Pitfalls of an unfettered net

Chinese students learn to repair an auto at Lanxiang Vocational School in Jinan city, east China's Shandong province, 24 July 2014.

Unfounded charges by netizens and irresponsible media reports push a premier technical training school to the brink of disaster

Shandong Lanxiang Senior Technical School has been known for years as one of China's largest vocational training bases for skilled workers, helped partly by its catchy promotion line: "One can turn to Shandong's Lanxiang for China's best excavator technology."

But the private training school and its headmaster, Rong Lanxiang, are now in the eye of a public storm because of a series of events, from allegedly organizing a "trans-provincial fighting group" and teachers beating up students who want to drop out of school to Rong holding three identity cards (as revealed by his wife during their pursuit for divorce), having six children, inflicting violence on his wife for 20 years and building a huge "gray-profit" empire.

Disagreement on the ownership of a residential property in Shangqiu, Henan province, between Rong and his wife during their divorce settlement led to a skirmish between Rong's staff and some members of his wife's family near the site on Sept 5, in which several people were injured. Local police later detained some of those involved in the skirmish.

This should have been a legal case, investigated by police and resolved through legal means. Instead, the case has become a lopsided slanging match. A series of media reports and information dug out by netizens against the school's chaotic management and campus violence, and accusations of manipulation in its graduate employment figures seem to have tarnished the reputation of the vocational school. Some netizens have even rephrased the Lanxiang school ad line into a teasing slogan: "Turn to Shandong's Lanxiang for the best fighting means."

The flood of negative reports and damaging information on the Lanxiang school is another proof of the price some people and institutions have to pay in the age of information. Easy access to the Internet has indeed made it convenient for people to express their opinions, but then the rapid barrage of unfiltered information can easily misdirect or misguide people. Many media outlets have carried reports of some poorly informed netizens unwittingly becoming members of the "Internet mob". Such cases seem to be on the rise because domestic Internet portals have failed to take effective measures to scrutinize opinions.

In the Lanxiang school case, some media outlets reportedly sent reporters to the school's headquarters in Shandong province to find the truth, but most of their reports appear to be based on hearsays or focus on the sensational history of the school's growth.