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China’s Millennials

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Re: China’s Millennials

#51

Post by jhbadger »

lonelappde wrote: post #33
ohduran wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just an overall impression, in the idea that "Millenials are this", "Millenials are that". Most of the times when someone frames a group of people into common characteristics, it sounds condescending to me.

It's a term to refer to "the current crop of young adults". I so rarely see the anti-"Millennial" crowd complain about the term "Baby Boomer"; usually it's the opposite, in fact.

But that was a real cohort with an actual cause (soldiers returning home from WWII and starting families, leading to a large increase in births in the decade following 1945). Later generations called Generation X and Millennials are much more arbitrary because there isn't really a defined cause for their existence.

Re: China’s Millennials

#52

Post by hoseja »

lonelappde wrote: post #31
Waterluvian wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The weird thing to me is that it's not like the term "Millennial" was self-adopted by the generation it describes. It was pretty much involuntarily assigned to them. And the word alone just has such a lightning rod quality to it.

"Millennial" is a dress-up word for "kids today". The connotation is much clearer under that substitution.

There's a browser extension that replaces every occurrence of the word 'millennial' with 'pesky whipper-snapper'.

Re: China’s Millennials

#53

Post by yorwba »

elliekelly wrote: post #22

> They were offered free software that would enable them to dodge the Great Firewall of China – which blocks almost all major Western news sites and social media outlets – and browse the internet without restrictions. There was some surprise when it turned out that even elite students in China had little interest in finding out what Westerners were thinking. Only 53 per cent of the participants had activated the soft…

> I’m not sure their browsing habits really indicate their interests in that scenario.

You should read the actual study [1] then. E.g. "when news on the Panama Papers broke (the week of April 4th, 2016) and when President Trump called the President of Taiwan (the week of December 5th, 2016) — two of the highest news peaks during the experiment — Group-AE students increased their weekly browsing time on the New York Times by 157% and 180% compared to their average consumption, respectively. Overall, a 10% increase in the share of politically sensitive articles published corresponds to students spending 1.8 more minutes on the website during that week."

[1] http://as.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu-as/econ/documents/2018-fal...

The study (or rather, an article based on the study) was discussed on HN before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20233268

Re: China’s Millennials

#54

Post by hoseja »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #44
thrwway483 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> these people are regularly disappeared in China and their lives are put at risk by doing this work. that's what I mean. how does this effect fashion?

It affects how the counterculture is expressed. Look at the 996 movement for example. Things have to be done carefully, anonymously, covering your own tracks, with a sort of guerilla tactics and plausible deniability. Or, if I can be blunt- the difference between the american idea of being edgy and contercultural and the chinese idea of being edgey and countercultural is that the government in america will not run yo…

Or, you know, the Occupy movement. There was a hushed coordinated government crackdown one day and then it just stopped.

Re: China’s Millennials

#55

Post by volkl48 »

yourbandsucks wrote: post #45
pjc50 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. This was highlighted in the overthrow of Iraq. It was undoubtedly an authoritarian state where dissenters and minorities were murdered. However, non-dissenters from the ethnic majority were largely free to go about their business. The destruction of the state made the place entirely unsafe, with an interruption of basic food, medical and energy supplies. The invasion happened in March 2003. Sixteen years late…

Free press checkpoint RE: Iraq. They shut the internet off there last week to try and suppress ongoing protests/unrest. It's been reported a little, but hardly wall to wall like the Hong Kong thing. Why? Nobody sent out orders to the Anglo press about what to report, yet we still have this very marked phenomenon where the reporting takes 'the side' of Anglo world power. It's worth thinking about for anyone who salute…

Is this a serious question?

Because Iraq is a chaotic mess where we are generally impressed if it isn't literally exploding. It's not that shutting the internet off is acceptable, it's that compared to everything else that happens/has happened in Iraq, that's insignificant.

We hold (supposedly) functional, developed places to a higher standard in what we expect from them, and it takes smaller acts of injustice or violence to be noteworthy.

Re: China’s Millennials

#56

Post by fat-chunk »

hos234 wrote: post #12

They seem to be having a good time and some old man is uneasy about it. Nothing to see here. The thing about uneasy old men, is they are happy only if everyone shares their uneasiness or someone shows up and holds their hand and tells them everything will be all right. If neither happens they get more and more cranky.

The author of the article is a woman born in the 80s

Re: China’s Millennials

#57

Post by mikorym »

As an American I would be somewhat alarmed by the claim that the Chinese millennials are not "rebellious" or anti-their-government.

But as someone born on the African continent I would shrug this off as a mistranslation between Marx & Lenin, Inc. and both the East and Africa. When communism came to Africa the response was: "Oh, you mean tribalism." I suspect that the East may have had a similar mistranslation in the gears turning China way back in the early 20th century.

Re: China’s Millennials

#58

Post by jacobush »

luckylion wrote: post #50
pjc50 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. This was highlighted in the overthrow of Iraq. It was undoubtedly an authoritarian state where dissenters and minorities were murdered. However, non-dissenters from the ethnic majority were largely free to go about their business. The destruction of the state made the place entirely unsafe, with an interruption of basic food, medical and energy supplies. The invasion happened in March 2003. Sixteen years late…

Minor correction about Iraq: ethnicity isn't that big a deal, religion is. Saddam and his government were Sunni muslims, the majority (2:1) are Shiite (both are predominately Arabs), with other tiny minorities making up the rest (Kurdish, Yezidi etc).

Yeah, I've heard that too, but I wonder... religion is not something you easily switch between families, and families run deep and old.

I am more familiar with Yugoslavia. Look at the Serbs and the Croats. They are both Slavs.

Yet the war was hardly over Orthodox Christianity (Serbs) vs Catholic Christianity (Croats).

Re: China’s Millennials

#60

Post by SolaceQuantum »

thrwway483 wrote: post #49
SolaceQuantum wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It affects how the counterculture is expressed. Look at the 996 movement for example. Things have to be done carefully, anonymously, covering your own tracks, with a sort of guerilla tactics and plausible deniability. Or, if I can be blunt- the difference between the american idea of being edgy and contercultural and the chinese idea of being edgey and countercultural is that the government in america will not run yo…

so how does this effect clothing, dress, and behavior in public? on the surface does everyone look very compliant and homogeneous? or do they look the same and dress the same as the west? For example, do Chinese millennials use hair colors that don't occur in nature as often, etc?

"so how does this effect clothing, dress, and behavior in public?"

Of course it affects behavior in public, as well as clothing and dress. You can't openly support movements- including the wearing of logos, brans, slogans, sayings, etc.

"do Chinese millennials use hair colors that don't occur in nature as often"

I'm pretty sure dyed hair is still considered popular and fashionable in east asian cultures, given the pop bands coming out of there!

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