
China’s Millennials - agronaut
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n19/-shengyun/chinas-millennials
======
yepthatsreality
Spoiler alert: generations are fiction used to quantify cultural behavior
during a specific period of time. "millenials" is a very American idea now
being applied to a completely different culture.

------
_iyig
For a more close-up perspective, I recommend “Wish Lanterns: Young Lives in
New China.” The author (himself a Western millennial) interviews and visits
with six different Chinese young people over a period of years, discussing
their goals, aspirations, worries and responsibilities.

[https://www.amazon.com/Wish-Lanterns-Young-Lives-
China/dp/16...](https://www.amazon.com/Wish-Lanterns-Young-Lives-
China/dp/1628727640)

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Throw_Away_8563
> They were offered free software that would enable them to dodge the Great
> Firewall of China – which blocks almost all major Western news sites and
> social media outlets – and browse the internet without restrictions. There
> was some surprise when it turned out that even elite students in China had
> little interest in finding out what Westerners were thinking. Only 53 per
> cent of the participants had activated the software (even after repeated
> reminders), and about 14 per cent of the ones who had activated it
> uninstalled it shortly afterwards. Active users were browsing content which
> wasn’t political.

People usually don't care very much about what foreigners think, particularly
such a nationalistic people as the Chinese, who AFAIK often think that the
West is using anti-Chinese propaganda. Not many Westerners would actively
browse Chinese or Indian sites to see their perspective either.

Edit: One might think that the fact that the content is censored might make
people curious, but I don't think that is the case if the people support the
censorship. In my country, Holocaust denial is illegal, but that motivates few
people to read the arguments of Holocaust deniers. Admittedly, the Chinese
censorship might be more effective than the German one, making people more
curious.

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mikorym
As an American I would be somewhat alarmed by the claim that the Chinese
millennials are not "rebellious" or anti-their-government.

But as someone born on the African continent I would shrug this off as a
mistranslation between Marx & Lenin, Inc. and both the East and Africa. When
communism came to Africa the response was: "Oh, you mean tribalism." I suspect
that the East may have had a similar mistranslation in the gears turning China
way back in the early 20th century.

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DavidHm
This was extremely fascinating. Thanks for posting.

~~~
wffurr
Seemed a little shallow to me and focused on a small slice of the Chinese
population born between 1981 and 1996 (a widely-accepted birth year range for
"millenials").

During those years, there was almost no Chinese middle class. All the growth
in China's urban middle class happened well after 1996.

Even with that growth, they're still greatly outnumbered by rural and working
class families, whose millenial children are likely quite different from
what's described in the article.

This felt like an article describing American "hipsters" who are nowhere close
to a majority of their birth cohort.

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wodenokoto
> not any old cotton tote, but one that’s trending on Instagram

Really? On Instagram?

~~~
yorwba
Why not? Chinese people use Instagram, too. This post by a Chinese celebrity
has more than 800k comments, most of them in Chinese:
[https://www.instagram.com/p/B1HRZMWHPvc/](https://www.instagram.com/p/B1HRZMWHPvc/)

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treden
is behind a paywall, how can I read this article?

~~~
shishy
[https://outline.com/DxUste](https://outline.com/DxUste)

~~~
bovermyer
I had never heard of Outline until just now.

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elliekelly
> They were offered free software that would enable them to dodge the Great
> Firewall of China – which blocks almost all major Western news sites and
> social media outlets – and browse the internet without restrictions. There
> was some surprise when it turned out that even elite students in China had
> little interest in finding out what Westerners were thinking. Only 53 per
> cent of the participants had activated the software (even after repeated
> reminders), and about 14 per cent of the ones who had activated it
> uninstalled it shortly afterwards. Active users were browsing content which
> wasn’t political.

If you’re a University student randomly offered “free software” to bypass the
firewall _of course_ you’re going to be acutely aware that your activity is
still being monitored. Probably monitored even closer than usual. I’m not sure
their browsing habits really indicate their interests in that scenario.

~~~
Jommi
This is an even bigger joke if you know that residential areas of the 2
biggest Unis in Beijing have built-in VPNs allowing you to access google
anyays :)

~~~
baybal2
I know of few Western universities in China giving out VPN on campus from
under the table, but nothing like that in BJ.

Can you elaborate?

~~~
Jommi
Go to Beijing. Go to one of the two best universities. Go to the residential
area. Connect to wifi. Go to google.com. This worked at least 6 months ago and
a student active confirmed that its how it has always been.

~~~
baybal2
Tsinghua? They made some form of VPN just for foreign exchange students as I
heard. Never heard of details though.

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ohduran
I'm not Chinese, and this article seems too...broad? I guess you can say
anything about Millenials from anywhere, with condescending tone, and get
pageviews.

~~~
Waterluvian
The weird thing to me is that it's not like the term "Millennial" was self-
adopted by the generation it describes. It was pretty much involuntarily
assigned to them. And the word alone just has such a lightning rod quality to
it.

~~~
lonelappde
"Millennial" is a dress-up word for "kids today". The connotation is much
clearer under that substitution.

~~~
hoseja
There's a browser extension that replaces every occurrence of the word
'millennial' with 'pesky whipper-snapper'.

~~~
CM30
There's also a browser extension that replaces the word with 'snake people':

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/millennials-to-
sna...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/millennials-to-snake-
peop/jhkibealmjkbkafogihpeidfcgnigmlf?hl=en-US)

------
scilro
>Now she is thinking of giving up the citizenship she worked so hard to get,
and moving back to an authoritarian China where guns and drugs are strictly
forbidden – at least her son would be safe.

To quote a friend, "all 'authoritarian' states (really, all states) distribute
their 'authoritarianism' unevenly. that you aren't experiencing any right now
doesn't mean it isn't being done, it just means you're not part of the
demographic being targeted."

The commonly understood definition of "authoritarian" is pretty insufficient,
since it doesn't capture non-state actors exercising authority, control or
violence over your life.

~~~
pjc50
Indeed. This was highlighted in the overthrow of Iraq. It was undoubtedly an
authoritarian state where dissenters and minorities were murdered. However,
non-dissenters from the ethnic majority were largely free to go about their
business. The destruction of the state made the place entirely unsafe, with an
interruption of basic food, medical and energy supplies.

The invasion happened in March 2003. Sixteen years later the country is still
at war at the edges, as part of the larger Syrian civil war. Car bombs still
happen in cities.

China appears to have chosen safety over freedom. The outcome is horrendous
for minorities (Uighur etc), but for the majority?

(By comparison, the Chinese civil war's combat period lasted about nine years,
with a wikipedia death toll of about nine million people. The war is still not
formally concluded.)

~~~
luckylion
Minor correction about Iraq: ethnicity isn't that big a deal, religion is.
Saddam and his government were Sunni muslims, the majority (2:1) are Shiite
(both are predominately Arabs), with other tiny minorities making up the rest
(Kurdish, Yezidi etc).

~~~
jacobush
Yeah, I've heard that too, but I wonder... religion is not something you
easily switch between families, and families run deep and old.

I am more familiar with Yugoslavia. Look at the Serbs and the Croats. They are
both Slavs.

Yet the war was _hardly_ over Orthodox Christianity (Serbs) vs Catholic
Christianity (Croats).

~~~
luckylion
That's true, but I don't know if Slavs are comparable to Arabs. There are
different Slavic ethnic groups with very distinct languages. Arabs are one
ethnic group with one language, but part of the Semitic family.

I suppose the Sunni/Shia conflict has an ethnic component with the Persians
mostly being Shiites, while most Arabs are Sunni.

~~~
jacobush
Not convinced. According to arabs I know, they hardly understand each other at
all if they are from to far away countries and never learned the "formal"
form.

------
thrwway483
I skimmed it, but didn't see much mention of something that I think is pretty
big to my generation (I'm '83) in the West: counterculture, protest, etc. It's
not as big as in the 1960s and 1970s had been (before I was born), but still,
it was definitely a pretty big element, and LGBTQ+ and social justice seem to
be important topics that affect many people here in the West. Here, much of
this is expressed -- or social change is effected -- through protest culture,
outrage, etc.

In China, everybody fully supports the government, don't they? I mean that
what the Party does, has 100.00% approval rating at all times, there are no
Facebook groups for discussing it, there is no activism protesting anything or
driving for any kind of change, and everyone there just totally supports
everything. (In Mainland China).

So how does this effect their youth and millennials, when they're literally
100.00% on board with everything, and there's no protest culture or
counterculture of any kind?

-

EDIT: little help from downvoters? What am I missing? (It's a really genuine
question about a huge difference between East/West.)

EDIT2: Thanks for the replies. I think we're all on the same page so I didn't
edit my comment. We all are talking about the same facts. However, my specific
question is how this effects millennial fashion, etc. (Being edgy,
counterculture, etc.) In mainland China, is Millennial fashion missing these
"edgy" or countercultural elements?

~~~
freeflight
> In China, everybody fully supports the government, don't they? I mean that
> what the Party does, has 100.00% approval rating at all times, there are no
> Facebook groups for discussing it, there is no activism protesting anything
> or driving for any kind of change, and everyone there just totally supports
> everything. (In Mainland China).

I take issue with that description of China because any government that is in
power usually is so because large numbers of its citizens supporting it.

That's something absolutely normal, as it doesn't work any other way. But with
China, it's somehow made out to be something bad when the Chinese are
supportive of their country and government.

Similarly: Facebook ain't the only platform for discussion and organizing, the
notion that China doesn't have any such platforms, and thus no counterculture
like that, is just silly.

~~~
corey_moncure
Have you ever been to China? You can find yourself cornered by armed soldiers
with assault rifles just for taking a photograph of the "wrong" building in a
completely ordinary public thoroughfare. Dissent is literally banned and
access to external social networks is cut off.

There's no way support for the government is completely genuine in such an
environment.

~~~
geogra4
There are plenty of places in the USA where you're not allowed to take
photographs too.

~~~
corey_moncure
Citation needed.

Name a place in any USA city where you will be detained and your equipment
confiscated for taking pictures from a public thoroughfare.

~~~
geogra4
You made the assertion that there are places in china where this happens so
you can go first.

~~~
corey_moncure
This happened to me personally in Nanjing. I'd show the photos as proof, but
of course I don't have them anymore.

