While "positive energy" prevails in China’s domestic news reporting, this is far from true with coverage of foreign countries. To make things at home seem even rosier, there is a steady stream of sensational content selectively emphasizing the dangers and discomforts plaguing other countries. Prominent recent examples include the focus on alleged dangers confronting travellers to Japan and the "kill line" narrative about poverty and precarity in the United States. At The New York Times in May, Yanzhong Huang noted that these themes have taken root, highlighting a viral video’s claim that "China is the only country in the world whose people eat well," and warning that a "dangerous overconfidence" has emerged as a result.
In the post translated below, from the WeChat public account History Rhymes, commentator Xu Peng argues that reporting on rising food prices in Japan has sensationalized and exaggerated the issue. Xu cites posts from two official sources, Henan’s Dahe Daily and China News Service, featuring a 23-year-old woman from Ehime who eats only one meal every two days. "This might sound like a personal lifestyle choice," the China News Service article says, "but pairing it with another news item reveals the underlying problem. The IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook report predicts that by 2027, Japan’s nominal GDP will be surpassed by India’s and the U.K.’s, sliding from fourth to sixth place worldwide." Food prices have been a real problem for many Japanese, especially vulnerable groups, but the survey report at the root of the story overwhelmingly framed its findings in lifestyle terms: only 14% of meal-skippers said they did it to save money (peaking at 18.6% for 25-29-year-olds), far behind lack of time (31.4% overall) or hunger (25.7% overall). "The media can’t pull weird stunts like this just to drum up traffic," Xu concludes. "Young Japanese aren’t canceling meals—the traffic-obsessed media have canceled their own standards."
I saw a really ridiculous news story today. A lot of media are reporting that young Japanese people are "canceling meals."
"People are iron, food is steel; you’ll suffer if you miss a meal." Are these young Japanese doing some kind of Daoist immortality cultivation? "Canceling meals," really?
Look more closely, and you’ll realize that this is about one 23-year-old woman who eats once every two days because of soaring meat and vegetable prices, so she just doesn’t eat now.
And it describes her as an "extreme enthusiast" for canceling meals.
Then we hear about reports from Japanese media, saying young people there are prioritizing spending time on hobbies and socializing over bathing and cooking. How does this amount to "canceling meals"? Obviously if you’re gaming with friends, meals can wait.
And if people have canceled cooking, does this mean they’re "canceling meals"? How many people order delivery these days?
According to survey data from the Japanese organization INTAGE, about 34% of the 15–49 age group choose to skip at least one meal a week. For 18-to-24-year-olds, this leaps to 41%. Does this mean nearly four in ten young Japanese have started deliberately skipping normal meals?
Doesn’t choosing to skip one meal a week just mean missing a single breakfast or dinner during that period?
You’d probably find more extreme numbers if you did the same survey on one of our own university campuses. Sleep in, skip breakfast—when I was at college I did this all the time, sleeping late if I didn’t have morning classes and skipping straight to lunch at around 11:00 a.m. at least a few times a week.
So might this 41% of Japanese between 18 and 24 missing a meal a week not just be getting a good night’s sleep, and not waking up for breakfast?
And a lot of people now are into intermittent fasting, skipping a meal a week or even a whole day’s meals, which is actually considered to have health benefits.
And portions in Japan are pretty small: they’ll stop eating after barely a mouthful. This might be why they have the world’s longest life expectancy.
And then that woman who eats once every two days: isn’t this holding up a rare exception as a general phenomenon? Aren’t there a lot of people with anorexia who eat even less than her? When she doesn’t eat meals, is she snacking instead?
So is a trend of "canceling meals" in Japan really worth reporting on? If I don’t eat dinner tonight, will you call that "canceling meals"?
And the media say Japanese meat and vegetable prices are rising too quickly, as if Japanese workers can hardly afford to eat at all.
I’d have believed it, if I hadn’t visited twice. When I was there a couple of years ago, a fast food meal cost me about 50 yuan [$7.50]. Some people are fine with just grabbing onigiri or bentos from 7-Eleven.
The yen’s fallen over the last couple of years, but on what they earn, they’re not struggling to eat.
And most surprising of all, young Japanese people’s job prospects are great [see reporting from Bloomberg]. On average, a fresh graduate these days will have nearly three offers to choose from.
So are things really all that bad for young Japanese?
Are the media seeking truth from facts with these reports on young Japanese people "canceling meals"?
If you applied the same sort of cherry-picking reporting to China, you’d find a lot of our own young people canceling meals.
That’s why the media can’t pull weird stunts like this just to drum up traffic.
Young Japanese aren’t canceling meals—the traffic-obsessed media have canceled their own standards. [Chinese]
WeChat account Unyielding Bamboo also commented on this tendency earlier in the month, citing coverage of living costs in Japan and protests in France.
[…] Actually, I totally get why some netizens and media feel the need to find a few current hardships abroad to fire people up and turn this foreign news into a kind of spiritual poverty alleviation. But isn’t this going overboard? Two stories a day? Isn’t that just making fools of people, turning them into frogs in a well? And the key thing is, it doesn’t even solve anything. However badly someone else is doing, you can’t pass that off as meaning I’m doing well. Someone else’s kitchen catching fire doesn’t show that our house is well built.
Finally, some personal thoughts: news states facts, and these let people reflect for themselves. But if the presentation of facts is "optimized," then the reflection is deliberately warped. If the greatest value of a piece of news is just "feeling a little better from seeing others suffer," then it’s really no longer about reporting the truth.
It just gives people a cheap sense of superiority. Or you could say it’s a kind of cheap spiritual massage, leaving people numb.
I think really commendable reporting doesn’t see someone else’s roof leaking and rush to pull up a stool and sit at the doorway, laughing.
Rather, it should ask: "Why is it leaking? When did it start? How are they going to fix it? And does our own roof have the same problem?" [Chinese]