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China's Youth: Increasing Diversity amid Persistent Inequality
Understanding the young adults who came of age during the rise of China's economic and global power This book by a prominent Chinese sociologist explores how China's youth will influence the country's future. Focusing on millennials—those born between the early 1980s and the mid-1990s—the book examines the status, lifestyles, attitudes, values, and behaviors of this key segment of the country's population. Li Chunling's study presents a native Chinese perspective on the increasingly diverse generation that at some point will assume leadership of the country. Among the key questions addressed in the book How do Chinese millennials differ both from preceding generations in China and from their counterparts around the world? How can current and future relations between Chinese millennials and the Chinese government be assessed? And, what are the factors or fault lines that have shaped the intra-generational differences among China's young people? Members of this age cohort are extraordinary, and in some respects unique, in contemporary China. Their ascent has accompanied five historic and far-reaching developments. These include China's rapid economic rise, the adoption of the one-child-per-family policy, the largest domestic rural-to-urban migration in Chinese history, the opening of extensive educational opportunities abroad, and the arrival of the digital era. Young Chinese citizens have developed a comprehensive understanding of the world much faster than previous generations; millennials see themselves not as extensions of the past, but rather as the innovators of the country's future. Through expansive and in-depth empirical research on Chinese millennials and younger age cohorts (people in their late teens and early 20s), Dr. Li's book illustrates how China's younger adults reflect the growing diversity and persistent inequality in society. The book also explores how their distinct characteristics and views will shape the country's trajectory. For the outside world, developing a better understanding of this unique generation is an urgent task, given that China now has more influence on the global economy and regional security than at any other point in modern history.
- GenresChina
399 pages, Hardcover
Published September 28, 2021
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July 31, 2022
Millennial malaise — China’s Youth: Increasing Diversity amid Persistent Inequality (Li Chunling)
Li Chunling’s tome (and thanks to the Brookings Institution) is a collection of academic papers published across the 2010s on Chinese millennials. Included are a foreword and an introduction which provide helpful context to much of the work. I also recommend that a reader have at least a passing familiarity with Chinese politics and social issues to get the most out of this book. I would also recommend at least a beginner level in statistics and statistical inference. It is enlightening, frank, and well worth reading.
Li’s narrative is an especially useful corrective for those who imagine Chinese youth to be stereotypically “brainwashed nationalists” without independence or innovation. In fact, my take-away, although not explicitly spelt out, is that Chinese millennials are quite similar in many ways to their counterparts in the West. They face many of the same issues (e.g. inaccessibility of housing in desirable cities) and are similar in many ways (e.g. use of digital technologies, views on marriage and sexuality). Being of a similar vintage myself, I empathised with many of the millennials presented (statistically) in the book. One passage resonated: “[a]lmost every young renter has some tale of housing woes: dishonest brokers, relentless rent increases, tiny and poorly maintained apartments, rows with roommates.”
Inequality is a core theme. Far and away the biggest contributor to inequality — of education, income, and opportunity — is the hukou, or household registration, system. Hukou is geographic, passed down via parents and restricts access to social safety nets, education, and several other services to only those with the correct hukou. Originating in an early policy of urban industrialisation and rural agriculture in support, hukou now generates large underclasses of migrant workers. Education is the vehicle for social mobility, but this persistent inequality makes it difficult for those with rural hukou to participate. Even then, a degree is no longer a guarantee of a good job (sound familiar?).
Roughly half the book is dedicated to enumerating and characterising distinct groups of Chinese millennials. We move from the consumption and cultural patterns of highly educated university graduates to the plight of “ants” (graduates, typically rural, who have not found a job), NEETs (e.g. mothers forced out of the labour market due to few childcare options), left-behind migrant children, so on and so forth. We spend time discussing gender imbalances in education (women outperform and outnumber men — similar internationally) and how it remains disconnected from the very real gender pay gap (the paper, I thought, was empirically sound). I’m loth to summarise it, but much of the discussion can be boiled down to those who fell through the gaps of Deng’s reform and opening up policies, and shifts from traditional to more modern social modes. China has seen 100 years of economic development compressed into 30: inequality is disheartening, but not unexpected.
The last parts of the book close the circle — my reading is that the CCP’s interest in the youth is, fundamentally, existential (there is a veiled reference to 1989 here). Young people not only face unique challenges that increase the risk of unrest, but they also view their national identity differently than older generations. Chapter 14 discusses several social groups that, by dint of shared experiences and/or geographic concentration, present particularly high risks of emerging unrest. Those are university students (and especially graduates), young office workers who often live together in dorms due to the high cost of housing, and low-status urban youths (“ants”). I think the best way to understand these groups is that there is relatively high correlational risk of a shock affecting the entire group, and contagion risk of unrest spilling over to others. Li presents this almost generationally: the millennials are a generational cohort” who, through shared experience, have similar views.
The underlying theme here is that the CCP’s legitimacy is fundamentally based on providing growth and opportunity. Every social group we examine, and every policy prescription, revolves around the CCP needing to provide jobs and continued growth in exchange for normative legitimacy. There is frank (and surprising) discussion on this in the book: many Chinese youths prefer liberalism (generally referred to as “Western ideology”) but are in no hurry to transition towards it due to the legitimating logic of economic growth. I think, given the publication date, a chapter on this would be appreciated though this would take us closer to political philosophy. The only prescription that is not based on jobs and growth revolves around “patriotic education”.
Finally, the book is useful given what we can learn about Chinese politics and the academe. It requires little reading between the lines — political objectives and worries are stated frankly. There was an excellent chapter on the history of youth studies in China. Roughly, it is split between two tracks: one political and ideological (represented by the Chinese Communist Youth League), and one academic (by the Chinese Academy for Social Sciences). “Tensions and controversies” (e.g. shutdowns, splits, and so on) between the schools are frequent. The CCYL is, understandably, better supported. Li represents the academic field.
Li Chunling’s tome (and thanks to the Brookings Institution) is a collection of academic papers published across the 2010s on Chinese millennials. Included are a foreword and an introduction which provide helpful context to much of the work. I also recommend that a reader have at least a passing familiarity with Chinese politics and social issues to get the most out of this book. I would also recommend at least a beginner level in statistics and statistical inference. It is enlightening, frank, and well worth reading.
Li’s narrative is an especially useful corrective for those who imagine Chinese youth to be stereotypically “brainwashed nationalists” without independence or innovation. In fact, my take-away, although not explicitly spelt out, is that Chinese millennials are quite similar in many ways to their counterparts in the West. They face many of the same issues (e.g. inaccessibility of housing in desirable cities) and are similar in many ways (e.g. use of digital technologies, views on marriage and sexuality). Being of a similar vintage myself, I empathised with many of the millennials presented (statistically) in the book. One passage resonated: “[a]lmost every young renter has some tale of housing woes: dishonest brokers, relentless rent increases, tiny and poorly maintained apartments, rows with roommates.”
Inequality is a core theme. Far and away the biggest contributor to inequality — of education, income, and opportunity — is the hukou, or household registration, system. Hukou is geographic, passed down via parents and restricts access to social safety nets, education, and several other services to only those with the correct hukou. Originating in an early policy of urban industrialisation and rural agriculture in support, hukou now generates large underclasses of migrant workers. Education is the vehicle for social mobility, but this persistent inequality makes it difficult for those with rural hukou to participate. Even then, a degree is no longer a guarantee of a good job (sound familiar?).
Roughly half the book is dedicated to enumerating and characterising distinct groups of Chinese millennials. We move from the consumption and cultural patterns of highly educated university graduates to the plight of “ants” (graduates, typically rural, who have not found a job), NEETs (e.g. mothers forced out of the labour market due to few childcare options), left-behind migrant children, so on and so forth. We spend time discussing gender imbalances in education (women outperform and outnumber men — similar internationally) and how it remains disconnected from the very real gender pay gap (the paper, I thought, was empirically sound). I’m loth to summarise it, but much of the discussion can be boiled down to those who fell through the gaps of Deng’s reform and opening up policies, and shifts from traditional to more modern social modes. China has seen 100 years of economic development compressed into 30: inequality is disheartening, but not unexpected.
The last parts of the book close the circle — my reading is that the CCP’s interest in the youth is, fundamentally, existential (there is a veiled reference to 1989 here). Young people not only face unique challenges that increase the risk of unrest, but they also view their national identity differently than older generations. Chapter 14 discusses several social groups that, by dint of shared experiences and/or geographic concentration, present particularly high risks of emerging unrest. Those are university students (and especially graduates), young office workers who often live together in dorms due to the high cost of housing, and low-status urban youths (“ants”). I think the best way to understand these groups is that there is relatively high correlational risk of a shock affecting the entire group, and contagion risk of unrest spilling over to others. Li presents this almost generationally: the millennials are a generational cohort” who, through shared experience, have similar views.
The underlying theme here is that the CCP’s legitimacy is fundamentally based on providing growth and opportunity. Every social group we examine, and every policy prescription, revolves around the CCP needing to provide jobs and continued growth in exchange for normative legitimacy. There is frank (and surprising) discussion on this in the book: many Chinese youths prefer liberalism (generally referred to as “Western ideology”) but are in no hurry to transition towards it due to the legitimating logic of economic growth. I think, given the publication date, a chapter on this would be appreciated though this would take us closer to political philosophy. The only prescription that is not based on jobs and growth revolves around “patriotic education”.
Finally, the book is useful given what we can learn about Chinese politics and the academe. It requires little reading between the lines — political objectives and worries are stated frankly. There was an excellent chapter on the history of youth studies in China. Roughly, it is split between two tracks: one political and ideological (represented by the Chinese Communist Youth League), and one academic (by the Chinese Academy for Social Sciences). “Tensions and controversies” (e.g. shutdowns, splits, and so on) between the schools are frequent. The CCYL is, understandably, better supported. Li represents the academic field.
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