False news about Lei Feng doesn't devalue his spirit

After the New Year, Li Zhurun, a retired journalist posted on weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, an apology for spreading a piece of April Fool's Day false news in the early 1980s that said "the United States Military Academy (at West Point) learns from Lei Feng". The apology, which admitted the story was false, has created widespread controversy among Chinese netizens about the relevance of Lei Feng as a role model today.

Lei Feng, an ordinary soldier who died in his 20s in the early 1960s, is known and praised by several generations of Chinese people for helping others, and he has long been held up as a virtuous example for others to emulate.

According to Li, in 1981 when he read a United Press International news report that said the students of West Point learned from Lei Feng and the Academy had put up a statue of Lei Feng on campus, he was immediately attracted by the story with no idea that it's a piece of April Fool's false report. And over the past decades quite a few people have heard the story that the students at the West Point learned the spirit of Lei Feng.