Thursday, Jul. 26, 2007
China's Me Generation
Six friends out on a friday evening, the seafood plentiful, the
conversation flowing. Maria Zhang — big hoop earrings, tight velvet
jacket and a good deal of meticulously applied makeup — starts to
describe an island that everyone is talking about off the east coast of
Thailand. It has great diving, she says, and lots of Chinese there so
you don't have to worry about language. Her friend Vicky Yang is
hunched over a borrowed laptop, downloading an e-mail from a pesky
client on her cell phone. An actuary at a consulting firm, Vicky needs
to close a project tonight. While she phones a colleague, the
dinner-table conversation moves on to snowboarding ("I must have fallen
a hundred times") to the relative merits of various iPods ("Shuffle is
no good") and the sudden onrush of credit cards in China. Silence Chen,
an account executive with advertising giant Ogilvy & Mather in
Beijing, tells the group he recently received six different cards in
the mail. "Each one has a credit limit of 10,000," he says, laughing.
"So suddenly I'm 60,000 yuan richer!" The talk turns to China's online
shopping business, before that is interrupted by the arrival of razor
clams, chili squid and deep-fried grouper.
The one subject that doesn't come up — and almost never does when
this tight-knit group of friends gets together — is politics. That sets
them apart from previous generations of Chinese élites, whose lives
were defined by the epic events that shaped China's past half-century:
the Cultural Revolution, the opening to the West, the student protests
in Tiananmen Square and their subsequent suppression. The conversation
at Gang Ji Restaurant suggests today's twentysomethings are tuning all
that out. "There's nothing we can do about politics," says Chen. "So
there's no point in talking about it or getting involved."
There are roughly 300 million adults in China under age 30, a
demographic cohort that serves as a bridge between the closed,
xenophobic China of the Mao years and the globalized economic
powerhouse that it is becoming. Young Chinese are the drivers and chief
beneficiaries of the country's current boom: according to a recent
survey by Credit Suisse First Boston, the incomes of 20- to
29-year-olds grew 34% in the past three years, by far the biggest of
any age group. And because of their self-interested, apolitical
pragmatism, they could turn out to be the salvation of the ruling
Communist Party — so long as it keeps delivering the economic goods.
Survey young, urban Chinese today, and you will find them drinking
Starbucks, wearing Nikes and blogging obsessively. But you will detect
little interest in demanding voting rights, let alone overthrowing the
country's communist rulers. "On their wish list," says Hong Huang, a
publisher of several lifestyle magazines, "a Nintendo Wii comes way
ahead of democracy."
The rise of China's Me generation has implications for the foreign
policies of other nations. Sinologists in the West have long predicted
that economic growth would eventually bring democracy to China. As
James Mann points out in his new book, The China Fantasy, the idea that
China will evolve into a democracy as its middle class grows continues
to underlie the U.S.'s China policy, providing the central rationale
for maintaining close ties with what is, after all, an unapologetically
authoritarian regime. But China's Me generation could shatter such
long-held assumptions. As the chief beneficiaries of China's economic
success, young professionals have more and more tied up in preserving
the status quo. The last thing they want is a populist politician
winning over the country's hundreds of millions of have-nots on a
rural-reform, stick-it-to-the-cities agenda.
All of which means democracy isn't likely to come to China anytime
soon. And that poses challenges for Western policymakers as they try to
engage China without condoning the Communist Party's record of
political repression and its failures to improve the lives of the
country's rural poor. China watchers say the Me generation's reluctance
to agitate for reform is driven in part by a reluctance to tarnish
China's moment in the sun. "They are proud of what China has
accomplished, and very positive about the government," says P.T. Black,
who conducts extensive marketing research for a Shanghai-based company
called Jigsaw International. The political passivity of China's new
élite makes sense while the good times roll. The question is what will
happen to the Me generation — and to China — when they end.
For anyone who visited the workers' paradise when it was still the
land of Mao suits and communes, trying to reconcile that China to the
one that young élites live in today is disorienting. When I first
visited China in 1981, I went to the People's Park in Shanghai with two
traveling companions. Our obligatory Foreign Ministry "guide" ushered
us through a special gate reserved for "foreign friends." A knot of
young Chinese had gathered outside. As we passed, a few made loud
comments about the unfairness of having parts of the People's Park
reserved only for foreigners. One of my companions, a Mandarin speaker,
agreed volubly in Chinese. Immediately a group of young Chinese men and
women surrounded us and peppered us with questions that mixed naiveté
and aspiration: Are there still slaves in America? Where did you learn
to speak Chinese? Do all American families really have three cars? Can
you help me go to America?
That discussion took place 25 years ago, the span usually allotted
to a single generation. The naive, wary Chinese I met that day could be
the parents of the group gathered for the seafood feast in Beijing. But
there is almost nothing about the appearance, attitudes, life
experience, education or dreams for the future that those young people
in the Shanghai People's Park share with the likes of Vicky and her
friends.
The most obvious change is demographic. Because of China's one-child
policy, instituted in 1978, this is the first generation in the world's
history in which a majority are single children, a group whose
solipsistic tendencies have been further encouraged by a growing
obsession with consumerism, the Internet and video games. At the same
time, today's young Chinese are better educated and more worldly than
their predecessors. Whereas the so-called Lost Generation that grew up
in the Cultural Revolution often struggled to finish high school, today
around a quarter of Chinese in their 20s have attended college. The
country's opening to the West has allowed many more of its citizens to
satisfy their curiosity about the world: some 37 million will travel
overseas in 2007. In the next decade, there will be more Chinese
tourists traveling the globe than the combined total of those
originating in the U.S. and Europe. Rather than fueling restlessness
among the Me generation, however, the ease of travel seems to provide
more evidence that the benefits of globalization can be had without
radical change.
There's another reason for the lack of political ferment: it's
exhausting. Like anyone else, members of the Me generation are shaped
by their experiences and those of their families. When their parents
talk about the Great Leap Forward (a disastrous Mao campaign in the
late 1950s that left 20 million to 30 million dead of starvation) and
the subsequent chaos of the Cultural Revolution, they mostly tell
horror stories that would put anyone off politics forever. That chapter
in Chinese history, which officially ended with Mao's death in 1976, is
ancient history to today's young élites. They have known little but
peace and an ever increasing economic boom. "We have so much bigger a
desire for everything than [our parents]," says Maria Zhang, 27. "And
the more we eat, the more we taste and see, the more we want."
One event that the Me generation does remember is the crackdown on
student activists in Tiananmen Square in 1989. But to young Chinese
like Maria and Vicky, the Tiananmen protests are less a source of
inspiration than an admonishment. Were popular uprisings like Tiananmen
allowed to continue, Vicky believes, they would have provoked a
counterreaction by conservative forces and led to a return to fortress
China: no more iPods, overseas shopping trips or snowboarding weekends.
"I think that the students meant well," says Vicky, who was 11 at the
time and has only vague memories of what happened. But the crackdown
that ended the demonstrations "certainly was needed."
Vicky embodies the shift in the priorities of young Chinese. She's a
purposeful, 29-year-old actuary who rarely smiles but loves nothing
better than a party. She and her friends meet so regularly for dinner
and at bars that she says she never eats at home anymore. As the
pictures on her blog attest, they also throw regular theme parties to
mark holidays like Halloween and Christmas, and last year took a
holiday to Egypt.
Encouraged by her new boyfriend Wang Ning, a keen snowboarder, Vicky
decided earlier this year to take up the sport as well. To prime for
it, she went to a mall in south Beijing that specializes in pricey,
imported skiing gear. She chose a gleaming new snowboard made by the
Colorado company Never Summer, emblazoned with colorful, psychedelic
paintings of butterflies. Along with gloves, goggles and other
paraphernalia, the new gear set her back about $700. When asked about
the wisdom of spending a small fortune on equipment for a sport she may
never take to, she says, "I believe you have to be fully prepared and
equipped before you decide to start a new hobby." Besides, she adds,
"even if I don't like skiing, think how nice [the gear] will look in
the hallway of my apartment. Guests won't know that I don't use it."
Vicky smiles to signal she's joking. But she's dead serious when she
explains, over coffee at Starbucks, her lack of interest in politics.
"It's because our life is pretty good. I care about my rights when it
comes to the quality of a waitress in a restaurant or a product I buy.
When it comes to democracy and all that, well ..." She shrugs
expressively and takes a sip of her latte. "That doesn't play a role in
my life."
People like Vicky and her friends represent the leading edge, the
trailblazers for a huge mass of young, eagerly aspirant consumers. All
over China, young professionals like these banter about blogging,
travel and work-life balance. ("Work hard, play harder," says Vicky
several times, repeating it in case she isn't heard.) If they can't
afford to blow $700 on skiing gear, they want to be able to soon.
And so for China's leaders, placating the Me generation is seen as
critical to ensuring the Communist Party's survival. By 2015, the
number of Chinese adults under 30 is expected to swell 61%, to 500
million, equivalent to the entire population of the European Union.
From issues of grave consequence to trivialities, the government has
made clear that it will do whatever it takes to keep the swelling
middle class happy. In Beijing, for example, newly prosperous residents
are snapping up automobiles at a rate of 1,000 a day. The number of
vehicles on the capital's sclerotic roads has doubled in the past five
years, to 3 million. (By comparison, there are about 2 million vehicles
registered in all of New York City.) But despite a grim pollution
problem (Beijing air quality is among the world's worst) that could
embarrass China during next summer's Olympic Games, the central
government has made no move to curb vehicle purchases through
regulation or taxes. And that, in turn, has made it harder for
governments in the developed world to make progress in getting Beijing
to do more to fight climate change.
That's just one example of the long-term impact of the government's
focus on the Me generation. In an article in the official mouthpiece
People's Daily published in February, Premier Wen Jiabao stressed that
economic growth should take precedence over democratic reforms for the
foreseeable future, a period that he appeared to indicate could stretch
to 100 years. And yet for all its machinery of control, the party is
vulnerable. Senior cadres from Wen on down have acknowledged in public
that growing unrest in the provinces, as farmers clash with police over
expropriated land or official corruption, could threaten the party's
grip on power.
As a result, China's rulers face a dilemma: the very policies that
cater to the urban middle class come at the expense of the rural poor.
So far the government is erring on the side of the rich. In March the
government pledged to address problems plaguing the country's peasants,
such as access to medical treatment and schooling, health insurance and
the disparity between urban and rural incomes. And yet a relatively
small portion of the budget was set aside to address the concerns of
the peasantry, with the bulk of spending still concentrated on stoking
the booming economy.
Even more telling was the passage of what was widely viewed as one
of the most important pieces of legislation to be put forward in
several decades of reform: the revised law on property ownership.
Pushed through despite objections from old-line conservatives, the law
for the first time gave equal weight to both state- and
private-ownership rights. But a look at the fine print shows that the
law only protects things dear to the rising middle class: real estate,
cars, stock-market assets. Farmers, on the other hand, will still be
unable to purchase their land and instead will be forced to lease plots
from the government.
If left unchanged, such policies could exacerbate China's rich-poor
divide and create conditions for tumultuous social upheaval. The test
for China — as the Me generation grows bigger, richer and more powerful
— will be whether it begins to push for the social and political
reforms that are necessary to ensure China's long-term prosperity and
stability. How likely is that? Though they're not exactly clamoring for
free elections, members of the new middle class have shown a
willingness to stand up to authority when their interests are
threatened. Last October police in Beijing attempted to enforce rules
limiting each household to a single, registered animal no taller than
14 in. (35 cm). The drive sparked a rare public demonstration by
hundreds of well-heeled Chinese, mostly young dog owners. Within a
month, according to Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, President Hu
Jintao had intervened, ordering the Beijing authorities to back off. It
was the first time most Beijingers could remember a public protest
drawing a direct intervention by China's top leader.
It was hardly Tiananmen, but a small triumph for free expression
nonetheless. And if the West hopes to see China become democratic as
well as prosperous, it will have to find ways to encourage modest
breakthroughs like these, rather than expect sweeping change. At the
Gang Ji Restaurant, where the dishes have been cleared and fresh fruit
and more tea brought in, the mood is reflective. "We are lucky compared
to our parents," says Maria Zhang, who works as a membership manager in
one of the capital's most exclusive clubs. "My parents had nothing
themselves. They lived for me." Wang Ning, the snowboarder who runs his
own successful advertising company, agrees. "We are more self-centered.
We live for ourselves, and that's good. We need to have the strength to
contribute to the economy. That's our power. The power to contribute.
That's how our generation is going to help the country." China's future
will be defined by whether they realize that democracy can help China,
too.
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