Despite the fact that China has developed by leaps and bounds over the last three decades, there remains a persistent voice which claims the West, particu¬larly the US, is better than China in almost every aspect.

However, along with China's rise, more people are traveling abroad and seeing the West by themselves. Voic¬es that praise the West and degrade China have increasingly become the laughingstock of society.

One cyber opinion leader recently posted a story online in which a Chinese boy in a US classroom tells his teacher that water boils at 100 degrees Cel¬sius, emphasizing that this is the standard answer. After the class is made to boil water them¬selves, proving that variations in boiling tempera¬ture can occur due to different factors, the boy com¬plains that schools in the US do not ask students to trust their textbooks or believe in standard answers.

The reader is supposed to con¬clude that the US education system is better because it promotes hands-on learning. Perhaps the greatest flaw of this simple-minded story is that if the Chinese boy is a victim of textbook-orientated education, he should know that water's boiling point depends on various factors and even be able to list these factors and their effects like an encyclopedia. In fact, only if he fails textbook learn¬ing will he believe that 100 degrees Celsius is the standard answer.

Yet some people, mostly other cyber opinion leaders, fell for it. They joined the original poster's attack on China's education, even saying this is why they should send kids overseas for education. Most ordinary netizens laughed at these opinion leaders' ignorance, not only because they failed to spot the obvi¬ous logical flaw in the story, but also because in most parts of the US, textbook-based education is standard.

As society becomes more in¬formed about the outside world, it is becoming harder to get away with such sweeping statements.

Last year, a famous Chinese TV host said in an interview that China's telecommunication fees were too high, claiming that in the US $9.99 can buy you unlimited calling for a whole year. This comment instantly drew criticisms from the general public and experts alike. One expert on the US telecommunication industry labeled this comment ridiculous, saying that although fees in China are higher, this example is ungrounded. That TV host eventual¬ly apologized on his Weibo account, saying that it was a slip of tongue.

Clearly, most voices that praise the US but discredit China are either misinformed or playing up old stereotypes. While the self-contained nature of China's past makes such comparisons to the West somewhat appealing, today's society knows better. People have gradually come to realize that the West, particularly the US, is far from perfect and faces many of the same big problems found in China.

With this balanced understand¬ing, rationality, long lost in China's society due to rounds of ideology changes, has started to take root again. To¬day, people no longer blindly give themselves over to a belief the way they did in the past when a few opinion leaders' propaganda could decide the tune of the country. As China now moves into a tougher phase of its reform, this rationality will become increasingly vital to the nation's future success.