This article comes off as an anti-western propaganda piece. No mention of any of the serious problems China has or what Chinese Millennials think about them. Imho, the article seems to suggest that prior to Millennials substantial progress was being made on any and all relative fronts and now progress has become stagnant. However, I believe that in reality, all of the problems Millennials are facing were generated by previous generations. So is the author just frustrated that these Millennials aren't fixing all of his generations mistakes?
China’s Millennials
91–100 of 111 posts
Re: China’s Millennials
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In China, everybody fully supports the government, don't they? I mean that what the Party does, has 100.00% approval rating at all times, there are no Facebook groups for discussing it, there is no activism protesting anything or driving for any kind of change, and everyone there just totally supports everything. (In Mainland China). I take issue with that description of China because any government that is in powe…
Have you ever been to China? You can find yourself cornered by armed soldiers with assault rifles just for taking a photograph of the "wrong" building in a completely ordinary public thoroughfare. Dissent is literally banned and access to external social networks is cut off. There's no way support for the government is completely genuine in such an environment.
Keep in mind you're also a (most likely) obvious foreigner taking pictures of perhaps a sensitive building in a foreign country. You don't think that given the current geopolitical climate, Asian people in the US taking pics of say, Mar-a-Lago, or a military complex or even an industrial park would sometimes run into trouble?
Also, you may have been to China, but have you ever taken the time while there to attempt to understand why there might be some support for the government? This is a country where even among the fairly young, most experienced poverty as children, where their parents and their grandparents have experienced hunger, sometimes severe famine, being invaded and conquered and brutalized by the Japanese, then civil war, and the civil strife and turmoil of the Cultural Revolution. Chinese families are close knit, most grow up living with their grandparents - these generational experiences are ingrained into the fabric of society. There's genuine and heartfelt appreciation for the recent policies and stability that has finally let a people raise themselves out from that poverty. (China in the 50's, 60's, and 70's was much poorer than Sub-Saharan Africa - per capita GDP was something from 1/2-1/3 of even places like the Congo and Zimbabwe). There is pride too, overwhelming pride in the grit and determination and hard work that has been poured into all that development and progress. Obviously, that's not to say that there isn't plenty of criticism and opposition and people making fun of aspects of the government and government policies, but the general support is not fake or coerced. I imagine it's not that different from the way a certain generation of Americans from a particular economic class saw FDR and his whole New Deal administration.
Just keep in mind that sometimes, depending on their background story and life experiences, people can see the same things in a very different light. They also have different utility curves - some might value a tootsie roll over a twix bar, some might value liberty over their own life, or some might just value stability and the opportunity to live their lives and raise their children over anything else in the world.
Re: China’s Millennials
#93I skimmed it, but didn't see much mention of something that I think is pretty big to my generation (I'm '83) in the West: counterculture, protest, etc. It's not as big as in the 1960s and 1970s had been (before I was born), but still, it was definitely a pretty big element, and LGBTQ+ and social justice seem to be important topics that affect many people here in the West. Here, much of this is expressed -- or social…
"Listen to how woke I am while I call a billion people robots"
Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and/or flamebait to HN?
Re: China’s Millennials
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Listen to how woke I am while I call a billion people robots"
Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and/or flamebait to HN? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Eye of the beholder, brother. Poster asked for feedback. I thought I was being economical.
Re: China’s Millennials
#95> 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…
How much time do westerners spend on the Chinese internet? How much relevance does either set of sites have to someone living in the other hemisphere? I find myself barely-remembering most western sites while I'm in China for even a couple of weeks, and language issues (mostly) keep me from spending much time on Chinese sites while I'm in the USA. Based on my experience as a Westerner making trips to China, I find th…
Every once in a while I baidu search something to see if there are any results that are totally different than on western search engines. I have never heard of any of my friends, coworkers, or family doing this so it's probably really uncommon.
Re: China’s Millennials
#96They 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.
"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."
Re: China’s Millennials
#97I skimmed it, but didn't see much mention of something that I think is pretty big to my generation (I'm '83) in the West: counterculture, protest, etc. It's not as big as in the 1960s and 1970s had been (before I was born), but still, it was definitely a pretty big element, and LGBTQ+ and social justice seem to be important topics that affect many people here in the West. Here, much of this is expressed -- or social…
Eastern Europe in the 80s. Everything seemed mostly normal, everyone "supported the government", no social media, the economy went bad, people grumbled then suddenly in a year or two everything was upended.
Re: China’s Millennials
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and/or flamebait to HN? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Eye of the beholder, brother. Poster asked for feedback. I thought I was being economical.
Ah ok. I see your point in this case.
Re: China’s Millennials
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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'.
There's also a browser extension that replaces the word with 'snake people':
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/millennials-to-sna...
Re: China’s Millennials
#100For a more close-up perspective, I recommend “Wish Lanterns: Young Lives in New China.” The author (himself a Western millennial) interviews and visits with six different Chinese young people over a period of years, discussing their goals, aspirations, worries and responsibilities.
https://www.amazon.com/Wish-Lanterns-Young-Lives-China/dp/16...