Lin Min

    IDEOLOGY and propaganda officials in China have long tried to instill what they call socialist values into students and citizens. But campaigns to learn from Lei Feng and other State-anointed role models have apparently failed to curb money worship and corruption.

    When Oprah Winfrey wrapped up her iconic, 25-year-old talk show last week, it should have inspired some soul-searching among China’s propaganda officials and media organizations, the defenders of social morals.

    Winfrey is known as a pioneer in the art of confessional television and “The Oprah Winfrey Show” has been an inspiration for millions of women in the United States and other parts of the world. Winfrey has inspired women to turn their lives around, go to school, lose weight, “validate” themselves and “live their best lives.” She has become a spiritual icon and self-help guru urging viewers to find themselves and achieve inner peace and happiness.

    Winfrey’s success provides much food for thought for China’s TV hosts and propaganda department officials, not for the wealth her talk show has brought to her, but for her skill in “educating” people. She seemed to have a bottomless well of advice, but never bored her audience with cliches and platitudes.

    Lei Feng is said to have aspired to be a faceless cog in a machine. Many other officially selected role models did not seem real. Altruism is good moral standard but losing oneself means a life without roots. When Winfrey presented her swan song last week, The Baltimore Sun listed 10 lessons learned from her shows. Here is one: “Every single person you will ever meet shares that common desire — They want to know, ‘Do you see me? Do you hear me? Does what I say mean anything to you?’”

    But don’t get her wrong. Winfrey was not encouraging selfishness. “My hope is that you will be a safe harbor for somebody else. Connect, embrace, liberate, love just one person. Then spread that to two and see what a difference that makes.”

    By recognizing and “validating” individuals, Winfrey drew legions of followers who listened to her and found themselves. If Winfrey were Chinese, she would have merited a national award in “moral education.”

    Lei Feng has been away from the center-stage of ideological education in China for quite some time as reform has led to new ideas such as “to get rich is glorious.” But new attempts in moral education and teaching on personal growth were mostly themed on self-sacrifice and obedience.

    Winfrey herself is a good example of how individual validation can make a difference in one’s life. Last week she thanked her fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Duncan. “Mrs. Duncan was my first true liberator. She made me feel that I mattered. … She validated me.” Perhaps this is why Winfrey knows how to liberate and validate her audience. Audience members last week praised Winfrey for setting people free, giving voice to the voiceless and transforming an astonishing number of lives.

    And there is a lesson she did not say in her final show: You cannot help others unless you have found your true self. There is no harmony in a society unless every individual is respected and has peace of mind. The stereotype of unearthly, selfless men like Lei Feng with no sense of individuality cannot strike a chord among ordinary people any more.

    Winfrey preached the importance of peace of mind by invoking God. In China, with money and power doing the talking and spirituality missing from most people’s lives, it remains hard to find peace of mind, the cornerstone of a harmonious society.

    (The author is editor of the Shenzhen Daily News Desk.)