Radio stations, TV stations, and online video and livestreaming platforms are forbidden to make, broadcast or spread programs that feature overeating, according to a new work plan issued by the National Development and Reform Commission, together with three other departments.

That's a positive move. It is easy to see from even a glimpse at any of the "big stomach" videos or livestreams, in which the hosts may eat a dozen hamburgers for lunch, for example, that their eating obviously exceeds a normal appetite. According to reports, such "big stomach" eaters can attract large audiences and more followers for commercial advertisements.

A good appetite can be healthy. Yet to promote such distorted eating is dangerous, not only to those doing the eating on the shows but also any who may be tempted to emulate or compete with them, it can cause eating disorders such as bulimia and can prove fatal.

In August 2020, a "big stomach" surnamed Wang in Shenyang city, Northeast China's Liaoning province died when preparing for his job, before which his weight rose from 100 kilos to 140 kilos. In the same month, a 3-year-old girl called "Peppa" was found to weigh 35 kilos, far exceeding the normal weight, which aroused nationwide worries about her health.

Those appearing in such videos or livestreamings are usually hired by companies with whole teams to finish the job, and even then they often throw up during ad breaks so they continue their performance. And as well as by encouraging people to eat so much it may harm their health, by creating the impression that it is ok to eat to excess, such "big stomach" shows may lead to people wasting food.

Of course, that does not mean food videos or livestreamings should be curbed. A good food program can teach people how to cook delicious dishes or showcase local specialties from around the country. It could also spread the millenniums-long traditional food culture of China, which has made a deep impression on the whole world and got many followers.

There is something very wrong with the system of values in a society that has only unkind terms like nerd and geek for the intellectually curious and academically serious. We all know what a nerd is: someone who wears thick glasses and ugly clothes: someone who knows all the answers to the chemistry or math homework but can never get a date on a Saturday night. And a geek, according to Webster's New World Dictionary, is a street performer who shocks the public by biting off heads of live chickens. It is an obvious fact about our language and our culture that someone devoted to the pursuit of knowledge is compared to such a strange person.

Even at a famous educational institution like Harvard, anti-intellectualism is widespread: Many students are ashamed to admit how much they study. The same thing happens in US primary and high schools.

Enough is enough. The anti-intellectual values that have spread throughout American society must be fought. There are very few countries in the world where anti-intellectualism runs as high in popular culture as it does in the US. In most industrialized nations, especially in East Asia, a kid who studies hard is praised. But in America, average professional ballplayers are much more respected and better paid than professors of the best universities.

How can a country where typical parents are ashamed of their children studying mathematics instead of going dancing be expected to compete in the technology race with Japan? How long can America remain a world-class power if we constantly put social skills and physical strength over academic achievement and intellectual ability?

Do we really expect to stay afloat largely by bringing in our scientists and intellectuals from abroad, as we have done for a major portion of this century without making an effort to also cultivate a prointellectual culture at home?

In cities like Beijing and Shanghai, online shopping is already a major part of daily life, leaving limited room for growth. As a result, e-commerce companies are increasingly turning to smaller cities and rural areas, where disposable income remains relatively high, in part due to lower living costs.

For example, Alibaba said its penetration(渗透)rate in developed parts of China is 85%, versus 40% in less developed areas. The company added that for the quarter ended June 30, more than 70% of the increase in annual active consumers was from those less developed areas.

Unlike urban residents, most rural Chinese have yet to experience e-commerce shopping. While that provides online platforms with one of the last untapped (未开发的)markets for e-commerce, progress has been slow due to the lack of infrastructure (基础设施) and logistics (物流)support, exacerbated by the lower population densities in rural areas.

Where the delivery infrastructure falls short, e-commerce companies have found other ways to reach consumers. Going door-to-door in sparsely populated villages can be a costly practice, so mini-distribution hubs like Rural Taobao can serve as pickup points. JD, which runs its own in-house logistics network, is making drones (无人机) that can bring up to 1 metric ton of packages to the rural areas, said the company’s chief technology officer last June.

The race to be the first U.S. company delivering packages via drone took a new turn earlier this summer, when Amazon’s Worldwide Consumer chief Jeff Wilke unveiled the company’s latest drone model at an event in Las Vegas. He pledged that Prime Air, Amazon’s drone delivery program, would be delivering packages to customers “in months.” Amazon appears to be throwing more resources into its drone aspirations than its competitors, which makes sense given that drone delivery could be very advantageous to Amazon’s core business. Certainly, it is impossible for China’s e-commerce giants to sit around waiting for his competitors in the race of setting up logistics network.