For two days, Wang had been playing video
games in the tiny apartment he shares with three other men in Shanghai, a
city of 23mn. He left only once, to buy food. The games “help me
relax,” he said. “It helps me escape. I feel so tired.”
In June, the 32 -year-old quit his job as a
salesman with a traditional Chinese medicine company. His monthly wage
was a meagre $400. Rocky has had nearly a dozen jobs since he graduated
from college a decade ago. His mother, who lived in a poor village in
Shandong, a province a few hours north of Shanghai by train, died in
May.
“I feel so guilty. She worked so hard to try
to give me everything, and I could never do anything for her,” said
Wang, who requested that only his English name be used because he’s
embarrassed by his poverty. “I feel so lost. I am such a loser. There is
such a huge gap between my reality and my dreams. I feel so old.”
Wang is part of a generation in China known
as the post-’80s. Born in the 1980s, they’ve seen rapid change as China
moved from a Maoist state to a market-oriented economy characterised by
rampant consumerism and unprecedented inequality. Because of the
country’s one-child policy, many of them are only children. They’re the
first generation to grow up with the Internet, and in turn, have had
more access to information — and perhaps greater exposure to individual
censorship.
They’ve also had more access to higher
education, yet their schooling has been in a system infused with an
ideological curriculum that the Chinese Communist Party strengthened
after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, where pro-democracy
demonstrations were crushed. They’re vastly different from their
parents.
Chinese society has long been worried about
the post-’80s and what will become of them. They’ve been called spoiled,
irresponsible, materialistic, lazy and confused. “They are described as
China’s lost generation,” said Minna Jia, who researched the age group
while obtaining her doctorate at the University of Southern California.
“People say this generation only cares about money, about themselves.”
That sentiment was given voice in May, when the People’s Daily,
the newspaper that’s considered the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist
Party, published an editorial that had little good to say about the
country’s young adults.
“Why has a generation that should be full of
vigour and vitality become lethargic,” the newspaper asked. While it
acknowledged that young people face overwhelming pressures, such as
finding jobs, buying homes and taking care of their parents, it also
blamed them for not having direction in their lives. “They stepped into a
highly mobile society but meanwhile suffer spiritual confusion,” the
editorial said.
Chinese in their 20s and 30s were outraged. On
social media they denounced the editorial — and the government policies
that they think have put them in this spot. Their malaise isn’t
something they’ve generated themselves, they complained, but the
byproduct of the communist party’s social and economic engineering
initiatives gone awry.
“We have four elderly people to take care of
and one child to raise. Our children have no access to safe milk or fair
education. High real estate prices make us homeless,” said one comment
on Sina Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter. “We want to look up into
the starry sky, but who has clouded it?”
The high real estate prices have made it
impossible to buy, or even rent, a home. As a result, many 20- and
30-somethings are living together in cramped apartments in big cities.
In Beijing, thousands of unemployed college graduates, mostly from the
post-’80s generation, live in urban slums known as “ant villages”.
Owning a home is a virtual prerequisite for
marriage here, especially for men. Yet skyrocketing prices make it hard
to buy apartments in metropolises such as Beijing and Shanghai, so many
young people are postponing getting married.
Meanwhile, the surge of educated young people
entering the labour market has made competition fierce for jobs and has
depressed salaries, which often are barely enough to cover basic
necessities.
As only children, the post-’80s generation
also must shoulder the burden of caring for ageing parents and
grandparents, not just their own, but also their spouses’.
Endemic corruption and nepotism have meant
that those in their generation whose families have powerful connections
and wealth are privy to the best opportunities. The food that the
post-’80s eat is unsafe, and the environment they live in is polluted.
“We have no house, no car, no money,” another
Internet user said. “No rights of speaking. No chances. We don’t have
anything we long for. Therefore, we have become silent and helpless.”
“If I want to buy a house, I can’t eat or
drink for 30 years,” wrote Zuoyeben, a popular social critic. “I belong
to the post-’80s generation. How is it possible for me not to be
dispirited? It’s enough ... accomplishment that I’m somehow still
alive!”
Interviews with 20-somethings confirm their unhappiness. Xia Tianyi, 25, works at a university in
Shanghai. She said most of her friends “admit they have some sort of
psychological problems.” She also said that many of them would like to
leave China.
“Our childhood was very pure and simple,” Xia
said. “When we grow up, the changes that took place happened overnight.
Everybody feels so anxious and doesn’t know what to do. We can’t escape
an environment where everyone talks about money.”
Wang Wei, 27, who works for a local government in Nantong, a coastal city near Shanghai, had a similar downcast view.
“I don’t think the situation will get better,”
she said. At night, she works a shift at a Kentucky Fried Chicken to
help make ends meet. She said she couldn’t get a promotion in her
government work because “it is very clear that those who get promotions
all have family connections. Opportunities are not really fair for
capable people.”. “All we can do is accept the way things are,” she said.
Despite the widespread unhappiness, few expect the post-’80s to demand political change.
Zhu Dake, an outspoken cultural critic and
professor at Shanghai’s Tongji University, said the Tiananmen crackdown
had crushed hopes for democracy, freedom and justice while stricter
ideological education and the rapid expansion of free market reforms
replaced it with a cynical outlook.
“They lost the pursuit of their beliefs,” Zhu
said. “Materialism became the priority, and they came to understand that
beliefs are meaningless. The result is that they became the most
pragmatic and materially oriented generation because they were left no
other choice.”
“They were born in the wrong age,” he said. “They are the sacrifice of history.”
“They very much support the government in many ways,” said Liu Fengshu, the author of the book Urban Youth in China: Modernity, the Internet and the Self.
“I think people will protest if the situation really goes beyond their
tolerance level, but it is very hard now to say how much young people
can bear. They are very nationalistic.”
Mandy Zi is an example of much that the
disaffected resent. The 27-year-old works for an international company
in Shanghai, hopes to buy an apartment with her boyfriend soon and can
afford luxury products. Her father was in the military and her mother worked for a state-owned bank. When she was young, she studied abroad.
She acknowledges the dark side of China today,
but she remains an optimist. “Things happen a lot here in China that
sometimes exceed our ethical standards, and I think it is just getting
more and more outrageous. So many scandals, so much unfairness,” she
said.
“Still, I think economic growth gives us a lot of opportunities. China is still a place of hope. That is my conclusion.” — MCT
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