1034 China losing its Millennials. American (Jewish) TV seduces China youth with 'Cultural Marxism' (ie Trotskyism)

China losing its Millennials. American (Jewish) TV seduces China youth
with 'Cultural Marxism' (ie Trotskyism)

Newsletter published on July 7, 2019

(1) American (Jewish) TV seduces China youth with 'Cultural Marxism' (ie
Trotskyism)
(2)  China Is Losing its Millennials: US TV shows push nonconformity &
self-realization vs authority & establishment
(3) Battle for China's youth: American TV always reflects a distrust of
and challenge to authority
(4) Korean women seek plastic surgery to look more Western
(5) American TV is massively popular among young Chinese for its
perceived authenticity
(6) Inspired by Western TV, young Chinese rebel against their parents

(1) American (Jewish) TV seduces China youth with 'Cultural Marxism' (ie
Trotskyism)
- by Peter Myers, July 7, 2019

Parents of teenagers in the West have seen Hollywood seduce our
children, like a Pied Piper leading them astray.

Likewise, Pinnochio was led astray by the bright lights. That story,
which we all grew up with, carries a warning about the allure of
temporary attractions.

Hollywood is Jewish-owned and run. Packaged in its 'entertainment'
products is cultural subversion, along the lines of 'Cultural Marxism'
and Gramsci's 'March through the Institutions'.

Yet to young people this appears as Freedom from Authority, Tradition
and Responsibility.

We in the West are aware of it; but it's been happening in other
countries which have embraced Hollywood, such as China and South Korea.

China did not recognise it as 'Trotskyism', but this is similar to the
anti-Family policy pursued in early Bolshevik Russia before Stalin
overthrew Trotsky.

That Cultural Revolution was broght to the West by supporters of
Trotsky. The 'New Left' is merely a rapackaging of Trotskyism.

Young Chinese perceive American TV as "authentic", and challenging
authority.

What about the murder of JFK by the CIA? How often does Hollywood
challenge the established story?

Even when it does, it NEVER fingers Mossad.

What about 911 as an Inside Job - done by Mossad? Does Hollywood
challenge the official narrative?

The so-called 'authenticity' of Hollywood is fake, like the bright
lights that led Pinnochio astray. It's merely part of Hollywood's
self-promotion.

The reality of the 'Gender Fluidity' promoted by Hollywood is 'Trans
women' admitted to women's change rooms, and competing in women's sports.

(2)  China Is Losing its Millennials: US TV shows push nonconformity &
self-realization vs authority & establishment

http://www.efreenews.com/a/the-chinese-regime-is-losing-the-millennials

The Chinese Regime Is Losing the Millennials

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has a tremendous generational problem
on their hands. Millennials aren’t behaving in the expected or
traditional Chinese manner.

A growing number of China’s young people are moving away from what could
be considered traditional Chinese attitudes. This includes changing
views on authority, the Party, marriage, families and how they want to
live their lives. Often, this puts them in direct opposition with the CCP.

Ghosts of the One-Child Policy

The CCP’s most urgent and long-term challenges is the country’s
contracting demographics. Many Chinese millennials just aren’t having
children—not even one child that prior generations did and which state
planners took for granted. The causes aren’t hard to define; four
decades of the one-child policy have led to a dramatic fall in the
country’s birthrate.

That policy, which was instituted in 1979, has had a bigger impact than
the intended result. While it did curb China’s population, the CCP’s
enforcement of the policy was draconian and inhuman. Mass forced
abortions and sterilizations, as well as stiff economic fines were waged
against women for having more than one child. These harsh measures went
a long way to reshaping Chinese women’s outlook on traditional roles,
including marriage and childbearing.

Another related factor is education. For the past two decades, women
have outnumbered men at China’s universities. Young, highly educated and
in well-paying jobs, they value their careers and financial independence
over getting married and having children.

As a result, China’s population is both shrinking and aging rapidly. By
2030, China will have more people over the age of 65 than under the age
of 14. By 2050, about one-third of China’s population will be over 60.
This poses an existential threat to China’s economic progress.

The Marriage Crisis and the Economy

Nonetheless, for a growing number of China’s millennials, the ancient
tradition and institution of marriage and family has fallen by the
wayside. In just the past five years, marriage rates have fallen 30
percent. Many millennial women now view marriage as an artifact of the
past, when marriage was necessary just to survive.

The impact of this decline poses a threat to the Chinese way of life.
Ironically, reducing the birthrate was once considered critical for
China’s development; now it’s plaguing the long-term future of the CCP
and the country’s economy.

That’s why the Chinese leadership is especially desperate for young
people in the middle- and upper-income brackets to have children—at
least one if not more. As the CCP seeks to move China into a high value
producer economy, it will need more high consuming citizens, not fewer.
Peasants and unskilled or uneducated workers simply don’t have the
buying power of China’s middle class. Even the most strident command
economy apologist knows that it’s difficult to grow an economy with a
shrinking consumer base. This demographic trend will also put a lot of
pressure on social services as well as on children forced to care for
their aging parents.

China’s New Feminism

Predictably, young, urban working women in China are increasingly
adopting a more feminists outlook. They’re highly educated and earn a
good living. Rising economic development and education tend to lower
fertility rates.

Additionally, with many having lived abroad, China’s millennial women
desire a different way of life. They’re pushing back against state
propaganda, rejecting the traditional expectations of marriage and
children in favor of delaying or even avoiding both. Their ideals of
happiness and fulfillment differ sharply than those of prior generations.

Western Influences Are Strong

Once American television shows and movies became accessible in the early
1990s, they heavily influenced the views and ideals of Chinese youth.
Yang Gao, a Singapore Management University sociologist who researches
foreign entertainment’s influence on Chinese youth, observed that
American TV is "massively popular" among the Chinese younger generation.

The reasons aren’t surprising. Young people find the individualist ideas
of spontaneity, nonconformity, and self-realization very appealing. The
common theme of standing up against authority and the establishment are
particularly attractive to China’s  millennials.

The CCP has determined that additional ideological support is necessary
against the invasion of Western values into Chinese culture, or what
Chinese leader Xi Jinping termed, "the wrong ideas." Those would include
democracy and the rule of law, as well as religious and spiritual
beliefs, with Christianity, Islam and Falun Gong at the top of the list.
The CCP’s solution is to reinforce political and indoctrination and
monitoring of children beginning at the earliest school age, and
teachers and university professors, too.

But some historical facts simply can’t be avoided, even under the
powerful propaganda and censorship of the CCP. China’s millennials are
quite aware of the fall of the Soviet Union and Eastern European
communist political systems and the contrast with open, Western liberal
societies that continue to endure. Furthermore, the existence of a free
and democratic Taiwan just offshore and Hong Kong’s wealth and relative
liberty on the coastal mainland continues to impact the thinking of
millennials.

Stanley Rosen, a professor at the University of Southern California who
studies the relationship between Chinese youth and the state noted that,
"Over the past decade … many Chinese college students—perhaps even a
majority of them—prefer elements of liberal democracy to China’s
one-party system. I think there is a real threat."

The "996" Life

As millennials become more aware of the rest of the world through
travel, entertainment, the internet and social media, their view on work
and life has changed. The younger generation works hard in upscale jobs
to indulge in luxury items from the West as a reward for their hard
work. The "996" life—working 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week—is their
way out of the life their parents lived. They’re rejecting the dull
factory work their parents performed and the stifling propagandistic
culture of the Party. They value luxury and autonomy and look down on
conformity and authority.

The CCP’s Big Challenge

At the other end of the spectrum, even those that believe in the Marxist
ideology are dissatisfied with the current leadership. Some of the most
enthusiastic Marxist millennials regard the current party and its
leadership as not being Marxist enough. The backlash includes criticism
for their hypocrisy on equality and sexism in the Party.

With his ascension to leader-for-life, Xi now effectively owns China.
That gives him enormous power, but it is also a double-edged sword. The
old days of indoctrination of the masses through the totalitarian
control of information are long gone. Whatever goes wrong in China, from
a struggling economy to appalling levels of pollution to inflation and
more, the blame will belong to Xi and the CCP.

For Xi Jinping, trying to control the energies, doubts and aspirations
of its younger generation may prove to be the most difficult challenges
he faces. Dealing with U.S. President Donald Trump may well be the
highlight of his day.

James Gorrie is a writer based in Texas. He is the author of "The China
Crisis."

(3) Battle for China's youth: American TV always reflects a distrust of
and challenge to authority
https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/02/09/chinas-youth-admire-america-far-more-than-we-knew-surprising-survey-results-ideological-university-crackdown/

China’s Youth Admire America Far More than We Knew

The Communist Party's is responding with a sweeping ideological
crackdown on its universities.

BY ERIC FISH | FEBRUARY 9, 2017, 2:06 PM

In early December, Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered the country’s
universities to "adhere to the correct political orientation."

Speaking at a conference on ideology and politics in China’s colleges,
he stressed that schools must uphold the Chinese Communist Party’s
leadership and "guide the broad masses of teachers and students to be
strong believers" in Marxist theories and socialist core values.

The conference had the highest profile attendee roster of any education
event in recent memory: top university officials, representatives from
the country’s military and propaganda apparatuses, and four of the seven
members of the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee. In case Xi’s
speech left any doubt as to the meeting’s purpose, China’s education
minister explained it in an article the following day. "Schools," he
wrote, "are the prime targets for the infiltration of hostile forces."

For years, China’s leaders have feared that they’re losing their grip on
the ideological loyalty of the country’s youth. According to official
rhetoric, the forces wresting away young minds are cultural warfare
waged through alluring foreign pop culture and the infiltration of
"Western values."

With the Party firmly in control and no obvious stirrings of a youth-led
insurrection, it would be easy to write off this sentiment as paranoia.
But according to researchers who study youth attitudes and how they are
shaped by popular culture from the West, the commissars may not be so
far off the mark. A series of surveys conducted over the past decade
have found that many Chinese college students — perhaps even a majority
of them — prefer elements of liberal democracy to China’s one-party
system. "I think there is a real threat," said Stanley Rosen, a
University of Southern California political scientist who researches the
relationship between Chinese youth and the state. "Certainly they’ve
interpreted [the collapse of Communism] in Russia and Eastern Europe, at
least in part, to the infiltration of Western culture."

When actor Alan Thicke died in December, there was an outpouring of
sympathy on Chinese social media among a generation that had come of age
with Thicke’s affable father character on Growing Pains. One of the
first U.S. television shows to air in China in the early 1990s, it
presented a lifestyle and culture in stark contrast to what Chinese
state television offered. "Although this show was from the other side of
the world, ordinary Chinese people could relate to it," one Chinese man
recently told the Los Angeles Times.

Growing Pains’ early 1990s broadcasts in China may be as good a marker
as any separating the Chinese generations that came of age before and
after an explosion in access to foreign culture. Those born in the late
’80s and ’90s grew up as American entertainment rapidly became
accessible — both through censored official channels and uncensored
mediums like bootleg videos and the Internet.

Today, Hollywood imports still offer an attractive alternative to state
television’s tightly controlled lineup dominated by historical costume
dramas and anti-Japanese war films. Yang Gao, a Singapore Management
University sociologist who researches foreign entertainment’s influence
on Chinese youth, says that American television is massively popular
among young Chinese for its perceived authenticity. "This fascination is
coinciding with the rise of the new ‘golden age’ of quality television
in America, with complex characters and unconventional storytelling,"
she said. "By comparison, Chinese TV can feel uninspired with relatively
predictable plotlines and unambiguous characters. Heroes are heroes and
villains are villains."

Gao says that the Chinese generation born in the ’80s and ’90s came of
age amid a clash between traditional collectivist culture and the
emergence of individualism. In this atmosphere, Hollywood characters
have provided young people a basis on which to interrogate their own
identities that isn’t often found in state-sanctioned sources.

"Growing up we were taught to obey," Gao said. "It’s written all over
the political discourse and goes down to the very cultural fabric of
society: We value conformity and harmony. But at the same time, economic
development is arousing this neoliberal ideal: You must be independent
and autonomous — you’re on your own now."

In research Gao conducted with university students in Beijing, she found
that Hollywood themes of spontaneity, nonconformity, and
self-realization particularly resonated with young Chinese fans of
American television. "While many students applaud misfits, oddballs, or
otherwise unconventional figures on U.S. TV, what seems to have more
forcefully struck a chord is the image of a ‘challenger,’" she wrote.
"Someone who fights against powerful social establishment or authority."

One of Gao’s subjects, a 21-year-old undergraduate, reported being
inspired to go to law school by the TV drama Boston Legal’s depiction of
lawyers suing government agencies like the FDA. ". . . [To] me, it’s a
gesture of challenging authority, which suggests that the authority is
challengeable," the woman said. "But in China, I’ve never been exposed
to that idea at school, not to mention watching the government get
blamed or sued on TV." Said another interviewee, "Whatever the reality
is, American TV always reflects a distrust of and challenge to
authority, whereas Chinese media basically dodge the issue.""Whatever
the reality is, American TV always reflects a distrust of and challenge
to authority, whereas Chinese media basically dodge the issue." [...]

In many ways, this ideological battle builds on a narrative established
after the violent suppression of the 1989 student-led Tiananmen Square
protests. In the aftermath, the Communist Party realized that its
legitimacy, which rested largely on championing socialist egalitarianism
and proletarian internationalism, was untenable amid its obvious embrace
of capitalism. So it instituted a "patriotic education" in schools that
stresses historical "humiliation" at the hands of foreign aggressors. It
insists on the inevitability of "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics"
— an official euphemism for the Communist Party’s monopoly power over a
capitalist economy — and goes to great lengths to discredit the
desirability of "Western democracy."

This nationalistic education, coupled with China’s torrid economic
growth, is often credited with subduing any interest in lofty political
change among the country’s young. The most passionate and well-attended
political protests of the past two decades have indeed been directed at
the United States and Japan, which might appear to suggest political
dissatisfaction has been successfully directed outward.

But studies again suggest that the young educated generation that is
subject to the full force of the patriotic education is also the one
that looks most fondly on the United States and its political system.

One 2007 survey of students at several Beijing universities found that
28 percent liked China’s overall political system, with 22 percent
expressing dislike, and the rest remaining neutral. Conversely, 56
percent said they liked the overall American political system and only 4
percent disliked it. Results were similar with questions that probed
more specifically into attitudes toward American personal liberties,
separation of powers, and multi-party elections versus China’s
centralized leadership apparatus.

The study tested knowledge about each country’s respective political
system, and found that students tended to be "fairly well-informed"
about both, and the more they knew about each side, the more they liked
the U.S. system.

These findings would likely surprise anyone who’s spoken at length with
Chinese college students, and they came as a great surprise to the
study’s author, Professor Chen Shengluo of China Youth University for
Political Science. In the study’s conclusion, he noted that in his prior
personal interactions and face-to-face interviews with college students,
they "almost unanimously" declared that Western democracy is unsuited to
China.

"To put it simply, the survey results formed a sharp contrast with
everyday impressions," he noted. "How can we explain this contrast? It
is possible, I feel, that the things we usually encounter may only be
superficial and manifest political phenomena that cannot truly represent
the real wishes of the majority of students."

Stanley Rosen, the University of Southern California political
scientist, says this accords with surveys conducted for internal
government use never released to the public due to political
sensitivity, which he accessed through contacts in government-affiliated
think tanks. Rosen says one internal survey of history students at
nearly three dozen universities, titled "The Influence of Western
‘Cultural Penetration’ and our Countermeasures," found that more than
half identified with American cultural concepts propagated by American
media and entertainment; only 17 percent didn’t.

According to Rosen, it also found that 61 percent identified with
"liberalism" and found it to be "a concept of universal moral
significance, despite the fact that, as the surveyors put it, everyone
knows that liberalism is part of Western political thought and the basis
of the ‘democratic system’ associated with Western capitalism."

Rosen agreed with Chen Shengluo’s assessment of the contradiction
between everyday political conversations with Chinese students and the
responses on these anonymous surveys: It likely suggests there’s a
sizeable cohort that harbors critical thoughts of its government but
does not speak out about these thoughts. "I think that’s what the
government recognized," Rosen said. "The people doing the surveys were
shocked by the results, and you can be sure they’re seeing even more
sensitive surveys."

These findings don’t necessarily indicate the desire for a complete
transformation of China’s political system. Rosen drew parallels to the
Tiananmen Square demonstrations, which are commonly referred to in the
short-hand as "democracy protests," but were in fact less about a
whole-sale inception of Western liberal democracy and more about simply
adopting certain elements like press freedom, personal liberties, and
official transparency and accountability. "I don’t think [young Chinese
today] would want the exact American system either — I think this past
election gives you an example of that," Rosen said. "But if things
opened up more, then people would be freer to say ‘maybe these things
aren’t such a bad idea after all.’"

"They don’t see any possibility for change in the Chinese system now,
though," he added. "Certainly not in the direction of a democratic
system like the U.S. Given the perception that these things are not
possible, people don’t think much in terms of how they might or might
not work in China."

What influence Donald Trump’s presidency will have on young Chinese
opinions of American democracy remains to be seen. So far, anecdotally,
opinions of Trump appear to be mixed. But admiration of American
politics already has notable limitations. A survey of Chinese urban
residents by professors from Duke and American University found what
they deemed a "bifurcated image" of America. On a scale of 1 to 5,
respondents gave American foreign policy and policy toward China
relatively low approval scores of just above 2 on average, while
American democracy, entertainment, products, and technology all received
scores above 4.On a scale of 1 to 5, respondents gave American foreign
policy and policy toward China relatively low approval scores of just
above 2 on average, while American democracy, entertainment, products,
and technology all received scores above 4. "Nationalism matters," the
study concluded. "Nevertheless, nationalism’s impact on anti-
Americanism is much more nuanced and complicated than conventionally
assumed."

It added that urban residents generally held more negative views toward
U.S. foreign policy, but that attitude didn’t carry over into other
political realms. ". . . [The] same group of people, despite heightened
nationalism, are actually more likely to appreciate the U.S.’s
advantages with respect to science and technology, education, political
systems, and other socioeconomic achievements."

The ability to tease apart American foreign policy from its culture,
with an emphasis on the latter in forming impressions, appears
particularly strong among China’s young. A 2016 Pew survey found that 60
percent of Chinese age 18-to-34 have a favorable view of the United
States, compared to just 35 percent of those over 50. And a 2009 survey
of Chinese under 25 years old found that "Hollywood" was the term that
they most commonly associated with the United States.

"These young people are very pragmatic, even utilitarian people," said
Suisheng Zhao, a University of Denver professor who researches Chinese
politics and nationalism. "They have much more information, more
resources, more education, and they love American culture, music,
sports, and movies. A lot of them even want to go to the United States"

"On the other hand, they’ve gotten used to China’s improving living
standards and are proud of its rise," he added. "And they’ve seen all
those tensions between China and the U.S. and other countries in the
last few decades and feel Western countries haven’t treated China well.
So they have mixed feelings."

While the "patriotic education" may not have particularly endeared
China’s youth to their country’s political system or stopped them from
looking fondly at politics in the West, it may still be having desirable
effects for China’s leaders — just not in the way one might expect.

Haifeng Huang, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the
University of California, Merced, has conducted studies with Chinese
university students testing the effects of political and ideological
education. In one 2011 survey, he found that most students regard their
college political courses as nuisances — only 8 percent said they even
somewhat actively study for them. He went on to measure how much
students actually absorbed from these classes by replicating questions
they might see on their exams. (For example, on the question "What is
the essence of elections in capitalist countries?" the "correct" answer
is "An important measure to mediate the interests and conflicts within
the ruling class," since it suggests that elections in the West are
merely facades.)

He also solicited the students’ feelings about China’s government and
their willingness to partake in certain activities. He found that
students with greater comprehension of the political education had no
greater satisfaction with the government (more recent,
yet-to-be-published surveys found that greater exposure to this
education actually makes students trust the government less, Huang says).

However, those with greater exposure had a greater belief in the
government’s capacity to maintain political order, and hence were less
willing to express dissent through mechanisms like strikes or public
protests. "That the government is capable of delivering the pompous and
sometimes ludicrous propaganda without much overt opposition . . . has
implied to the students that the government is strong," Huang concluded.

In line with previous studies, Huang’s survey also found that 73 percent
of student respondents agreed with the statement "Western political
systems are very appropriate for our country."In line with previous
studies, Huang’s survey also found that 73 percent of student
respondents agreed with the statement "Western political systems are
very appropriate for our country." Only 7 percent disagreed. Overall,
students expressed lukewarm satisfaction with the Chinese government,
but very little willingness to join public demonstrations of discontent.

"The conventional wisdom about propaganda in authoritarian countries,
including China, is that propaganda tends to brainwash people," Huang
said. "My argument is that this kind of propaganda will not be able to
indoctrinate people, but it may still be effective in that people see
the government is able to impose a unified propaganda message on
society. The government shows that it has high capacity in social control."

He said that in coming years, the growth-driven performance legitimacy
that the Communist Party has relied on to maintain public support will
be stretched as the economy inevitably continues to slow and confronts
painful restructuring. "The Chinese government cannot simply rely on
performance legitimacy to sustain its rule," Huang noted. "Given the
central role that young people, and especially students, play in
political crises, signaling social control capacity to them may actually
become more important."

Minzner, the Fordham University law professor, said that some of the
rhetoric from the education conference on the role of professors in
upholding the "correct political line" resembled that which preceded a
redefinition of the role of lawyers, and a later spree of lawyer
arrests. "I wouldn’t be surprised if in a year or so you see professors
doing confessions on CCTV," he said.

What was also striking from the education conference, Minzner noted, was
the absence of the usual nods toward openness to the outside world and
learning from foreign achievements and culture while developing China.
Instead, there was an emphasis on guiding students to correctly
understand the historic inevitability of "Socialism with Chinese
characteristics" when making international comparisons.

"I think they are sending a signal," Minzner said. "And that signal
alone will probably be enough to accomplish 70 or 80 percent of the goal
by increasing self-censorship in universities. Then the push for
ideological control may continue in some form until, ideally — from the
standpoint of Party censors — it trickles down to students watching what
they say even in the dorm room."

Gao noted, though, that access to foreign entertainment is ubiquitous on
university campuses through many channels. And when living on their own
for the first time in a much freer environment compared to the years
preceding their university entrance exams, students are especially
anxious to access these resources to explore their own identities and
worldviews. So the government will face an uphill battle in separating
foreign culture from an educated youth cohort that’s especially thirsty
for it.

"I think authorities have reason to be worried," she said. "I heard
discontent and criticism of the government among young people of the
post-80s generation when I did my first research back in 2009, and I
hear it now among the post-90s generation."

"But I don’t think it’s some kind of fixed and packaged Western
ideologies that they need to be worried about," she added. "It’s the
creativity and critical abilities that young people are honing through
processing all this outside information and exposure to alternative ways
of life."

(4) Korean women seek plastic surgery to look more Western

https://gradesfixer.com/free-essay-examples/the-effects-of-westernization/

The Effects of Westernization

Published: 23 Jun 2018

[...] Although Korea did not fully adopt the (mostly) equal society in
terms of gender in America, the idea still penetrated society. This is
evident in the many Korean women immigrating to America to escape the
patriarchal society of Korea. This also shows the appeal of American
culture that has traveled all the way to Korea. But westernization has a
hidden negative side that people may not realize or overlook. In South
Korea, looks are heavily stressed in society and many young girls can
feel the pressure put on them to look a certain way: Psychiatrist Ryu
In-Kyun examined how many Korean college girls received plastic surgery
in 2007. 52.5% received plastic surgery and 82.1% wanted to receive
cosmetic surgery (Park 55). Koreans’ excessive preferences for US values
lead Korean people to devalue their culture, especially their bodies,
which is a negative effect of American influence in Korea.

The reason behind the drastic amount of college girls receiving plastic
surgery is the belief that "western" faces are more attractive, with
western physical traits such as double eyelids, pale skin, and a
V-shaped chin. The effects of westernization can also be seen through
everyday speech and writing: Konglish is a cultural fusion of English
words such as "ice cream" or "camera" into the Korean language (Rhodes).
The incorporation of English words into the Korean language is an
obvious effect of westernization. But the real question is whether this
symbolizes a loss or deviation away from the native Korean culture.
Konglish uses English words but twists the pronunciation to fit Hangul
(Korean language), and the Konglish words, when written, are distinctly
Korean, so it still retains its original culture while using these
half-English words.

Furthermore, westernization of South Korea has prompted the vast
majority of South Koreans to think of English language ability as the
most important element to promote careers (Park 53). English is
especially important for obtaining sought-after competitive jobs in
Korean large firms like Samsung, Hyundai, and LG, as well as high-paying
jobs in international companies. People seeking personal economic
improvement; therefore, tend to attribute western characteristics by
learning English, and Korean students generally prefer the United States
as a place to learn the language. But acquiring proficiency in any
foreign language is made up of much more than speaking and writing. It
embodies the cultural values that the language shapes, and, in this
sense, many Korean students are assuming western values. Along with
language being westernized, South Korea’s music has also been highly
influenced by western ideas. One of the biggest pop culture industries
in South Korea is the famous K-pop industry. With trendy songs, complex
dances, and beautiful faces, K-pop is the epitome of where Korean and
Western cultures unite.

According to Jessica Oak and Park Young Woong, "Their combination of
Western and Eastern sounds… have all helped K-pop stand out among other
genres" (Oak and Woong). Many K-pop songs incorporate different western
styles in them such as EDM (electronic dance music), rap, and R&B. K-pop
music videos also exhibit the western trend of focusing on telling a
story through the music video rather than performing or dancing.
Although this wasn’t’ the style of older generation kpop, it is slowly
changing due to the western influence. Because of the cultural fusion
between the two, K-pop is successful in appealing to both Westerners and
Asians in their music and performances. Although K-pop is successful in
appealing to the South Koreans with their western infused pop, the same
cannot be said about K-pop’s influence in North America. According to
Dal Yong Jin and Woonjae Ryoo, some westerners view K-pop as a diluted
version of the Western music, making it hard for Korean musicians to
find acceptance in the mainstream western pop industry (Jin and Ryoo).

This harsher view of K-pop reflects the views that westerners hold of
westernization. They are pleased that other countries find western
ideas, or in this case, music style to be appealing, but are hesitant to
accept the westernized products from other countries because they
believe the new products are lesser versions of the actual western
product. Thus, for this reason, K-pop has had a hard time finding
western audiences that are not previously affiliated with the K-pop
genre. Although Westerners may not be very accepting of "diluted"
versions of western products, those in Japan are very welcoming of
western ideas. Westernization in JapanConsidered to be fairly western,
Japan has embraced westernization, which is reflected in their diet,
fashion, and education system. First, we can see the effects of
westernization through the changes in the Japanese diet throughout time.

According to Zenjiro Watanabe, Westernization caused the introduction of
dining out in Japan (Watanabe). This change was caused by the
diversification in lifestyle that took place in the post World War II
period. Urbanization, the social advancement of women, and changes in
labor conditions led to a gradual decrease in the traditional scene of
the family gathered around the table at mealtime. This new lifestyle
demanded increased individualization and simplicity and led to the
development of the foodservice industry and instant foods. Thus, as a
result of westernization, Japan gained a new style of dining: fast food.
But westernization did not cause all positive changes with regard to the
Japanese diet. After the surge of western influence in Japan in 1964,
Japanese people started eating more than 300% more animal fat, protein,
and fat in general (Watanabe). The explanation for this drastic change
in the Japanese people’s’ diets can be explained by westernization.

During the 1950-1960s, Japan adopted more and more western customs and
ideas, such as the first supermarket, which opened in 1963, the
introduction of propane, and the use of electricity and gas. These
changes also brought about western foods into the Japanese diet. Because
westerners promoted the importance of milk and animal proteins in their
diet, these trends carried over to the Japanese diet. Moreover, the
increase in fast food also contributed to the increase in fat intake,
which demonstrates how an initially positive change can result in a
negative consequence. Not only is westernization able to be seen in diet
trends, it can also be seen through the style and clothing changes
across Japan.

According to Yuniya Kawamura, During the Taisho period (1912-1926),
wearing Western clothing was a symbol of sophistication and an
expression of modernity (Kawamura). Because western culture had such a
great impact on Japan during the Meiji restoration, the Japanese were
very appreciative of western "luxuries," and wearing western clothes was
a way to show a higher class. Workers, especially men, started wearing
business suits, and kimonos eventually started disappearing from casual
life. Although some may argue that because of westernization, Japan lost
its traditional values and culture through the disappearance of the
kimono, that is not the case. Instead, the kimono is worn on special
occasions such as weddings or coming-of-age ceremonies. This makes the
event even more special and allows the Japanese to keep their
traditional way of dress. In addition to the change in dress,
westernization also impacted Japan’s education system. It had greatly
changed the educational system in Japan by creating a new system for
compulsory schooling in 1871" ("Western Effects on Japanese Culture
During the Meiji Period").

The educational system in Japan was based on the European system which
provided proper education for not just Japanese men, but also for women
and children. By the time the educational system had become universal in
1908, most of the Japanese children were able to read and write.
Overall, many countries all over the world have experienced many effects
of westernization. The western culture has specifically permeated the
cultures of China, South Korea, and Japan with regards to the diet,
fashion, pop culture, language, and much more. Life in these countries
went from watching mundane Chinese shows to humorous western shows,
listening to traditional Korean music to K-pop infused with western
music styles and English lyrics in South Korea, and from wearing
traditional kimonos to business suits in Japan. This just goes to show
how every action that we take here in a western country is able to send
a ripple to the rest of the world, whether it be a new fashion trend or
a way of eating, the ideas from western countries are able to positively
or negatively impact non-western countries.

(5) American TV is massively popular among young Chinese for its
perceived authenticity

http://www.chinafile.com/features/whys-beijing-so-worried-about-western-values-infecting-chinas-youth

Why’s Beijing So Worried About Western Values Infecting China’s Youth?

February 4, 2017

Eric Fish

In early December, Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered the country’s
universities to "adhere to the correct political orientation."

Speaking at a conference on ideology and politics in China’s colleges,
he stressed that schools must uphold the Chinese Communist Party’s
leadership and "guide the broad masses of teachers and students to be
strong believers" in Marxist theories and socialist core values.

The conference had the highest profile attendee roster of any education
event in recent memory: top university officials, representatives from
the country’s military and propaganda apparatuses, and four of the seven
members of the all powerful Politburo Standing Committee. In case Xi’s
speech left any doubt as to the meeting’s purpose, China’s education
minister explained it in an article the following day. "Schools," he
wrote, "are the prime targets for the infiltration of hostile forces."

For years, China’s leaders have feared that they’re losing their grip on
the ideological loyalty of the country’s youth. According to official
rhetoric, the forces wresting away young minds are cultural warfare
waged through alluring foreign pop culture and the infiltration of
"Western values."

With the Party firmly in control and no obvious stirrings of a youth-led
insurrection, it would be easy to write off this sentiment as paranoia.
But according to researchers who study youth attitudes and how they are
shaped by popular culture from the West, the commissars may not be so
far off the mark. A series of surveys conducted over the past decade
have found that many Chinese college students—perhaps even a majority of
them—prefer elements of liberal democracy to China’s one-party system.
"I think there is a real threat," said Stanley Rosen, a University of
Southern California political scientist who researches the relationship
between Chinese youth and the state. "Certainly they’ve interpreted [the
collapse of Communism] in Russia and Eastern Europe, at least in part,
to the infiltration of Western culture."

When actor Alan Thicke died in December, there was an outpouring of
sympathy on Chinese social media among a generation that had come of age
with Thicke’s affable father character on Growing Pains. One of the
first U.S. TV shows to air in China in the early 1990s, it presented a
lifestyle and culture in stark contrast to what Chinese state television
offered. "Although this show was from the other side of the world,
ordinary Chinese people could relate to it," one Chinese man recently
told the Los Angeles Times.

Growing Pains’ early 1990s broadcasts in China may be as good a marker
as any separating the Chinese generations that came of age before and
after an explosion in access to foreign culture. Those born in the
late-80s and ’90s grew up as American entertainment rapidly became
accessible—both through censored official channels and uncensored
mediums like bootleg videos and the Internet.

Today, Hollywood imports still offer an attractive alternative to state
television’s tightly controlled lineup dominated by historical costume
dramas and anti-Japanese war films. Yang Gao, a Singapore Management
University sociologist who researches foreign entertainment’s influence
on Chinese youth, says that American TV is massively popular among young
Chinese for its perceived authenticity. "This fascination is coinciding
with the rise of the new ‘golden age’ of quality television in America,
with complex characters and unconventional storytelling," she said. "By
comparison, Chinese TV can feel uninspired with relatively predictable
plotlines and unambiguous characters. Heroes are heroes and villains are
villains."

Gao says that the Chinese generation born in the ’80s and ’90s came of
age amid a clash between traditional collectivist culture and the
emergence of individualism. In this atmosphere, Hollywood characters
have provided young people a basis on which to interrogate their own
identities that isn’t often found in state-sanctioned sources.

"Growing up we were taught to obey," Gao said. "It’s written all over
the political discourse and goes down to the very cultural fabric of
society: We value conformity and harmony. But at the same time, economic
development is arousing this neoliberal ideal: You must be independent
and autonomous—you’re on your own now."

In research Gao conducted with university students in Beijing, she found
that Hollywood themes of spontaneity, nonconformity, and
self-realization particularly resonated with young Chinese fans of
American TV. "While many students applaud misfits, oddballs, or
otherwise unconventional figures on US TV, what seems to have more
forcefully struck a chord is the image of a ‘challenger,’" she wrote.
"Someone who fights against powerful social establishment or authority."

One of Gao’s subjects, a 21-year-old undergraduate, reported being
inspired to go to law school by the TV drama Boston Legal’s depiction of
lawyers suing government agencies like the FDA. ". . . [To] me, it’s a
gesture of challenging authority, which suggests that the authority is
challengeable," the woman said. "But in China, I’ve never been exposed
to that idea at school, not to mention watching the government get
blamed or sued on TV." Said another interviewee, "Whatever the reality
is, American TV always reflects a distrust of and challenge to
authority, whereas Chinese media basically dodge the issue."

These values are at direct odds with what the state tries to instill in
its youth. Every September, all incoming college freshmen must attend
weeks of military training designed, in part, to instill collectivism,
love for the Party, and obedience to authority—the culmination of an
education that stresses socialist values and the unchallengeable
supremacy of Communist Party rule. Extensive censorship of Chinese
entertainment likewise insists on messaging conducive to social
stability and the "correct" moral values.

China’s censors have attempted to clamp down on popular websites
offering American TV shows like NCIS, The Practice, and The Good Wife,
and then met withwidespread anger among the shows’ Chinese viewers. In
2014, when The Big Bang Theory was removed from streaming sites, livid
fans went online to deem China "West North Korea." The term was quickly
blocked on Sina Weibo, the Twitter-like social media platform.

Gao said that even seemingly innocuous characters on apolitical comedies
like Friends and Sex in the City can leave identity-altering impressions
with young Chinese, and prompt them to question the values promoted by
their schools, parents, and the government.

"There is a generation gap that is greater when it comes to
interpretation of the sub-textual messages in those shows," she said.
"With ideas of individualism, democracy, more liberal thoughts, and this
elevation of ambiguity and complex individual attitudes over unification
and conformity—this is something I think younger generations are more
appreciative of than the older generation."

How deeply Hollywood’s influence has penetrated China’s young generation
is unclear, but over the past decade, its members have demonstrated what
appears to be a small but growing willingness to challenge authority.

One of the first major environmental protests involving tens of
thousands of participants occurred in Xiamen in 2007 over a proposed
chemical plant. It was a largely youth-driven rebuke to authority that
would repeat itself in cities across the country over the following
years. By 2011, Sina Weibo—which was overwhelmingly used by people born
after 1980—was hitting its stride, with Internet vigilantes felling a
succession of corrupt officials and exposing government misdeeds and
cover-ups.

In early 2013, protestors both on and offline gave what was perhaps the
most significant challenge to authorities since 1989 when they decried
press censorship en masse after the staff of a liberal newspaper went on
strike over particularly egregious government censorship. Students
across the country uploaded pictures of themselves in support of the
paper and hundreds protested in person outside its offices.

It’s against this backdrop that Xi Jinping ascended to China’s
presidency in March 2013. Shortly after, the Communist Party’s fears of
foreign ideological infiltration were laid bare with the leak of
Document 9, an internal communiqué´ instructing cadres to stop
universities and media from discussing seven taboo topics: Western
constitutional democracy, universal values, civil society,
neoliberalism, the Western concept of press freedom, historical
nihilism, and questioning whether China’s system is truly socialist.

The document precipitated a sweeping crackdown that’s felled lawyers,
rights activists, labor leaders, NGOs, journalists, social media
influencers, and generally anyone who’s been outspoken against
government policy. Since the imposition of this crackdown, large-scale
public protests have ebbed, and Weibo is a shadow of what it once was.

Carl Minzner, a specialist in Chinese law and politics at Fordham Law
School, says that December’s education conference suggests the campaign
is now poised to reach deeper into academia. "This is big and dark,"
Minzner said. "This is several years in the making and it will likely
roll out in colleges over the next several years. We don’t know how far
it will go."

He added that this trajectory predates Xi Jinping’s presidency. In
October 2011—one year before Xi assumed China’s top leadership post—the
Communist Party Central Committee emerged from its annual plenum with an
agenda focusing on "cultural development" and protecting China’s
"cultural security."

The following January, then-President Hu Jintao elaborated on the
perceived threat, saying that international hostile forces were stepping
up their plot to Westernize and divide China. "Ideological and cultural
fields are the focal areas of their long-term infiltration," he said.
"The international culture of the West is strong while we are weak."

That same month, then-Vice President Xi Jinping gave his first signal
that higher education would be a key battleground in this struggle.
"University Communist Party organs must adopt firmer and stronger
measures to maintain harmony and stability in universities," he
reportedly told a meeting of university Communist Party officials.
"Young teachers have many interactions with students and cast
significant [political and moral] influence on them. . . They also play
a very important role in the spread of ideas."

In late 2013, China established a national security committee to focus
on "unconventional security threats," including Western culture. A
senior colonel working with the committee said that Hollywood movies
were dangerously altering the thinking and values of China’s youth. This
posture appeared to pick up steam in academia by early 2015, when
China’s then-Minister of Education Yuan Guiren reportedly ordered
university officials to disallow teaching materials that "disseminate
Western values."

In many ways, this ideological battle builds on a narrative established
after the violent suppression of the 1989 student-led Tiananmen Square
protests. In the aftermath, the Communist Party realized that its
legitimacy model, which rested largely on championing socialist
egalitarianism and proletarian internationalism, was untenable amid its
obvious embrace of capitalism. So it instituted a "patriotic education"
in schools that stresses historical "humiliation" at the hands of
foreign aggressors. It insists on the inevitability of "Socialism with
Chinese Characteristics"—an official euphemism for the Communist Party’s
monopoly power over a capitalist economy—and goes to great lengths to
discredit the desirability of "Western democracy."

This nationalistic education, coupled with China’s torrid economic
growth, is often credited with subduing any interest in lofty political
change among the country’s young. The most passionate and well-attended
political protests of the past two decades have indeed been directed at
the United States and Japan, which might appear to suggest political
dissatisfaction has been successfully directed outward.

But studies again suggest that the young educated generation that is
subject to the full force of the patriotic education is also the one
that looks most fondly on the United States and its political system.

One 2007 survey of students at several Beijing universities found that
28 percent liked China’s overall political system, with 22 percent
expressing dislike, and the rest remaining neutral. Conversely, 56
percent said they liked the overall American political system and only 4
percent disliked it. Results were similar with questions that probed
more specifically into attitudes toward American personal liberties,
separation of powers, and multi-party elections versus China’s
centralized leadership apparatus.

The study tested knowledge about each country’s respective political
system, and found that students tended to be "fairly well-informed"
about both, and the more they knew about each side, the more they liked
the U.S. system.

These findings would likely surprise anyone who’s spoken at length with
Chinese college students, and they came as a great surprise to the
study’s author—Professor Chen Shengluo of China Youth University for
Political Science. In the study’s conclusion, he noted that in his prior
personal interactions and face-to-face interviews with college students,
they "almost unanimously" declared that Western democracy is unsuited to
China.

"To put it simply, the survey results formed a sharp contrast with
everyday impressions," he noted. "How can we explain this contrast? It
is possible, I feel, that the things we usually encounter may only be
superficial and manifest political phenomena that cannot truly represent
the real wishes of the majority of students."

Stanley Rosen, the USC political scientist, says this accords with
surveys conducted for internal government use never released to the
public due to political sensitivity, which he accessed through contacts
in government-affiliated think tanks. Rosen says one internal survey of
history students at nearly three dozen universities, titled "The
Influence of Western ‘Cultural Penetration’ and our Countermeasures,"
found that more than half identified with American cultural concepts
propagated by American media and entertainment; only 17 percent didn’t.

According to Rosen, it also found that 61 percent identified with
"liberalism" and found it to be "a concept of universal moral
significance, despite the fact that, as the surveyors put it, everyone
knows that liberalism is part of Western political thought and the basis
of the ‘democratic system’ associated with Western capitalism."

Rosen agreed with Chen Shengluo’s assessment of the contradiction
between everyday political conversations with Chinese students and the
responses on these anonymous surveys: It likely suggests there’s a
sizeable cohort that harbors critical thoughts of its government but
does not speak out about these thoughts. "I think that’s what the
government recognized," Rosen said. "The people doing the surveys were
shocked by the results, and you can be sure they’re seeing even more
sensitive surveys."

These findings don’t necessarily indicate the desire for a complete
transformation of China’s political system. Rosen drew parallels to the
Tiananmen Square demonstrations, which are commonly referred to in the
short-hand as "democracy protests," but were in fact less about a
whole-sale inception of Western liberal democracy and more about simply
adopting certain elements like press freedom, personal liberties, and
official transparency and accountability. "I don’t think [young Chinese
today] would want the exact American system either—I think this past
election gives you an example of that," Rosen said. "But if things
opened up more, then people would be freer to say ‘maybe these things
aren’t such a bad idea after all.’"

"They don’t see any possibility for change in the Chinese system now,
though," he added. "Certainly not in the direction of a democratic
system like the U.S. Given the perception that these things are not
possible, people don’t think much in terms of how they might or might
not work in China."

What influence Donald Trump’s presidency will have on young Chinese
opinions of American democracy remains to be seen. So far, anecdotally,
opinions of Trump appear to be mixed. But admiration of American
politics already has notable limitations. A survey of Chinese urban
residents by professors from Duke and American University found what
they deemed a "bifurcated image" of America. On a scale of 1 to 5,
respondents gave American foreign policy and policy toward China
relatively low approval scores of just above 2 on average, while
American democracy, entertainment, products, and technology all received
scores above 4.

"Nationalism matters," the study concluded. "Nevertheless, nationalism’s
impact on anti- Americanism is much more nuanced and complicated than
conventionally assumed."

It added that urban residents generally held more negative views toward
U.S. foreign policy, but that attitude didn’t carry over into other
political realms. ". . . [The] same group of people, despite heightened
nationalism, are actually more likely to appreciate the U.S.’s
advantages with respect to science and technology, education, political
systems, and other socioeconomic achievements."

The ability to tease apart American foreign policy from its culture,
with an emphasis on the latter in forming impressions, appears
particularly strong among China’s young. A 2016 Pew survey found that 60
percent of Chinese age 18-to-34 have a favorable view of the United
States, compared to just 35 percent of those over 50. And a 2009 survey
of Chinese under 25 years old found that "Hollywood" was the term that
they most commonly associated with the United States.

"These young people are very pragmatic, even utilitarian people," said
Suisheng Zhao, a University of Denver professor who researches Chinese
politics and nationalism. "They have much more information, more
resources, more education, and they love American culture, music,
sports, and movies. A lot of them even want to go to the U.S."

"On the other hand, they’ve gotten used to China’s improving living
standards and are proud of its rise," he added. "And they’ve seen all
those tensions between China and the U.S. and other countries in the
last few decades and feel Western countries haven’t treated China well.
So they have mixed feelings."

While the "patriotic education" may not have particularly endeared
China’s youth to their country’s political system or stopped them from
looking fondly at politics in the West, it may still be having desirable
effects for China’s leaders—just not in the way one might expect.

Haifeng Huang, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the
University of California, Merced, has conducted studies with Chinese
university students testing the effects of political and ideological
education. In one 2011 survey, he found that most students regard their
college political courses as nuisances—only 8 percent said they even
somewhat actively study for them. He went on to measure how much
students actually absorbed from these classes by replicating questions
they might see on their exams. (For example, on the question "What is
the essence of elections in capitalist countries?" the "correct" answer
is "An important measure to mediate the interests and conflicts within
the ruling class," since it suggests that elections in the West are
merely facades.)

He also solicited the students’ feelings about China’s government and
their willingness to partake in certain activities. He found that
students with greater comprehension of the political education had no
greater satisfaction with the government (more recent,
yet-to-be-published surveys found that greater exposure to this
education actually makes students trust the government less, Huang says).

However, those with greater exposure had a greater belief in the
government’s capacity to maintain political order, and hence were less
willing to express dissent through mechanisms like strikes or public
protests. "That the government is capable of delivering the pompous and
sometimes ludicrous propaganda without much overt opposition . . . has
implied to the students that the government is strong," Huang concluded.

In line with previous studies, his survey also found that 73 percent of
student respondents agreed with the statement "Western political systems
are very appropriate for our country." Only 7 percent disagreed.
Overall, students expressed lukewarm satisfaction with the Chinese
government, but very little willingness to join public demonstrations of
discontent.

"The conventional wisdom about propaganda in authoritarian countries,
including China, is that propaganda tends to brainwash people," Huang
said. "My argument is that this kind of propaganda will not be able to
indoctrinate people, but it may still be effective in that people see
the government is able to impose a unified propaganda message on
society. The government shows that it has high capacity in social control."

He said that in coming years, the growth-driven performance legitimacy
that the Communist Party has relied on to maintain public support will
be stretched as the economy inevitably continues to slow and confronts
painful restructuring. "The Chinese government cannot simply rely on
performance legitimacy to sustain its rule," Huang noted. "Given the
central role that young people, and especially students, play in
political crises, signaling social control capacity to them may actually
become more important."

Carl Minzner, the Fordham University law professor, said that some of
the rhetoric from the education conference on the role of professors in
upholding the "correct political line" resembled that which preceded a
redefinition of the role of lawyers, and a later spree of lawyer
arrests. "I wouldn’t be surprised if in a year or so you see professors
doing confessions on CCTV," he said.

What was also striking from the education conference, Minzner noted, was
the absence of the usual nods toward openness to the outside world and
learning from foreign achievements and culture while developing China.
Instead, there was an emphasis on guiding students to correctly
understand the historic inevitability of "Socialism with Chinese
characteristics" when making international comparisons.

"I think they are sending a signal," Minzner said. "And that signal
alone will probably be enough to accomplish 70 or 80 percent of the goal
by increasing self-censorship in universities. Then the push for
ideological control may continue in some form until, ideally—from the
standpoint of Party censors—it trickles down to students watching what
they say even in the dorm room."

Yang Gao noted though that access to foreign entertainment is ubiquitous
on university campuses through many channels. And when living on their
own for the first time in a much freer environment compared to the years
preceding their university entrance exams, students are especially
anxious to access these resources to explore their own identities and
worldviews. So the government will face an uphill battle in separating
foreign culture from an educated youth cohort that’s especially thirsty
for it.

"I think authorities have reason to be worried," she said. "I heard
discontent and criticism of the government among young people of the
post-80s generation when I did my first research back in 2009, and I
hear it now among the post-90s generation."

"But I don’t think it’s some kind of fixed and packaged Western
ideologies that they need to be worried about," she added. "It’s the
creativity and critical abilities that young people are honing through
processing all this outside information and exposure to alternative ways
of life."

(6) Inspired by Western TV, young Chinese rebel against their parents
https://www.ft.com/content/dae2c548-4226-11e8-93cf-67ac3a6482fd

The quiet revolution: China’s millennial backlash

Young Chinese rebel against their parents professionally, personally and
politically

Yuan Yang in Beijing

APRIL 18, 2018

Faye Lu, a Beijing-based businesswoman, chose the Chinese new year after
her 30th birthday to come clean to her family. At the biggest social
gathering in the Chinese calendar, she prepared a New Year’s Eve feast
for her parents and 20 relatives — more than 10 dishes including roast
fatty pork, pork ribs and fried pickled cabbage. The feast, she knew,
would give her the right to make a speech.

"You have taken care of me for 30 years," she told her guests seated at
the table. "I am very grateful to you all. I have had the opportunity to
travel and to get to know many different cultures, who have different
attitudes to marriage. And I can see that despite their differences to
us, they are still happy . . . "

Lu was circling around a problem: as an unmarried 30-year-old, she is
seen by her parents and their contemporaries as a "leftover woman". At
the end of her speech, she presented a veiled request: "I am so grateful
to you for not bothering my parents too much to ask when I am getting
married."

When she had confided in friends what she planned to say at the dinner,
they did their best to dissuade her. She was hoping for the impossible:
to convince her family she could be 30, single and happy. When Lu had
discussed her ideas about the future before, her parents said she had
been "poisoned by foreigners" while studying abroad. But she was
determined to carve out a different life for herself.

Across China, millennials like her are committing small acts of
rebellion. Society puts pressure on young people in China to find a good
job, buy an apartment and get married — in that order, before the age of
30. But economic restructuring, soaring house prices and increasing
numbers of students in higher education are making those goals harder
for millennials than they were for their parents. At the same time,
millennials have developed different visions of the "good life" to their
parents. This generation wants something new from China, and in pursuing
it they are changing China, too. A quiet revolution is under way.

Behind a stall in Beijing’s central business district, a barista offers
drinks with names such as "Can’t-Afford-To-Buy-A-House Iced Lemon Tea".
Another stall of the same chain sells "My Ex-Girlfriend’s Marrying
Someone With Rich Parents Fruit Juice". This is the brand Sang Tea (sang
meaning "dejected, dispirited") — a business that began in Shanghai last
year, initially meant to be a temporary pop-up stall to mock the brand
"Lucky Tea", but whose dark comedy and deadpan presentation resounded
with millennials, and prompted franchises to open across the country.

Society puts pressure on young people in China to find a good job, buy
an apartment, and get married — in that order, before the age of 30

"A cup of negative energy a day," promises a logo on Sang Tea’s website.
The phrase is a pun on the slogan of "positive energy" that President Xi
Jinping likes to use to exhort young people to support their country’s
development.

The success of Sang Tea rests on the growth of sang culture — the
millennial self-mocking, semi-ironic embrace of giving up, which has
launched viral internet picture-memes, videos and fiction. The
28-year-old writer Zhao Zengliang, who is often associated with sang
culture through her dry-humoured internet presence, says of the
phenomenon: "Sang culture is where you can take a breather [from the
pressures of competition], and where everyone can honestly just admit,
‘I don’t feel I’m good enough.’ "

Despite being born into a relatively prosperous period, well-educated
millennials in big cities not only face unprecedented competition in the
labour market but are also finding it harder to buy what Chinese people
tend to see as the most fundamental asset: an apartment. For young men,
owning a property is seen as a prerequisite for marriage, and it is said
to be unlucky to give birth to a child while living in a rented flat.
Some 70 per cent of Chinese millennials achieve home-ownership,
according to research by HSBC — compared with 35 per cent in the US. But
house price rises have far outstripped most people’s salary increases.
The average price per sq metre in China’s major cities has almost
doubled over the past eight years, according to Wind, a data company.

For the previous generation, who grew up in a planned economy, being
part of a large state-owned enterprise or a government department meant
the system would take care of you for life, offering rudimentary
healthcare, a pension, and even a house. This bargain was called the
"iron rice bowl", and Lu’s parents ate from it, being factory workers.

Today, those who are not fortunate enough to have family homes in
China’s big cities, where professional jobs accumulate, will start
shelling out the world’s most unaffordable rents upon graduation. A
study last year by real estate research company E-house China R&D
Institute found that in Beijing the average tenant spends 58 per cent of
their income on rent; in Shenzhen the figure is 54 per cent, and in
Shanghai 48 per cent. By comparison, the UK’s Office for National
Statistics reckons that as of 2016, the average rent-to-income ratio in
London was 49 per cent. China’s millennials are starting to experience
the economic precarity of their western peers.

With the growth of the private sector and university education, so too
has grown the pressure to accumulate internships (often for little pay),
overseas experiences and other such CV-boosting exercises. In 2017,
almost half of all new labour market entrants were university graduates
— a record 8m, up from roughly 4m a decade ago. Amid this competition
and a slowing economy, the average monthly income for new graduates fell
16 per cent to Rmb4,014 ($590) in 2017, continuing the decline of the
previous year, according to recruitment website Zhaopin.

Despite having a solid career as the head of international development
for a major Chinese company, Lu longs to do something more creative: to
become a documentary-maker. She is not alone: over 82 per cent of
post-1990s kids in China would choose a different job to the one they
have if they could, according to a survey of 1.2m people by Wonder
Technology, a tech start-up that uses voice-based psychological
assessments to help millennials find their ideal date and career.

"Chinese students mostly select a university degree by choosing the most
prestigious degree course that will accept their score. That score has
little to do with what they value," says Wendy Wu of Wonder Technology.
"They largely chose their career based on their university degrees,
which in turn they chose based on their entrance exam scores," she adds.
"I call these the ‘lost millennials’."

Unsurprisingly, sang culture has attracted hand-wringing from the online
edition of the government mouthpiece, The People’s Daily, who called it
"spiritual opium". Ironically, such diatribes are written in the
chest-thumping revolutionary language that often sounds dated to
millennials. "The thoughts and ideas of young people will determine the
future values of the Chinese people," wrote The People’s Daily, "Smile,
get up, be brave, refuse to drink Sang Tea".

The People’s Daily editorial probably made the Sang Tea phenomenon more,
rather than less, popular online. The rise of microblogging website
Weibo in the early 2010s raised a generation of netizens attuned to
online drama. Millennials dominate the irreverent social-media discourse
that has flourished in a nation of 753m mobile internet users. They
enjoy internet freedoms that, though curtailed by the government, expose
them to ideas their parents would never have entertained during the more
strictly propagandist era of television and radio broadcasting.

But millennials wanting freedom in their private or social lives,
particularly online, are starting to find that the political often
infringes on the personal. Over the past two years President Xi, who
likes to be termed "Papa Xi", has tightly restricted millennials’ access
to their natural habitat — the online world — shutting down Weibo
accounts, clamping down on live-streaming platforms, and increasing the
censorship of articles and videos across China’s flourishing
"self-publishing" online space.

"The post-1990s generation are masters of online mobilisation via social
media. Despite censorship, they know how to ‘grab eyeballs’ through
creating and circulating visually arresting photos and slogans," says
Diana Fu, assistant professor of Asian politics at the University of
Toronto. (Although in the west, millennials are generally defined as
those born between the early 80s and the late 90s, in China people tend
to split generations more narrowly, speaking of the "post-1990s"
generation in the same way English speakers say "millennial".)

However, as Fu cautions, there is a difference between getting hits
online — sometimes derided as "slacktivism" — and getting people
committed to a cause.

While China’s online tribes include factions in favour of universal
rights, equality and democracy, there is also a growing wave of young
nationalists and authoritarians, known domestically as "little pinks".
The Party is trying to get internet-savvy, hiring private designers and
film studios to create millennial-friendly propaganda.

"There are more nationalists among the younger generation, because of
the influence of Communist party education, and because of the
increasing social and economic pressures they face," says political
commentator Qiao Mu. A study by think-tank Merics found that
nationalists, who love to vent their opinions as part of China’s growing
army of online trolls, were more likely to be dissatisfied with their
personal economic situation compared with other online tribes.

Working-class millennials in smaller towns, and rural millennials, have
less freedom to beat their own path. The 17-year-old student interns
assembling iPhones at Foxconn’s factory in Zhengzhou, for example,
accepted whatever jobs their vocational-school teachers gave them. Their
socialisation by China’s rigid education system, to accept authority
figures dictating their personal lives, may also explain why so many
young Chinese also accept the government’s authoritarian over-reach into
their private spaces.

Terri Yang, a 24-year-old from a small town in Hunan, one of China’s
poorer central-southern provinces, quit high school to move to Beijing.
"I had a dream one night I was in Beijing, and so I went," she says. At
her parents’ request she enrolled in a vocational college to become a
masseuse and acupuncturist. After a bout of illness last year she took
time off work and reflected on how she had ended up in what she called a
"tiresome" job, dealing with complaining patients as a hospital intern
for Rmb2,000 ($320) per month, 80 per cent of which she had to spend on
rent.

"Chinese parents are conservative: they want you to respect the plans
they’ve made for you. My parents think I have no ideals," she says. But
then during her sick leave, she realised that as a young teenager, she
had plenty of ideals — just not the ones her parents had hoped for.

Yang is now working towards her ambition to open a café in her hometown,
and to give it a queer-themed name. Currently her hometown has no cafés
— and no "out" lesbians, she says.

"When I was 13 I watched a TV programme set in the UK about someone
opening a café, how he designed and planned it all," she says. Despite
speaking no English, the image stuck with her for more than 10 years.
She is now working and training in Beijing at the Korean café chain
Caffe Bene to pursue her dream. Before starting, she had not even tasted
coffee, which is only popular in China’s big cities.

Her parents accept her café-opening plan because it accommodates their
desire for her to have a stable career with another common Chinese
parental desire — that she return to her hometown.

Like Terri, Baoyi Liang, a 25-year-old theatre set designer, also found
her childhood hopes clashing with those of her parents. She recalls
telling them she wanted to be an artist at the age of eight. "You’ll end
up on the street drawing people’s portraits," they warned her.
Eventually they agreed to support her through six years of living and
studying in London, where she graduated from Central Saint Martins.
After graduation, she worked as a waitress in Islington, north London,
while doing design projects on the side. "It sounds silly, but it was
then that I first realised being a waitress wasn’t humiliating," she
says, sitting in a sushi restaurant in Beijing while uniformed
waitresses circle us. "If I had been a waitress in China, it would have
been considered an ‘indecent’ job — all that education for nothing. But
in that café in Islington, my colleagues were all really happy. They
were all working evenings and being actors or scriptwriters in their
spare time."

This broadening of ideas of a good career is exemplified by Han Han, the
35-year-old novelist most celebrated by millennials, who wrote on his
Weibo microblog earlier this month, "Success isn’t about how many
millions you earn. From a billionaire to a gardener, art editor or a
programmer . . . everyone has their role and their destiny, each has
their own kind of happiness."

Han was reacting to what he called the "anxiety peddling" of an article
headlined "Your Contemporaries Are Leaving You Behind", about another
influential millennial, Hu Weiwei, the 36-year-old founder of
bike-sharing tech start-up Mobike. The piece contrasts the careers of Hu
with what it calls the "mediocre" lives of her peers who fall short of
such success. "You said we’d walk the paths of our youth together," the
author writes, imagining a dialogue between two classmates, "but you
went and bought a car."

Perhaps one of China’s most well-known millennial rebels is the
29-year-old student Li Maizi, part of the so-called "Feminist Five" who
were jailed for a month for planning to protest against sexual
harassment on subways. What could have been a non-governmental issue
became an international scandal as the result of her jailing.

But over the Chinese new year festival two years ago, she made her mark
on the subway system in Beijing. Li was part of an
"anti-marriage-pressure alliance" who used social media to crowdfund an
advert warning against nagging one’s children at the annual familial
gathering. It stayed up for a month in Dongzhimen station, one of
Beijing’s busiest, and roughly 40,000 people donated.

"Dear mums and dads, the world is so big, there are so many types of
people, it’s possible to be happy and single," the poster read.

Lu’s parents have not fully got the message, and are still trying to set
her up on blind dates — the latest with a young employee at Beijing
Capital Airport, whom they had thought eligible based on the criteria
that "an airport won’t ever go out of business". But at least one of her
uncles understood what she was asking for at the Chinese New Year’s Eve
dinner.

"Don’t worry, I know exactly what you mean, and I won’t bother your
parents about when you’re getting married," he said. And then he added:
"If the others don’t understand what you mean, they can come talk to me
about it."

Yuan Yang is the FT’s Beijing correspondent