The Future and China's Youth

Statistical reports on China’s internet show that around 70 percent of internet users are under the age of 40. These younger users are also the segment of internet consumers in China who are most likely to be finding and translating information from Western sources. This suggests that for many young Chinese, Thunberg does not personify the “power of youth.” Correspondingly, we can note that the “Fridays for future” movement has not resonated in China.

Assuming that these online voices are representative of how youth in China view environmental activism, what can account for the gap in views on climate change and other issues? And what do these gaps mean for our global future given China’s rising power in the world?

One of Germany’s most influential sociologists of the 20^th century, Helmut Schelsky, identified three factors determining the social roles and identities of youth. First, there were basic social structures, including family and gender roles. Next, there were changing social structures, such as industrialization. Finally, there was the historical-political situation. These factors can also help us understand the differences between Chinese and Western youth. Since we’ve identified the gap in views of Greta Thunberg, let us stay for a moment with the activist and look at each of Schelsky’s factors, beginning with the historical-political situation.

How Dare You!

Thunberg’s success lies in large part in her framing the climate change issue as a generational conflict and a question of justice. As fresh as her message may seem, the generational conflict is a concept that has been embedded in public life in the West since the 1960s, as discussed by American anthropologist Margaret Mead. But Chinese society has never passed through a similar process in which the young have gained a normative legitimacy in challenging power and demanding change.

In China, the cry, “How dare you!”, is not a legitimate question to be raised by the youth. Some may object that the example of the so-called Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) is a case of youthful rebellion in which students opposed their parents and teachers and called for revolution. But the Cultural Revolution was never about the rights or freedom of the young, but rather was instituted by Mao Zedong as a top-down political purge to consolidate his own power.  

Today, the Cultural Revolution and the violent actions of the Red Guards are synonymous with disorder, and it is revealing to note that Greta Thunberg is often referred to in Chinese as the “environmental little general” (环保小将), comparing her to a Red Guard and associating her with disruption of social order.

The first attempt of Chinese youth to pose a generational challenge to old systems emerged at the end of the 19^th century, culminating during the 1910s in the New Culture Movement, in which young intellectuals promoted science, individual rights, and linguistic and literary reforms. But the 1919 Treaty of Versailles was a real moment of disillusionment for many Chinese, who viewed decisions by major Western powers – including the ceding of Qingdao to Japan – as a deep betrayal of china’s interests. Nationwide protests followed, and the path of the youth movement ran into a nationalistic and radicalized direction. The slogan, “Wrestle for national rights abroad, punish traitors at home” (外争国权，内惩国贼), reflected a strong sense of nationalism, which became the dominant frame for Chinese state narratives of legitimacy even today.

Another nascent youth rebellion took shape in the early 1980s in the wake of the Cultural Revolution, as young Chinese began searching for new models for Chinese society in Western theories. This period ended with the 1989 crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protests, a “How dare you!” moment in which students and other demonstrators had called for political reform and spoken against gerontocracy.

Ever since 1989, the Chinese Communist Party has worked to strengthen its ideological work and nationalism education to ensure that such a generational conflict is not repeated. During a plenary session on June 23-24, just three weeks after the crackdown, Party leaders pledged to “strengthen ideological and political work, work to carry out education in patriotism, socialism, autonomy and self-determination, and arduous struggle, actively opposing bourgeois liberalization.”

It is within this post-Tiananmen political context that young Chinese today came to adulthood, and this has significantly shaped their views and values.

Nationalism has very different perceptions in the differing historical-political context of China and the West, and we can see this again reflected in survey results. In the Shell Youth Study in Germany, nationalistic attitudes were regarded as populist, and just nine percent of young people in the survey were identified as national populists. The study cited as positive its finding that 52 percent of young people surveyed regarded xenophobia as a social problem.

By contrast, a comparable research project in China published last year, based on a survey of more than 10,000 university students in nine provinces, reflected strong nationalistic views. Nine out of ten Chinese students surveyed either “strongly agreed” (17.8 percent), “agreed” (54.9 percent) or “generally agreed” (20.4 percent) with a statement that “one should not dare to forget the interests of the nation even if one’s status is humble” (位卑未敢忘忧国) – a phrase that encapsulates the Chinese sense of the need to always consider the country’s interests as a central priority.

Further details in the Chinese study clue us in to what these ideas of “nationalism” mean in practice. For example, 85 percent of the students surveyed felt that the boycotting of South Korean and US products during the 2017 dispute over the THAAD missile defense system was a positive response.

Despite the strong nationalistic sentiments revealed by the study, the Chinese researchers still voiced concern over the “infiltration of Western culture,” as 50 percent of the students surveyed agreed with the statement: “Some elements of Western culture can be borrowed, and university students should have appropriate access.”

What’s Wrong With Greta Thunberg?

The narrative of national primacy is a factor also driving the domestic debate about activist Greta Thunberg. In a recent opinion piece, one of China’s top commercial newspapers, The Beijing News, asked: “Why don’t Chinese netizens like Greta?” The article concluded that one important reason is that Chinese people believe in Deng Xiaoping’s statement that “development is the top priority” (发展是硬道理), and they see the demands of climate activists in the West as obstructing China’s development.

According to the author, actions such as tree planting, which China has carried out for decades, are “real work” to promote environment protection, whereas Thunberg’s activities are seen as “empty talk.” In fact, China’s ministry of education has made tree planting an established part of school life, demanding each student plant at least one tree. At the university level there are more than 3,000 student environmental organizations. However, as Chinese researchers have observed, most of these organizations are organized, financed and supervised by communist youth leagues at universities and lack real initiative and volunteerism. "We are not used to these kind of social movements [that Greta instigated]”, said the article in The Beijing News. It also noted that Chinese generally have a critical view towards what it called "Western political correctness".

The defensive and antagonistic posture of nationalism can make it difficult for views that are more tolerant, empathetic or nuanced about global events to become part of the conversation. One recent example was an article on the Chinese internet that harshly criticized Australia for its incompetence in dealing with the bushfire crisis, laying the blame squarely at the feet of Western values like “human rights and freedom,” and praised China for its supposedly bold response to a major forest fire in 1987. While Australian firefighters and government officials had selfishly failed to act over the Christmas holiday, the article suggested, 211 Chinese firefighters during the 1987 fire had given their lives “for their land and their people.”

The article, posted to a WeChat public account called “Youth Courtyard” (青年大院), went viral on social media, yielding more than 20 million views and 300,000 likes. But it angered older journalists and media researchers, who pointed out that reports in 1987 by the China Youth Daily and other media had been a breakthrough in Chinese media history: Young reporters at that time actively exposed government incompetence in dealing with what was actually a “man-made disaster.”

In the end, however, many of these dissenting views of the “Youth Courtyard” post and its nationalistic views were censored online, while the original post was allowed to remain. In China’s digital media landscape, where profits are driven by traffic but traffic must abide by stringent controls, nationalistic content like the above post can be a huge revenue source – in turn feeding the populist echo chamber.

This online environment has a huge impact on Chinese youth, and it brings us to the second of Helmut Schelsky’s three factors in the formation of youth identities and values – that of changing social structures. The pervasiveness of digital media and new technology in China constitutes a new social structure for China’s young generation, but in ways that may again create greater divergence with the values of youth in the West.

Digital Darwinism

In comparison with their Western counterparts, Chinese youth have embraced new technologies and their opportunities whole-heartedly, with few misgivings and little consideration of the potential social costs. In his New York Times op-ed, Bret Stephens suggested that youth today had grown more skeptical of Silicon Valley innovation and how personal data is being used (or abused). Some Studies have supported this view, showing that young consumers in the West are more wary of data privacy.  

The same cannot be said, however, for young Chinese. Over the past quarter century, the internet has fundamentally transformed Chinese society, and the speed of change has accelerated over the past 10 years.

Several factors have driven this spectacular growth. First, there is China’s unique political ecosystem. In 2010, the Google search engine withdrew from the China market, citing censorship demands. And nearly all of the social media platforms popular across the world have been shut out of the China market. This situation has left China’s massive market wide open for domestic internet companies, offering these companies an opportunity to evolve and expand, independent of global competitors. 

Another key factor has been the rapid expansion of inexpensive domestic smartphone brands in China, which has encouraged mobile internet usage. Since 2012, the smartphone has been the most used device for internet access in China. Contrast this with just 23 percent of internet usage in 2012 in Germany.

China’s mobile dependency has boosted the development of mobile applications that have transformed the country’s economic landscape. Chinese youth are the most critical factor in this growth. As the biggest single market in terms of user numbers, China has a vast young internet population compared to EU countries. Digital natives (those born after 1980 who have engaged with digital technology since a young age) dominate China’s internet market, accounting for 70 percent of the total number of internet users. With a greater affinity for technology, they are mobile consumers, business entrepreneurs, and the principal source of labor for emerging technology industries.