Chinese Nineties Kids （九零后）

I had an interesting conversation recently with an old-china hand about the kids growing up in China today, and his opinion and mine match pretty well: they suck.

Now, some of this may just be crotchety-old-timerism, as he is older than I am, and I myself am a generation removed from these brats, but of course, as my opinion, I think some of it is warranted.

I've written a couple of things about these kids before since I find them fascinating, here, about some of my students and how they don't have any time of their own, and here, about the phenomenon of having a country of single children.

The way my conversational partner put it was that "if you were born in the 40's in China, you had a fascinating life [though not always a great one], if you were born in the 50's (60's, 70's) you're living a fascinating life, even if you were born in the 80's you'll live a fascinating life, but if you were born in the 90's, your life is shit!"

That's in quotes but is certainly not verbatim.

The charge against the kids is that they have no roots, care for nothing but money and personal comfort etc, etc, and as far as I can tell this is true. They are pampered more or less by their elders (sometimes two sets of grandparents and of course their parents) but have little of a real emotional connection to them, are given complete free reign to do as they please within rigidly defined boundaries (you should see these kids in restaurants it's terrifying, but, of course, when seven am rolls around they're off to class lock-step,) grow up isolated from any historical sense of their culture other than what is purely sentimental (of course, sentimentalism seems to be the common thread of modern Chinese culture, a harsh but only slightly exaggerated comment) part of which is that the concept of hardships is really no more than a concept. (We are talking mostly about urban lower-middle class to upper class kids, of course.) There's much more here that I won't go into depth about but, basically, these kids suck. The above, of course, are just theories as to why, you'd have to actually see them and their behavior to really understand what I'm saying. Those of you who have seen them probably agree. I actually give them some slack, I think they're growing up in a real twisted environment. My girlfriend (Chinese) is harsher on them than I am.

On a hike on the great wall, I saw some chalking done by some (obviously) 90's kids that said, basically, "there is no love, there is only fooling people." This is a typical sentiment, I feel, from them. Of course, seeing the culture they've grown up in, it's hard to argue that, from their point of view, it could appear any other way. More later, perhaps.

But this is where it gets interesting.
Apparently, according to the old-China hand, the PLA (People's Liberation Army, which would be the Army of China if it didn't belong exclusively to the Communist Party, a distinction only a naive foreigner would make) commissioned a study some years ago about what the effect of China's rise would be in the world, undergone by the intellectuals, and freed of any official pressure (the warping effects of pressure are applied after the study is published,) that found that China's rise into the world order would start seriously conflicting with other countries in the late 2020's and the 2030's, right at the time when these twits would be taking over the country. After this period, China would be an established world power, and the balance would be restored, but during the period of troubles, the idiots would reign.

Because of the arch-conservative nature of the central party, I am hoping this will not entirely turn out to be true, but certainly that generation will be the ascendant one during this time period, which is just great for everyone concerned.

I just can't wait.