Blogging is not a waste of time

At least in China, blogging is playing a huge role to curb abuses of civil servants and authority. In the absence of free press and a huge govt machinery, the ordinary people are often trampled by high officials and their little pet dogs. Today's My Paper frontlined an article on how the internet became an important tool for the ordinary Chinese to shame the authority by exposing their abuses and corruption in cyberspace. Other than blatant abuses, state departments are also famous for cooking up skewed information and statistics to paint a distorted picture of the truth. And 'crazy rules are often snuffed out by waves of online scorn.' Chinese netizens have been very effective in their postings to embarrass country officials and also to overturn or stop some of their nonsensical rules and practices. Our netizens may not be as vocal in cyberspace for many reasons. Maybe there were lesser abuses of authority and corruption to start with. And our rules and practices are very well thought out and implemented and netizens have little reasons to scorn or embarrass our govt officials. Even then, there is a role for netizens to play to point out the minor infringements or irregularities that are bound to have. If there is no netizens, the silence shall either explode some day or be lost at the misfortune of those who are at the wrong end of the stick. I remember someone said this a couple of days back. Oh he was quoting Lu Xun of Ah Q fame. The people's voices of conscience must be heard and there must be an outlet for it. Blogging is never a waste of time. It takes effort to look at issues, to understand them and to nit pick problems that are blind to many people, especially the people who write the edicts.