According to a new report by Chinese state media outlet China News, legalists in China are considering a new law that would impose penalties against anyone who makes videos, where people eat large amounts of food or binge drinks. The proposed media rule is part of a broader law to discourage food wastage, which would allow China’s restaurants to charge extra for customers who do not finish their meal.
The Chinese government, under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, launched a campaign called the Clean Plate Campaign earlier this year in an effort to waste less food domestically. Xi said the goal in the summer was to create a social order where “waste is shameful and exhausting is admirable.” Fines for breaking the new law range from 10,000 yuan to 100,000 yuan, or the U.S. The currency will range from about $ 1,530 to $ 15,300.
The binge-eating and drinking video, known by the term “moutang”, became popular in China in recent years. Mukabang is a combination of Korean words for “eat” and “broadcast”, with viral stars like Pangjai doing fine and enjoying Internet fame with English-speaking audiences on platforms such as Twitter and YouTube.
What exactly does Pangjai do? He eats a lot, smokes cigarettes, and drinks stylishly – while occasionally recounting stories about his life, his home, and his family. This all sounds great and more visually compelling, but Pangjai announced in August that he would no longer make videos due to the government’s reprimand. Surprisingly, Pangzai re-aired this month on Twitter.
The draft legislation, first reported in English by Sixth Tone, was presented to the National People’s Congress of China Standing Committee on Tuesday, and includes “radio stations, television stations and online audio and video service providers.” ” An audio-only version of Muqtang sounds kind of gross, but who are we to judge?
Traditionally, it is too polite in China to serve large portions of guests’ meals, a way of showing generosity that would be familiar to many Americans. But that generosity is creating a culture of waste, where an estimated 17 million pounds of food is thrown away every year in China. According to a recent study by the Chinese Academy of Science and the World Wildlife Fund, this food can feed at least 30 million people each year – the entire population of Texas.
While we are sympathetic to the idea of reducing food wastage, it is another area where the Chinese government has overstopped. If you have ever seen a video by 34-year-old Pangzai, you know that there is no food or drink that is going waste.
Pangzai is a winner who is sharing his life with the Internet, even when he does a “whirlwind beer” swirl while doing so.
In fact, the blogger initially assumed that Pangzai’s video could be approved by the Chinese government when it went viral last year, given its popularity on Western social media platforms. Pangzai is a middle-class man in China who surely helps Internet users outside the country belong to a culture that they often hear negatively in the mainstream American press. Alas, Pangzai was not involved in the state-sanctioned Tornado Beer Diplomacy with the rest of the world. If this new law is passed, it is officially impostor.
China’s cyber police have recently closed more than 13,000 silentbang video accounts for sealing food wastage, calling on the United States and China during a controversial period in the new Cold War and so forth. Are increasing. We need more mookbangs, not less, if we want average people on both sides of this stupid conflict to understand each other better and avoid the mistakes of the First Cold War.
It is not clear what will happen to Pangzai’s Twitter account if the new anti-binge law is passed, but he is still speaking out after winning on 1 December.
We survived that bizarre period from about 1945–1990, looking at the nuclear weapons learned decades later, when the Soviet Union and the US were always 20-minutes away from global destruction. But today we have internet and silentbang to help bridge the cultural divide. We should keep it that way.
