In recent days, I have seen many friends spread this news in the circle of friends, saying that at the beginning of the new year, Tsinghua University and Peking University reached an agreement through friendly consultation, and the teachers and students of the two universities have achieved smooth communication. In-service staff and students in Qingbei can enter the school on foot or by bicycle after passing the school gate.
1. Serious decision-making has become a joke among netizens
Without exception, the circle of friends is spreading the news as a joke.
But with the decision-makers at two prestigious universities, this is clearly a serious matter. After all, Peking University associate professor Li Zhi "hurdle" in and out of the school gate has become national news, and then it must have carried out a survey on the feasibility of interconnection, and the school-level leaders must have carried out serious discussions and consultations.
Everything is serious, and it is also in line with the voice of the masses, everything is done by the decision-making process, and the central media has also reported it, but why has it become a joke directly among netizens?
Perhaps the leaders of the two universities will feel that the views of netizens are ridiculous, just as some leading cadres often contemptuously think that netizens' remarks are not worth a penny when they are questioned by the masses after making decisions. However, if we take into account that the reputation and image of universities are not determined by themselves, but often by external public opinion, and that online public opinion and reputation and image management are closely related, we know that this practice of ignoring the opinions and opinions of netizens is wrong. In other words, the serious decision-making of the two universities in Qingbei has attracted ridicule, which itself is worth reviewing.
Second, there are actually many similar cases
In fact, similar serious decisions eventually lead to risk consequences, not to mention the latest Qingbei interchange incident? Take a look at the following cases, Yin Jian is not far away-
——In order to better live and Xi local primary and secondary schools, the education department of a certain place set the local winter vacation time after repeated research, but it was found by netizens to be "the coldest winter vacation in history", causing a wave of dissatisfaction. In the end, it was the relevant departments of the province that came forward and uniformly stipulated the winter vacation time, and the dispute was settled;
——The news that this year's Chinese New Year's Eve may not be closed under the arrangement of relevant departments has once aroused the dissatisfaction of the people across the country. Everyone complained that the foreign festival was not good, and now even the traditional festival is not good, after all, this is an important day for the whole family reunion of Chinese for thousands of years, and no matter how big the reason is, it is impossible to say. Although relevant experts listed a lot of reasons, but failed to calm the people's dissatisfaction, in the end, the General Office of the State Council issued a notice, once again emphasizing that all units are encouraged to arrange for employees to rest on Chinese New Year's Eve, so that Chinese New Year's Eve can be regarded as "lost and regained":
-- At the juncture of improving the stock market to become a high degree of consensus from the official to the non-governmental, a document issued by the relevant departments in a "timely" manner, which has beaten the stock market to a wrenched state in one fell swoop. Is it not the case that this policy was introduced rashly? It must have been introduced after various investigations and investigations, but as soon as it was introduced, it brought a chill to the economy. In fact, in February 2022, Tencent's stock price has plummeted for a while, stemming from an unconfirmed claim on social media that the relevant authorities will issue a negative new regulation for the gaming industry. Unexpectedly, similar policies were introduced as scheduled this year, and Tencent and NetEase fell sharply as a result. It's really "the same place fell twice";
INTERVIEWER After Japan's nuclear sewage was discharged into the sea this year, the international community, including China, was severely criticized, and people were extremely worried about the quality of seawater. Although it is no problem to just watch the news, it is in serious conflict with the trend of public opinion at home and abroad at that time, and even makes netizens unable to distinguish which direction the guiding wind of "above" is blowing?
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This phenomenon has been discussed in the article "Review of the "Coupled Risk" Phenomenon in the Late Summer of 2021" written in 2022, saying that the introduction of policies by a department may be the result of scientific research, but when each department promulgates its own policies according to its own "Pareto optimality", it may have a very unexpected negative aggregation effect, resulting in a change from optimal to suboptimal, or even canceling each other out, to the worst effect. For example, after various departments intensively introduced various major policies such as preventing "capital overexpansion" at the end of the summer of 2021, many observers were pessimistic about future economic expectations, and some foreign media claimed that "China is resetting the underlying logic of its economy".
This phenomenon, which economics calls the "synthetic fallacy," is a concept put forward by economist Samuelson, which means that an economic policy is correct at the micro level and not necessarily correct at the macro level; vice versa, if it is correct at the macro level, it is not necessarily correct at the micro level. For example, after China pledged to "carbon neutrality", many places began to charge carbon emission taxes, and even curtailed electricity, regardless of whether enterprises lived or died, carbon emissions were reduced, and enterprises were paralyzed.
For example, in March 2022, on the eve of the U.S. interest rate hike, the Financial Stability and Development Committee of the State Council held a special meeting to stabilize expectations and stabilize the market. However, unfortunately, the relevant departments did not realize the seriousness of the problem before and after the policy was introduced, and as a result, the policy became a risk factor as soon as it was introduced.
In recent years, many experts have repeatedly raised the risk of preventing the "synthetic fallacy" based on the historical and practical lessons of industrial development in various countries. In the second half of this year, the relevant departments of the central government proposed to guard against this risk, but in practice, this phenomenon still cannot be avoided.
3. What public opinion literacy is needed to crack the "synthetic fallacy"?
So let's analyze again, why does the "serious" policy issued by the department constitute a systemic risk and make this "synthetic fallacy"?
As far as the "interconnection" approach of Peking University and Tsinghua University is concerned, when making decisions, although it is also out of doing good deeds for the teachers and students of the two universities, and thinking that this is definitely a good policy and good news, there is a serious deviation in decision-making thinking, that is, only from the partial interests of the two units and from the narrow perspective of the "circle of friends", it just ignores the feelings of hundreds of millions of netizens, the main body of China's online public opinion and public opinion, and they are the real commentators on this policy and the group that influences public opinion. Once their feelings are ignored, the policies introduced will inevitably ignore them, and they will inevitably be ridiculed, thus making serious decision-making behavior a negative case in the field of public opinion.
If policymakers take into account that the "wealthy" families of the two famous universities themselves have their own sensitivity to public opinion, and that this kind of "strong marriage" behavior is not only beneficial to themselves, but also meaningless to the public, then they know that this practice will definitely cause netizens to look sideways. If you think about it a little deeper, you should know that what netizens want is not to watch your wealthy families act together, but to hope that the campus will be fully open and open to the public, not only to increase social welfare, but also to say goodbye to the epidemic era and enhance social confidence.
Therefore, we can say that the reason why there is a problem in this decision of the two famous universities is mainly due to the lack of public opinion and public opinion awareness of the decision-makers, which can be simply attributed to the lack of "public opinion literacy". The so-called "public opinion literacy" means that before the policy is introduced, it is necessary to stand at the height of the "cloud", that is, the network, and look at the problem from the perspective of hundreds of millions of netizens who are the main body of public opinion, and eliminate the risk factors that cause public opinion, so as to be safe and secure.
As far as various departments are concerned, before promulgating policies, it is necessary to fully consider whether there is a suitable soil for accepting the current network psychology and social sentiments? And it is necessary to look at the introduction of this department's policies from the perspective of the overall situation, and whether the timing is sensitive? Whether the content conflicts with the present? What do netizens think? What does the media think? What public opinion will say? All these need to be taken into account.
For example, when the relevant departments discuss whether to have a holiday on Chinese New Year's Eve, have they taken into account the sensitive psychology of the Chinese people at present? The foreign festival is no longer good, but people need to relax and need entertainment, then Chinese New Year's Eve, as a traditional festival, will inevitably assume more responsibilities, at this time should give netizens a big welfare, holiday "big red envelope", in exchange for the people's favor, but unfortunately, the relevant departments did not consider this, but only from the department's decision-making thinking, finally issued a self-satisfied, But the people are generally dissatisfied with the plan.
From the above cases, it can be seen that even the best decision-makers in the field and the best decision-making in the department can lead to systemic risks and losses to the overall economic and social development if everyone lacks public opinion literacy. The important thing is that this phenomenon is not two cases together, nor is it today or yesterday, but has always existed, and it is almost a risky phenomenon in Chinese society.
The real risk at present also lies in the fact that due to the extreme importance and urgency of economic and social development for the present and the future, all departments, from the central to the local, have taken action. Some of them conducted intensive research, some introduced policies, and they wanted to slow down the practice in advance, and the idea of loosening up quickly "rolled up". This is originally a good thing, "everyone gathers firewood and the flame is high", but it cannot but be said that in this critical period when the big guys are all in battle, many departments have more policies and more methods, but it is a period of high incidence and high risk of "synthetic fallacy", which cannot but be guarded against.
Professor Liu Yuanchun, President of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, proposed that the fallacy of synthesis is an inevitable product of the bureaucratic system. Because under the strict division of labor system, when the same goal is decomposed into different departments for implementation, it often incurs high coordination costs and even coordination failures, and it is difficult to complete the set tasks. From this point of view, the synthetic fallacy is not an occasional risk, but a risk factor deeply embedded in the system, which needs to be paid attention to from time to time, and policies should be introduced to prevent and correct it with the power of the system.
However, if we only look at this synthetic fallacy from the perspective of public opinion, our suggestion is very simple, that is, before the policy-makers of the department introduce policies, in addition to improving their political position, standing at a higher level, and standing on the overall position, they should also try to use the cloud perspective of the Internet to try to use netizens, If you see the risk consequences of the policy and the potential emotional fluctuation risk of netizens and public opinion, then resolve the risk as soon as possible and conduct a more prudent policy argument.
We hope that similar lessons will serve as a reminder to relevant departments that they must enhance their public opinion literacy and look at the consequences of their own policies and decisions from a higher cloud, a broader perspective, and a more people's livelihood.