Education, graft the hottest topics on Chinese Internet

A recent report shows that education and graft are the two most popular topics for online discussion, China Youth Daily reported on Wednesday.

The report finds that 23.8 percent and 22.9 percent of sampled Internet users talk about education and anti-graft issues respectively, much higher than netizens concerned about environmental protection and real estate, 18.1 percent and 17.6 percent respectively.

The 2014 Report on Mentality of China's Online Society was released by the Communication and State Governance Research Center affiliated with the Shanghai-based Fudan University, one of China's most prestigious universities.

For the past eight months, the center tracked the online discussions of 1,800 users on Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like microblogging service in China.

Teacher-student relationships in the spotlight

The report found that among those who talk about education, 42.7 percent believe that students are over burdened.

Also noteworthy were teacher-student relationships, following a series of sex scandals involving teachers and students, earning 5.7 percent of respondents' attention.

60 percent satisfied with anti-graft drive

The report also found that on the anti-corruption front, news stories about sacked officials garnered the most attention from netizens. People who do not work in governmental institutions racked up 22.7 percent of the corruption related postings, 0.6 percentage points more than that of insiders.

These microbloggers approve of the anti-graft campaign, with public attention and satisfaction reflected online. Of 315 respondents who expressed their opinion, 60.3 percent gave their thumbs up to government efforts.

394 respondents expressed their opinion on how to contain corruption. Some 68.8 percent of them believe institutional reform has an important role to play in addressing the issue, a proportion much higher than those supporting the continuous crackdown on corrupt officials, which stands at 28.9 percent.

Smog a hot topic among environmental issues

Internet users are extremely dissatisfied with China's efforts in fighting pollution. Only a meager 1.3 percent are satisfied, while a staggering 89.2 percent are dissatisfied. Among various environment problems, smog drew the most attention, with 71.4 percent of respondents talking about it.

Related news:

Study reveals how much people understand Internet

Majority of Chinese minors under 10 use Internet

60 percent of mobile Internet users are male: report