡同), Tianya Forum (天涯社区), the Strong Nation Forum (强国论坛) [at People’s Daily Online] and “KDnet” (凯迪网络) were born, attracting web users with their unique community forums. As they pieced together massive audiences, online forums developed rapidly. They opened up a simple environment for interaction and exchange, particularly suited to the sharing and discussion of public affairs.
When weblogs emerged as the popular new medium, they attracted more and more internet users. But as blogs dealing with political affairs were few and far between, and blogs were relatively poor in terms of interactivity, online forums were still where internet users interested in reading about and commenting on current affairs tended to congregate.
With the advent of microblog, internet user interest in blogs and online forums has further differentiated. The reason lies not just in a shortage of readers. Some bloggers have discovered they simply can’t be in two places at once. Too many things are going on in their lives, and they don’t have time to kick around online forums and maintain their blogs. Other users have migrated to easier social media. And of course there are also a few who cannot stand the cheap shots or loss of privacy and have left the world of blogs and online forums altogether.
Despite the above-mentioned differentiation, reports from the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) indicate that the audience for online forums continues to expand each year. While the vitality of online forums has been challenged by blogs, microblogs and other Web 2.0 services, this online media so beloved by Chinese web users still has profound support long-term development prospects, and has an important and unique position in Chinese online ecology.
Strictly speaking, online forums lie somewhere between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, and they have an irreplaceable role on the internet with Chinese characteristics. Tianya, MOP, KDnet, Tiexue and other sites work on a “forum + editor” model, while the Strong Nation Forum, Sina Forum, Sohu Forum, Phoenix Forum, Baidu Post and other such sites are important components of larger news forums. All have made substantial contributions to China’s online public sphere, and they are often the places where sudden-breaking news stories unfold, where public opinion is sourced, where corrupt behavior is exposed, and where various social groups interact.
There are many examples in recent years of the way online forums have encouraged social development and prompted more open political behavior. Without the role of online forums, for example, the South China Tiger Affair might not have ended in the way it did.
In a global context, regardless of how online forums develop in the future, we can be sure that they will not draw attention in the same way they have in the past. This is because Web 2.0 has irrevocably changed the nature of the internet. Online forums undergone a process of development from small gathering places frequented by die-hards to mass public spaces.
In the old days, people using their precious computers (computers were luxury items) had to connect their modems, access their terminal software and enter in their BBS codes just to access BBS sites. It was a clumsy and difficult process. Today, internet developments have ushered all of this into the past. Browsers and RSS readers can now take us just about anywhere. The only thing that hasn’t changed is our desire as users to interact. Popular websites in recent years, including MySpace and Facebook, have all shown us just how eager people are to keep in contact with others. These new channels all have advantages that online forums do not have.
Therefore, in my view, online forums in the future will become mixtures — permitting those with a sense of kinship or affinity to build their own “online corners,” and also allowing popular mass discussion verging on real-time. The heyday of the online forum has already passed, but they have not entirely vanished. In order to survive, online forums must in the future be equipped with the following characteristics: general ease of use; a more friendly user interface, permitting real-time use of chat and gaming services; information not necessarily stored on a central server, but rather on a dispersed network that is always online.
It is not easy to gaze into a crystal ball and look at the future of the online forum, but this much is certain — the future of online forums lies in increased real-time interaction among users. BBS sites must learn from microblogs and social network services, otherwise they risk becoming a cottage industry, their influence gradually waning over time.
In many ways, the history of online forums is the history of China’s internet. In today’s cacophony of voices, with blogs, microblogs and social networks, online forums still have their own special beauty. We look forward to their next decade.
A Chinese version of this articles appeared in today’s edition of Southern Metropolis Daily.

As leaders throughout China’s vast bureaucracy get more proactive about the business of agenda setting as a complement to information control, a change now encompassed by President Hu Jintao’s official buzzword “public opinion channeling,” or yulun yindao (舆论引导), one favored tactic has been to train and deploy teams of “internet commentators” (网络评论员). These government-hired online eyes and ears, who scour the web for potential public opinion flash points and make pro-government posts to spin the conversation, have been popularly dubbed the “fifty-cent party,” originally a reference to the half-yuan they were said to be paid per post.
Internet commentators, wangpingyuan for short, have now been trained up and used by all sorts of government units at all levels, and they are one of the most open dirty secrets of Internet control in China, drawing scorn and derision from Chinese Internet users.
Local officials who respond to the central leadership’s call for more active “channeling” of information by deploying their own “commentator” teams sometimes advertise them without shame. The task, after all, is closely linked to the paramount work of “stability preservation” in a society where social tensions are running red hot — and stability preservation is the number-one thing on the minds of local officials in China these days, thanks to tough mandates from leaders at the central and provincial levels. Internet commentators, for example, figured prominently in the provincial government response to riots at Weng’an in Guizhou Province back in 2008.
Nevertheless, discussion of the “fifty-cent party” in the media remains somewhat sensitive, and sharing information on the nitty gritty of commentator work and training is generally out of bounds.
But the news on May 18 that Guangzhou’s corps of “city inspectors,” the camo-clad enforcers of urban order particularly among the rural migrant population in China’s cities (and a key component of “stability preservation”), would likely be getting its own team of internet commentators brought a few interesting comments from China’s media last week.
The original story — independently reported by Guangzhou Daily, Southern Metropolis Daily, China News Service, the Information Times and Shanghai’s Xinmin Evening News — quoted the head of Guangzhou’s City Inspectors Committee (广州城管委), Li Yangui (李廷贵), as saying at an awards ceremony that the Guangzhou committee would build a system of internet commentators, “working together with relevant departments to strengthen processing and monitoring of online public opinion.”
The goal, Li said (invoking the old media control buzzword of “guidance”), would be to “track and analyze online public opinion, preventing the spread of undesirable information and thereby generating positive guidance of public opinion.”
The cheekiest response came the following day from China Youth Daily , with columnist Liang Fafu (梁发芾) expressing support for China’s proposed “real-name registration system,” which would effectively end anonymity on China’s web.

In order to deal with negative online information and channel public opinion, a number of government departments have set up special internet commentator teams as well as part-time teams, and this is no longer a secret. It’s my view that we should make information about internet commentators completely open and transparent, instituting a system of real-name registration for internet commentators making online posts. The government has touted the real-name system for the web all along, and we should begin with internet commentators.

Writing in Guangdong’s official Nanfang Daily, Xun Zhi (迅之) agreed that city inspectors in Guangzhou “must work harder in the area of public opinion channeling,” but went on to promote something different altogether — complete openness of information about the actions of city inspectors.

Relying solely on favorable information from the side of city inspection departments will not suffice to change the negative impact of a whole host of unfavorable incidents involving city inspectors as they emerge on the Internet. How might city inspectors in Guangzhou channel online opinion in such a way that they are truly on the [information] offensive? I believe that first and foremost they need to build a system for the public release of information, so that citizens can learn information about the work of city inspectors in Guangzhou on a timely basis. So long as the release of information is permitted by policy, it should be made public, and through this process of openness the people might gradually develop a sense of trust about the work of city inspectors.

Writing at Jiangsu’s Changjiang Daily, Yin Guo’an (殷国安) brought the “guidance” and control aspects of Li Yangui’s remarks into sharper relief.

[According to Li’s statement] these expert and part-time teams [of internet commentators] must also serve a function of ‘channeling and stopping’: they must prevent the spread of undesirable information and create positive guidance of public opinion on the web. This means two things. First, “building an embankment,” preventing the spread of undesirable information. Second, “channeling,” or leading online public opinion to the point of correct guidance. This is a problem.
First of all, what does undesirable information mean, and what is positive public opinion? Given the same information, ordinary people might say it is “good information” while officials say it is “undesirable information.” . . . Should we suppose that “preventing undesirable information” means stopping the spread of information that reflects poorly on the work of city inspectors? Is “positive public opinion” just about not criticizing city inspectors, but simply singing their praises? If there are no standards, what can internet commentators possibly do? . . .

The final line of Yin’s editorial suggested the whole notion of “public opinion channeling” was misguided in its understanding of the proper relationship between the government and the public.
“Officials have this stubborn condition whereby they must always try to instruct the public and guide ordinary people,” Yin wrote. “In fact, the opposite is true. It’s the officials who should listen to the opinions of the people and handle matters according to their wishes. Many people have taken this most basic of principles and turned it on its head.”
SEE ALSO:
“Can setting up ‘internet commentator teams’ make Guangzhou’s city inspectors lovable?“, QQ Blog, May 18, 2010

In the following group of short essays, which I have called “On Democracy,” I’ll discuss the issue of democracy by responding to a number of questions my readers have raised, and then connecting these to the present-day situation in China. I will do my utmost to keep the essays under 2,000 words in order to convenience those youngsters who otherwise lack sufficient patience to read them through to the end. These essays are well suited to those under 30 years of age, and they might serve as useful accessories, or amusements, for university and secondary students as they engage in their habitual transmission of democratic concepts to those around them. ^_^
I’ll begin this essay with a letter from one of my readers.
In recent days, “Red Shirt” protesters in Thailand have taken to the streets opposing the government, paralyzing the country’s capital, and many readers have written to me about this. One long-time reader wrote to me and said painfully: “When I watch this Thai-style democracy, I feel pained. Perhaps it’s true that we lack the cultural capacity for democracy in Asia, that we have no democratic traditions? And perhaps we’ve taken this democracy that took root in Europe over two-thousand years and planted it on our own doorsteps, and that’s why problems arise. Could Teacher Yang offer some direction? . . . ”
I never found the time to write back to say that not only did the roots of democracy go back 2,000 years, but in fact they originated in Greece, the birthplace of Western democracy, where there have just recently been popular demonstrations to oppose the government.
I supposed the reader would get along fine without my “direction.” A couple of days later, though, he sent another letter, and this time his despondency was even more palpable: “Teacher Yang, it looks as though the democracy you hold so dear is not only unsuited to Asia, but look how problems have emerged even at democracy’s very source. Could it be that democracy has reached a dead end? Why is it that problems like this always occur in democratic countries? Is there any answer you can give? Thailand has left me really disappointed, and Greece has left me confused. Where does the hope lie?”
I had already decided by the time this letter came to write this series of short essays, so I didn’t give a personal response. What would I have said if I had? In light of the fact that he is a long-time reader, I might have harshly upbraided him: Kim Jong-Il has just made an official visit to China, so perhaps you could ask if any seats are available on his private train. If you could return with him to North Korea, perhaps you might get some sense of “hope.” If you stand in North Korea and gaze at the world from there, you will find that everything chaotic and inharmonious happens in democratic nations. Of course, compared to North Korea, just about every nation on earth could be called “democratic” . . . .
Over the past few years, I’ve received thousands of letters like this, if not closer to ten thousand. They never concern the major principles of democracy, nor do they address its deeper theoretical questions. Most are concerned with the surface and minutia of democracy.
Naturally, I can understand how for these young people who have just barely dipped their toes into the world, these ripples are enough to influence their views of the world. And considering that these young people have not had an opportunity to live in the democratic West, and don’t necessarily have the time to read too widely about such things, I think it’s necessary to devote at least a few words to explain some of these things in a bit more depth.
In the On Democracy series to come I’ll address a number of aspects of the democracy as everyone talks about them in everyday speech, and these can be seen as supplements to the larger essays I’ve written before. But there will certainly still be points of error and slip ups. So I hope younger readers will leave comments and points of view after my article, and raise any issues they hope to talk about further. I’m not in the habit of writing short essays like these, and there are sure to be many issues that cannot be explained clearly in them. But if you raise things in the comments or in letters, I’ll do my best to do “remedial work” in the essays that come after.
As everyone knows, any academic article must have a methodology, and while the articles in my On Democracy series are not academic, they too have a methodology. Simply put, it can be summed up in two idioms with which mainland Chinese are very familiar: “seeking the truth through facts,” and “one divides into two” (一分为二) [i.e., the idea that all things show internal contradiction].
As someone who lives at the same time and in roughly equal measure under democratic and undemocratic systems (I spend about half of each year in each) I want to do my best to describe accurately [what I have experienced] — the good is good, and the bad is bad. As for “one divides into two,” I know that many friends have a distaste for these “dialectics” that have afflicted the country for many years — but any problem will benefit by being approached from both the positive and negative sides. Still, in this series of essays I will raise my own viewpoints and come to conclusions that I find to be accurate. But I leave the final conclusion to my readers themselves. If everyone can come to their own conclusions, I will consider my goal to have been reached.
Goodness, I’ve already written 1,000 words! ^_^
So let me return to that reader’s letter. Thailand’s democracy is certainly far inferior to that of Europe and America, and Greece’s cannot be counted among the best in the West. In a democratic system, for the people to take to the streets, even smashing the doors of the government, is not a strength to be flaunted. At the same time, this type of thing is not proof of the drawbacks of democratic systems — and it is certainly not evidence that democracy has gone wrong.
Concerning the cases in Thailand and Greece, these are about other problems, whether social or economic, and democratic systems are merely throwing these into relief. We’ll discuss these in the chapters to come.
Democracy is not a decorative vase, nor is it a pretty woman on the dancing stage that you can lust over but cannot touch. For democratic countries, while “perfect democracy” may be an ultimate goal, “imperfect democracy” has already become a fact of everyday life, a means for the pursuit of social justice and and economic fairness. When people find that their portion of “bread” has decreased (as in Greece), or when they find that a special interest group governs their country (as in Thailand), they take to the streets and demonstrate against the government, voicing their opinions and anger according to rights guaranteed them by their constitutions. This is a part of democracy, whether you choose to see it as a strength or a weakness.
There is a phrase we often have at the ready that goes like this: the democratic system is hitherto the least bad system the world has come up with. Those who say this are of course supporters of democracy, and what they’re trying to say is that democracy is a good thing. But there are of course some subtle differences between these two statements. In this series of essays, I’ll opt in preference of the former, along the following two strains: 1) democracy is in fact a poor system, with many faults and shortcomings, but 2) when it is compared to other other (non-democratic) systems in the world, it is clearly the least bad.
It’s a simple matter to state this argument, but of course when it comes to “seeking the truth through facts” and the dialectics of “one divides into two,” the task is not a simple one. This is true for democratic systems, just as it is for non-democratic ones. When we declare that the superior advantage of a system with Chinese characteristics (中国特色的制度) lies in its “concentration of resources to accomplish big tasks” (集中力量办大事”), we should admit to ourselves that there is some merit in this argument — otherwise, how could a nation in which more than 100 million people still live in poverty be able to manage the largest-scale Olympic Games and the largest-scale World Expo in history?
If we want to show off our overall level of national prosperity to the world, we’ll have to wait at least 50 years before we can feel proud and elated. But when this “concentration of resources to accomplish big tasks” can make ordinary Chinese, including the old granny selling duck eggs and the young woman washing your feet, feel a sense of national glory and honor, who can possibly argue that this is not an incomparable advantage? Still, even as we admit this advantage, we must recognize that over the last century the great things this system of “concentration of resources to accomplish big tasks” has accomplished have principally been “great evils,” most notably Stalin’s great purge and China’s Cultural Revolution.
And there is another way of looking at things. When the people so easily resort to the constitution and democracy as shields with which to take to the streets, this naturally causes people to think this way is not very harmonious. Some might even say this way is “very bad” (influencing traffic, upsetting the country’s international image and the lives and routines of ordinary people). But what are the methods like in nondemocratic systems? If people living in such places discover, as the Greeks have, that their real wages and benefits are going down, or if, as in Thailand, they are unhappy with the special interests governing their country, what will they do?
I think most of you realize that appealing to higher authorities and petitioning for redress (上访) are not very useful. If you’re willing, of course, self-immolation might draw some sort of response. The idea of thousands kneeling before the government offices [to seek redress] is something we are seeing anew, but of course it has proven an effective method for thousands of years [in China].
This is a question we must explore step by step in coming installments of On Democracy, until everyone can arrive at their own conclusions.
This essay originally appeared in Chinese at Yang Hengjun’s blog.

After she found herself in a fight once again with her classmates, first-grader Lei Mengjia (雷梦佳) of Menglu County (孟津县) in Henan Province was subjected to a peculiar form of punishment — the head of the class organized a “democratic vote” by the whole class to determine whether she would stay or go. Two-thirds of the student voted for her to leave. Three days later, Lei’s body was found in a canal behind the school [and it was found that she had committed suicide].
The incident provides a glimpse into wrong ideas of democracy being taught in our schools. Democracy is a political concept, and it is a method citizens apply for the handling of public affairs. It does not mean, as the class head mistakenly believed, that all “major matters” needing resolution can be decided by a vote. Even in the context of political affairs, democracy must have as a precondition respect for the individual’s personal dignity and basic freedoms. Many editorials responding to this recent case have noted this point.
But I have also noticed that none of these editorials express skepticism about whether Lei Mengjia was in fact a “problem girl.” The discussion has focused on how to deal with and help these “problem students,” not on how they should be seen or understood.
All those in Lei Mengjia’s life — whether we’re talking about her classmates, teachers and schoolmaster, or her parents and friends — seem to have accepted the label “problem girl” that had been hung over her neck. This was because she spoke loudly, walked upright with her chest held high, her hands thrust into the pockets of her blue jeans — “Just looking at her, you knew she wasn’t a good student.” Moreover, she seemed to enjoy getting into scrapes, and drinking alcohol with the boys.
It seems that everyone believes schools tend to be divided into the good students and the bad students. In the past, schools even openly determined and selected which students were “excellent students” (优等生) and which were “substandard students” (差等生). There is a fixed system of benchmarks for determining whether students are good or bad — are their scholastic achievements good or bad, do they listen and follow instructions, are boy students honest, are girl students quiet and demure?
Sure, the head of Lei Mengjia’s class believes that all the other students in the class are better than Lei Mengjia. But what these students don’t understand is that to cooperate with their teacher in using a vote to send a classmate out of school, ultimately causing her the commit suicide, this is a something very wrong. Some students wrote kind words for Lei Mengjia on greeting cards they left for her, but still they voted to have her leave, and then later they even explained to reporters: “Those things I wrote on the greeting card were just words, I didn’t mean them.” This is not at all how good students should behave.
My point is not to drag these students down into the ranks of the “bad students.” It’s this notion itself that’s wrong. Everyone will stumble across problems in the process of growing up. Some people have more problems, some have less. What teachers should do is to help students work through their problems — their focus should not be on resolving “problem students.”
The concept of the “problem student” is itself a problem.
The most important thing is to work out what are problems and what are not. This is something that really needs to be talked about. Fighting is of course a problem, but for a girl to walk in a way that’s not seen as sufficiently delicate, far from being a problem, might point, if seen in another way, as a sign of her uniqueness and individuality, and as a significant personal strength. Perhaps it was prejudices about gender roles and differences that led to the discrimination and exclusion of Lei Mengjia, and which led to her own errors in using fights as a means of resistance.
It could be said that it was this standardized education system that not only forced Lei Mengjia to her death but also poisoned her classmates. They don’t understand how to tolerate those who are different. They do not understand the principle of democracy. They know nothing of remorse and responsibility. And they see all of these as hallmarks of the good student.
Some people will say, well, for so many people to have disliked Lei Mengjia — that’s just a fact. But we should not forget that this “fact” too is the product of education. That vote which decided whether she would stay or go, and ultimately whether she would live or die, was in fact also a directed result. The class head enumerated Lei Mengjia’s “record” and hoped all of her classmates would cast their vote “according to her prior behavior.” For these young boys and girls who were taught for so long that listening (and not independent thinking) is the mark of a good student, there was certainly a great deal implied [by the class head’s actions]. Just imagine, if the class head had spoken instead about how Lei Mengjia was not a bad person, but was only different, and that everyone should treat her fairly, would so many students have voted to have her leave?
There is a film called Juno that deals with a lot of problems in growing up, and that tries to provide people with better ways of explaining these problems. Juno, a female high school student, tastes forbidden fruit and ends of getting pregnant. Naturally, this is a problem that needs to be dealt with, but it is after all only a problem. Juno is not branded as a “problem girl.” Her parents gently blame her for being careless, and she is not censured as immoral by her teachers and classmates. She goes off to classes with her big tummy, and inconvenience much the same as a carelessly broken leg. She opts against abortion because she feels for the baby, but nor is she prepared to be a mother. So she finds a couple that is willing to adopt the baby. The important message conveyed by this film is that in the process of working through her problems Juno becomes more mature and more confident, and those around her become more rational and tolerant.
This editorial was originally published in Chinese at Southern Metropolis Daily.