Why can't people in China read more books?

According to media reports, people in China read 2.7 books every year. Compared with 7 books per capita in South Korea, 40 books in Japan and 55 books in Russia, people in China read very little.

Perhaps the statistics reported by the media are not accurate, but we can intuitively feel that people in China are less and less fond of reading books from some phenomena in daily life.

It has been written before that many people are reading quietly in subways, trains and other means of transportation in developed countries. On these occasions in China, people are either talking or dozing off, and few people read books.

Mahjong parlors and Internet cafes are the most prosperous entertainment industries in small and medium-sized towns in China. A small town with more than 10,000 people has dozens of mahjong parlors and five or six Internet cafes. In Suizhou Mahjong Hall, a famous historical and cultural city and the hometown of Yan Di, Shennong, Hubei Province, almost all hotels and rooms are equipped with automatic mahjong machine. More than 90% of urban and rural residents have mahjong tables at home. Officials and ordinary people are addicted to playing mahjong, and even children of several years old can play mahjong because of the influence of their parents. In just a few years, Suizhou replaced Chengdu and became the famous "Mahjong Capital" in China. 80% of its two Xinhua Bookstores, with a business area of more than 4,000 square meters, are rented to restaurants and home appliances, and hundreds of square meters of bookstores are deserted.

Mahjong hall is almost full day and night, with no worries for tourists and prosperous business. Farmers, businessmen, retired cadres, teachers, doctors, civil servants, etc. To play mahjong, many teachers even played two games during their lunch break, boasting that they were "economical for half an hour". It can be said that regardless of education level and gender, middle-aged and elderly people participate in mahjong, young people surf the Internet and children watch TV. China people's entertainment life is almost condensed into mahjong, surfing the Internet and watching TV.

Whether in Internet cafes or university computer rooms, whether boys or girls, we can see that most of them are playing games and a few are chatting. Few students look up materials or read books online and in libraries.

There used to be a saying that satirized civil servants doing nothing all day: a cup of tea, a pack of cigarettes, a newspaper, half a day. It shows that there were still many civil servants reading newspapers at that time, but since the establishment of the Internet Office, no one has read the massive reading information brought by the Internet, and no one cares about newspapers. I have been to the offices of different departments, and many people are fighting landlords openly or secretly and playing games online. The situation of playing cards has become a topic of discussion.

Let's look at the leaders of various departments. They are busy with all kinds of inspections, entertainment and dinners all day, but even sigh that they can't spare time to study. Reading has become the patent of scholars. This is not just my good guess. Maybe many scholars stop reading books. Judging from the plagiarism of more and more papers, the reason why they take such risks and do such shady things shows that these scholars can't write anything. Scholars who can't write anything must have failed to save their energy in time, and only when their capital runs out will they run out of Jiang Lang. An expert and scholar who often reads and studies can't write anything.

Last year, I chatted with friends in the publishing industry in Beijing. The editor-in-chief of a publishing house said with emotion: Now there are more people writing books than reading books in China! This may be a joke, but now fewer and fewer people buy books to read. This is really worrying.

Gorky said: "Books are the ladder of human progress." Yes, not only the country and society can't do without books, but also human beings can't do without books. The increasing international competition is actually the competition for talents. Lifelong learning is the only way to improve the competitiveness of a person, a country and a nation, and reading is an important form of lifelong learning. Can China people's low reading and cultural literacy make China sustainable? Can we realize the great rejuvenation of the nation? I feel a little hung up.

There are four reasons why people in China don't like reading: First, the national cultural quality is low, and nine-year compulsory education has not been popularized until recent years. In these countries, high school education has long been popular; Second, the good habit of reading has not been formed since childhood, and the family and society also lack the atmosphere of reading; Third, the country has been implementing "exam-oriented education", so that children have no time and energy to read extracurricular books. At the same time, exam-oriented education deprives children of reading interest and motivation, which is also the most important factor; Fourth, there are fewer and fewer good books, and the content does not attract readers. There are more than 2 million kinds of new books in China every year, which are mainly erotic and romantic, and are worth reading, except for evaluating professional titles, market hype and shoddy, that is, a small number of imported books.

The habit of reading should be cultivated from an early age. The cultivation of good reading habits mainly depends on schools and families. But years of exam-oriented education have made many parents and teachers think that learning is doing homework. So we often hear a teacher say to students: Go back and do your homework. Parents urged the students to say: Have you finished your homework? No one has ever asked: What book did you read today? Reading extra-curricular books at school was confiscated by teachers, and reading extra-curricular books at home is by no means a legend. Reading has not attracted the attention of the government. As long as you walk around the school, you may hear the headmaster or teacher casually say: I don't like reading the most. Many school libraries are furnishings and few students borrow them. Parents only know how to buy toys and food for their children, but they don't know how to buy books for their children. I estimate that in some ordinary families in China, there are certainly not many 50 books.

The people of China fight for money, power and interests. In order to be admitted to a famous university and have a good job for children in the future, not according to their own interests; Adults study to be promoted or admitted to civil servants; The government attaches importance to highly educated talents rather than knowledge, so how can you be happy to study? The key is how to make China people establish a correct outlook on life, values and world outlook.