Here are two key characters: min yi.

Look out for them. Literally translated as "popular will," min yi is often referred to as public opinion. Min yi diaocha, for example, means public opinion poll.

The word has caught my eyes frequently of late. Yesterday when I was online, it jumped out at me.

A blogger, using an imaginative name with five Chinese characters containing nine ren (person), claimed that China has entered a new phrase characterized by interaction between min yi and reform.

Curious, I put min yi into a search engine and spent an hour online, trying to find how it interacts with reform today.

Of course, Internet opinion is only part of min yi. There are other outlets, traditional and modern, giving vent to popular views and opinions.

Mobile phones, for instance, are another handy medium Chinese often use, especially during special occasions when people take issues and express their views via messages.

Nevertheless, the Internet has become a force, perhaps the most influential force, in shaping Chinese min yi and bringing it to the attention of society, and policy-makers in particular.

The Internet has opened a huge vista for the general public to express, comment, debate, criticize and even attack. Netizens say whatever they want to say whenever they want to say it.

It is true that no one is able to count how many articles have been published about the ongoing reform on the Internet. It is also true that much online debate is not attacking the real issues.

However, never before have the Chinese been so active in expressing themselves.

Never before have common folks become so enthusiastic in debating China's general reform policies.

They may sometimes miss the point. But matters relating to people's lives such as healthcare and farmers' incomes are the issues that min yi is mostly debating.

People argue and disagree more often than they can agree.

The current debate, however, is more interesting than it used to be, since more ordinary people are taking sides.

China's reform has never been smooth sailing. In the three decades of reform, we have seen three great debates concerning reform policies.

The 1982-84 debate was over the commodity economy (it was so called because ideology still prevailed then, and the nation shied away from recognizing the market economy).

The 1989-92 debate was over market-oriented economy (it was a compromise, of sorts, to distinguish China's reform from the market economy in the West).

The third debate, which began in 2004 and still rages today, focuses on the market economy. Unlike the previous two that were chiefly the concern of elites political figures, economists and journalists, this time it has gained the attention of laobaixing (common folk). Attackers and defenders are people from all walks of life.

Laobaixing have voiced their opinions and it is worth noting that many do not share the elite's advocacy of the market economy simply because they want to share the benefits brought by the reform.

Farmers, for example, want their livelihoods improved.

When a small group of farmers in East China's Anhui Province contracted their production quotes to individual household in the late 1970s, they were ahead of the elite, the first to embark on the road to reform China's countryside.

Three decades have passed since then, and the market economy has changed the face of urban China. However rural China remains a striking contrast.

Will the advance of the market economy help farmers as some elite economists have suggested? Their argument is: developmental problems exist because market economic reform is not thorough enough.

I do not see any reason why innocent farmers are willing to be marginalized any further. Rural voices grow into min yi and they want what the market economy cannot deliver.

Indeed, at this point the best things the government has done are administrative policy and financial adjustments that include, for example, waiving tuition fees for rural school children and scrapping the 2,000-year-old agricultural tax.

Of course, more needs to be done. The New Countryside campaign gives hope to farmers who deserve to be treated the same as their urban cousins.

No longer short of public opinion, China's common folk are learning the importance of min yi. So must policy-makers.

Healthcare, for example, is another controversy that draws polarized views.

When Health Minister Gao Qiang explained the complexities of rising medical costs recently, the public disagreed, with some criticizing the minister for shirking his duty.

Facing mounting complaints, Premier Wen Jiabao earlier this month announced at the National People's Congress annual session that the government would accelerate the building of community-based clinics that would be included in medical insurance programs.

The premier's response to min yi was well received. The fact that people now expect to be listened to and that their opinions are taken into consideration is a positive and constructive element of the ongoing reform.

To see how seriously the government now takes min yi, I checked four websites of municipalities directly under the central government, Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Chongqing.

The result? All have dedicated special channels for common folks to communicate. The governments have learned that they can neither cheat nor fail min yi.

(China Daily March 31, 2006)