China’s Millennials
lrb.co.uk
lrb.co.uk
If you’re a University student randomly offered “free software” to bypass the firewall of course you’re going to be acutely aware that your activity is still being monitored. Probably monitored even closer than usual. 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
Can you elaborate?
So how do these "approved VPN's" really work?
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 this VPN anecdote unsurprising.
Boycott the NBA and Blizzard and support those such as South Park who fight back
People usually don't care very much about what foreigners think, particularly such a nationalistic people as the Chinese, who AFAIK often think that the West is using anti-Chinese propaganda. Not many Westerners would actively browse Chinese or Indian sites to see their perspective either.
Edit: One might think that the fact that the content is censored might make people curious, but I don't think that is the case if the people support the censorship. In my country, Holocaust denial is illegal, but that motivates few people to read the arguments of Holocaust deniers. Admittedly, the Chinese censorship might be more effective than the German one, making people more curious.
During those years, there was almost no Chinese middle class. All the growth in China's urban middle class happened well after 1996.
Even with that growth, they're still greatly outnumbered by rural and working class families, whose millenial children are likely quite different from what's described in the article.
This felt like an article describing American "hipsters" who are nowhere close to a majority of their birth cohort.
https://www.amazon.com/Wish-Lanterns-Young-Lives-China/dp/16...
Really? On Instagram?
Generally they hate talking about politics, and actively avoid the "smears" outside the GFW.
That's why the recent pro-China posters are often deemed bots for being inactive or new, they don't like Twitter coz it's full of fake news and smears to them.
I so rarely see the anti-"Millennial" crowd complain about the term "Baby Boomer"; usually it's the opposite, in fact.
Either way, Millennials are not being singled out.
Signed, a reluctant member of GenX.
As for Gen X, the X is lazy, for sure. What we have in common are Baby Boomer parents.
A side note, Pornhub also is often praised on reddit for less toxic comments than like youtube
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/millennials-to-sna...
To quote a friend, "all 'authoritarian' states (really, all states) distribute their 'authoritarianism' unevenly. that you aren't experiencing any right now doesn't mean it isn't being done, it just means you're not part of the demographic being targeted."
The commonly understood definition of "authoritarian" is pretty insufficient, since it doesn't capture non-state actors exercising authority, control or violence over your life.
The invasion happened in March 2003. Sixteen years later the country is still at war at the edges, as part of the larger Syrian civil war. Car bombs still happen in cities.
China appears to have chosen safety over freedom. The outcome is horrendous for minorities (Uighur etc), but for the majority?
(By comparison, the Chinese civil war's combat period lasted about nine years, with a wikipedia death toll of about nine million people. The war is still not formally concluded.)
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 salutes the flag in between platitudes about freedom.
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.
I think Trump’s legacy will be as the symbol of American decline. He represents a hollowing out of core institutions that started long before him, but his presidency will be remembered as the time when the world realized American hegemony was over.
They didn't sound surprised to me. They sounded elated and fulfilled that they were right about the 'bad guys'.
News stories spread because people want to click them. Nobody wants to hear about Iraq, it's a bummer and a reminder that they probably supported it.
The other, though? Tell me how bad they are!
Compare to the absolute deluge of HK stories across all media sources.
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).
I suppose the Sunni/Shia conflict has an ethnic component with the Persians mostly being Shiites, while most Arabs are Sunni.
> To quote a friend, "all 'authoritarian' states (really, all states) distribute their 'authoritarianism' unevenly. that you aren't experiencing any right now doesn't mean it isn't being done, it just means you're not part of the demographic being targeted."
Freedom is also not distributed evenly. The powerful can use freedom as a means to their ends all the while justifying everyone else's failures as their own choice since they had the 'freedom' to achieve the same for themselves. Just my 2 cents.
As a soon to be expat to Singapore, I am in agreement with the first quote. While I can understand the values and culture here, I am also not too fond of unfettered freedom where people think public infrastructure belongs to them rather than as a shared good that everyone has the responsibility to take care of. Furthermore, the immediate reaction to any government involvement as 'socialism/communism' to shut down a discussion is honestly quite tiring and annoying now.
I do not understand how they are mutually exclusive. I personally believe I am responsible for what belongs to me, and I take care of my belongings. Is it really just me? I do not believe that. Plus, if they do not care about their belongings, what makes you think they will care about them if you claim that it is a "shared good", or how is this supposed to work?
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).
So how does this effect their youth and millennials, when they're literally 100.00% on board with everything, and there's no protest culture or counterculture of any kind?
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EDIT: little help from downvoters? What am I missing? (It's a really genuine question about a huge difference between East/West.)
EDIT2: Thanks for the replies. I think we're all on the same page so I didn't edit my comment. We all are talking about the same facts. However, my specific question is how this effects millennial fashion, etc. (Being edgy, counterculture, etc.) In mainland China, is Millennial fashion missing these "edgy" or countercultural elements?
I take issue with that description of China because any government that is in power usually is so because large numbers of its citizens supporting it.
That's something absolutely normal, as it doesn't work any other way. But with China, it's somehow made out to be something bad when the Chinese are supportive of their country and government.
Similarly: Facebook ain't the only platform for discussion and organizing, the notion that China doesn't have any such platforms, and thus no counterculture like that, is just silly.
But then a lot of Chinese folks who cross over to Western social media find the anti-CCP sentiment to overreach (no doubt bc of the geopolitical considerations involved), and switch over to a defensive posture as a result.
There's no way support for the government is completely genuine in such an environment.
Name a place in any USA city where you will be detained and your equipment confiscated for taking pictures from a public thoroughfare.
Bad Aibling, with its ECHELON installation, used to be quite infamous for that because it was located in a pretty popular hiking region.
I doubt the US military is that much more lenient domestically about having their installations photographed/filmed, no military really is, and a lot of law enforcement/IP rights are neither [0].
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.
Unfortunately when dissent is explicitly illegal, opinion polls are scientifically invalid. That's the CCP's choice, not external propaganda.
When in reality Chinese people are as diverse a people as any other, they are just as influenced by Western pop-culture as any other people.
Case in point: Asian hip hop, yes even Chinese hip-hop has seen quite a rise in popularity.
They copy a ton of tropes out of the US, like most non-US hip-hop has been doing for decades, but they also inject their own Chinese identity as part of the narrative of the songs [0].
Of course, that's a rather acquired taste, but I would easily count as "counter-culture", after all that's also exactly what it started out as in the US.
This isn't true. There have been several documentaries covering people trying to drive change in China that the west has documented. (Hooligan Sparrow, Ai WeiWei: Never Sorry, The Ivory Game, etc. just on Netflix alone) The problem is, these people are regularly disappeared in China and their lives are put at risk by doing this work.
In truth, most people know the chinese government, especially Xi, is behaving to preserve control first and foremost. That this benefits the chinese economically is a side effect- but now that effect is waning.
that's what I mean. how does this effect fashion?
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 you over with tanks if you organize a public sit down. (However, make no mistake, the government in america will eliminate dissidents of enough threat in similar ways to china- see chelsea manning or the black panther movement.)
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!
>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).
No they don't have 100% support. Where are you deriving this information?
Your point about Facebook is sort of bizarre. Are you aware that China has famously blocked Facebook?
There is activism, too. For example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qidong_protest
Are you familiar with the Tiananmen Square protest?
Do they? I remember a Chinese friend telling me about how elections worked in his town. When he was a student, their voting cards were checked by the teachers to make sure they supported the principal's friend. So maybe 100% support on paper, but definitely not 100% voluntary. (That's only one small part - there's definitely more opposition, not full support either way)
FWIW, my basic angle here is 'people are people'. If the board were overloaded with anti-American or anti-Russian stuff, I'd be making mostly the same points.
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.