On November 12, 2024, the Ministry of Education, the National Health Commission, the CDC, and other three departments issued a notice[1], proposing to “firmly control myopia prevention and treatment in kindergartens and primary schools.” As for how to do it, the Ministry provided eight methods: ensure sufficient outdoor activity time, guide parents to carry out myopia prevention work for their children, increase the frequency of vision checks in schools and the publicity efforts for myopia prevention, improve indoor classroom environments, strengthen vision health education, implement “vision monitoring and early warning,” implement the “double reduction” policy, reduce students’ use of electronic products, and increase sleep time. Currently, the myopia rate among Chinese students has reached an astonishing level. Over 100 million Chinese primary and secondary school students are nearsighted, accounting for one-sixth of China’s total myopic population of 600 million and half of the total number of primary and secondary students, with the youth myopia rate ranking first in the world[2]. According to statistics, from 2012 to 2017, China’s myopic population surged from 450 million to 650 million, and from 2010 to 2018, the myopia rate among elementary students increased from 31% to 36% (from 31.07 million to 37.22 million), among middle school students from 58% to 72% (from 30.61 million to 33.31 million), and among high school students from 76% to 81%. “Even 6-year-old children, in 2018, had 15 out of every 100 with myopia”[3]. The root cause of this result is precisely the reactionary capitalist education system of the Ministry. The oppression suffered by Chinese students is rare worldwide. In terms of study time, students in mainland China spend an average of 57 hours per week studying, with 40.7% studying more than 60 hours weekly, ranking first in the world[4]. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, residents aged 6 to 17 (most of whom are students) spend only 2 hours and 19 minutes daily on “personal free activities”[5], but spend as much as 8 hours and 12 minutes daily on “study and training”[6]. Heavy academic burdens leave students breathless and greatly harm their physical and mental health. In fourth grade, only 30.7% of students get ten hours or more of sleep; in eighth grade, only 16.6% get nine hours or more[7]. Waking up at five or six in the morning and finishing school after ten at night, with only an hour for lunch break, has become the norm for Chinese students. “Old schools are schools of rote memorization, forcing people to learn a large amount of useless, burdensome, dead knowledge, filling the minds of the youth with this knowledge, turning them into mold-like officials”[8]. Students devote large amounts of energy and time to academic pursuits, wasting over a decade of life on tedious, dull, useless books; coupled with the high pressure from capitalist schools and families, it is very difficult to avoid myopia. In any city in China, you can see students wearing glasses, even elementary school students. It is clear that the brutal dictatorship of capitalist schools and families forces students to devote most of their energy to studies, leading to the frightening widespread phenomenon of myopia. But how does the Ministry of Education plan to solve this problem? The slogan “double reduction” has become an empty phrase in the Ministry’s inaction; its only role is to allow bureaucratic bourgeoisie to attack private training institutions run by small bourgeoisie and their children’s academic pursuits under the slogan of “strict governance and comprehensive regulation of off-campus training.” And the so-called “increase in the frequency of vision checks and publicity efforts for myopia prevention,” “strengthening vision health education,” “vision monitoring and early warning,” “guiding parents to carry out myopia prevention work”—these statements, besides adding a few unrelated posters on campus notice boards, what impact do they have on students’ lives? These words from the Ministry are merely deliberately avoiding the core issue of capitalist oppression. However, the Ministry has two statements that genuinely reflect their wishes: namely, “reducing students’ use of electronic products and increasing sleep time.” The Ministry has always liked to promote the idea that electronic products cause large-scale myopia among Chinese students. On one hand, this is to conceal the root cause of the current large-scale myopia problem among students; on the other hand, it is to strengthen reactionary dictatorship over students. The Ministry of Education once demanded that primary and secondary students “principally not bring mobile phones to school” in the name of “protecting students’ vision”[9], to prevent students from using mobile phones and other electronic devices to expose and reveal reactionary oppression within capitalist schools. Moreover, under today’s Ministry society, student groups are under the control of Confucian families due to economic dependence, with no personal freedom. Confucian elders, to enjoy their old age and ensure family prosperity, are frantically forcing students to devote all their time and energy to capitalist education, realizing the so-called “social mobility” dream. Under such circumstances, reducing the use of electronic products only pleases the Confucian elders, giving them reason to force students to invest more personal time into capitalist studies, further severely damaging students’ physical and mental health. The oppression of students by capitalist schools is far more than just myopia; the myopia issue is only a result of the counterattack by the reactionary Ministry group after China’s capitalist restoration. For decades, Chinese students have suffered from depression and suicide, with their bodies harmed and minds poisoned, subjected to great persecution. According to surveys[10], the depression detection rate among Chinese primary school students is 10.0%, among middle school students 30%, and among high school students 40.0%. According to the “2022 National Depression Blue Book”[11], among 6,670 respondents with depression, 50% are students. According to Fei Lipeng’s “Suicide Situation of Chinese Youth,” among adolescents who attempted suicide from 1995 to 1999, 45.2% experienced “negative life events” related to dissatisfaction with work or study before suicide, 28.6% faced intense competition pressure, and 47.6% experienced failure or disappointment in exams. “China’s child suicide rate is the highest in the world, with about 100,000 youths dying by suicide each year. Every minute, 2 children die by suicide, and 8 attempt it”[^13]. From September to November 2021 alone, over sixty reports of student suicides appeared online in China[^14]. On December 15, 2020, a primary school student in Luzhou, Sichuan, wrote in a farewell letter: “I have to say, I live too tired.”[12] The problem is already very clear: “The school system must be shortened, education must be revolutionized, and the phenomenon of bourgeois intellectuals ruling our schools can no longer continue”[13]. The only way out for Chinese students is to resist capitalist society and oppose the cannibalistic capitalist education system!
我国近视患者已达6亿，青少年近视率居世界第一_新闻频道_央视网(cctv.com)
全国中小学生近视人数超1亿！关于孩子近视，学生、家长这些事实一定要知道……_澎湃号·政务_澎湃新闻-The Paper
https://news.eol.cn/meeting/202403/t20240301_2560903.shtml ↩︎14亿中国人估计一半是近视眼 青少年近视率持续居世界第1位_中部纵览_中国网
2022年中国儿童青少年视觉健康白皮书_澎湃号·湃客_澎湃新闻-The Paper ↩︎The definition by the National Bureau of Statistics of China in the “Third National Time Use Survey Bulletin (No. 2)” is: “The domain of personal free activities includes categories such as exercise and fitness, cultural leisure and entertainment, and other activities excluding public welfare volunteer activities within the social interaction category.” ↩︎
https://www.stats.gov.cn/sj/zxfb/202410/t20241031_1957215.html ↩︎
“The Tasks of the Youth League,” Lenin. ↩︎
“Five-Seven Directive,” Mao Zedong. ↩︎