Today, many of our leaders and cadres who go on visits to foreign countries don’t wish to see reporters and think that the more they talk the more they stand to lose. But the world really has a hunger to understand China. I believe the problem is that Chinese elites really lack the ability to engage in communication and dialogue, and there is a need for improvement.

Actually, this situation is already changing. For example, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has already raised its requirements for foreign diplomats. Every year now you must make a report home about how many journalists you met with, how many public addresses you gave. There is an expectation that they make more public appearances and interact more with the media.

After I graduated from university in 1959 I was engaged by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. By the time I retired in 2009 it had been 50 years [in this line of work]. I really hope that our youth, and Internet users, have the capacity to think for themselves. The world is changing, and there are all sorts of different agitations and incitations (煽动). Those driving these incitations would like to push our youth along in one direction [of their choosing] in order to achieve their own objectives. And so our young people need to be very mindful of this sort of inflammatory language (煽动的言论).

In 2008, Wu clashed with Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth at Davos, accusing him of attempting to impose Western values on China. He also chided a panel moderator along similar lines. From The New York Times:

“You western countries, you decide the rules, you give the grades, you say ‘you have been a bad boy,’” he said. “You have taken such a habit.”

Democracy, Mr. Wu said, took two centuries to develop in the United States and in France; China had only started its opening in 1978. The first American President was elected with only 4 percent of the popular vote and France gave women the right to vote only in 1945, he pointed out.

“Ahhhh France,” said Mr. Wu, a former ambassador to France, “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: diplomacy, Foreign Ministry, France, human rights watch, United States, Wu Jianmin, youth
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In her Vans cap, Quiksilver shirt and Adidas shorts, 19-year-old Terry Zhong is a walking checklist of sports brands as she sets out on a weekly shopping trip with a 500-yuan ($73) budget.

Global economic gloom has barely dented her willingness to spend.

“I don’t think it has anything to do with me,” Zhong said, striding through Beijing’s bustling Xidan commercial district carrying bags from H&M and Zara.

Young Chinese shoppers like Zhong are still spending freely, and major brands ranging from Nike Inc. to Barbie doll maker Mattel Inc. are courting them eagerly to shore up revenue as demand elsewhere slumps.

© Liu Yong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: consumption, youth
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They’re known as the “post 1980s” kids or the “Tiananmen-plus-20″ generation: 200 million-strong, Web-savvy, pop-culture-conscious and decidedly apolitical.

As the world observes the 20th anniversary of the bloody crackdown on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on Wednesday, pro-democracy advocates abroad lament how little Chinese youth today know or care about the student-led movement that ended with the deaths of hundreds when tanks rumbled through the capital’s streets and troops opened fire.

But what is lost in the generalization is whether today’s political apathy is a fact or a front.

“Politics is not a game that we want to play or we can play,” said “Holly,” a 21-year-old college student, who like the rest of the people quoted in this article, agreed to speak on condition of anonymity.

Read also “Is this an anonymous interview?” by Solarina Ho.

© Liu Yong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 1989 20 years, 1989 protests, youth
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An association in China says that suicide is the leading cause of death among young people.

The Chinese Association for Mental Health says young people aged between 15 and 34 are more likely to die at their own hand than by any other means.

The suicide rate is reported to be higher in the countryside than cities, with more women taking their own lives.

The report was published in advance of World Suicide Prevention Day, taking place on Wednesday.

© Liu Yong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: suicide, youth
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Alex Zhang opines on his blog about music and movies and, most recently, learning to drive on Beijing’s congested roads.

The 25-year-old sends instant messages to friends on his computer and cell phone, hangs out at social-networking site Xiaonei and downloads American and Chinese movies and television shows from Web sites like Xunlei.

“I would feel uncomfortable if the computer can’t connect to the Internet,” said Zhang, who earned a master’s degree in engineering from Tsinghua University in Beijing this spring.

Zhang is representative of China’s well-connected youth, for whom the Internet and cell phone have become critical communication tools.

© Liu Yong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: netizens, online culture, youth
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Says one Shenzhen resident:

“My parents are from the countryside. They are much more conservative. We have a different way of thinking. … Especially when it comes to spending money. They just don’t get it.”

Considering this label consciousness, it will be interesting to watch American Apparel’s China play, says Danwei:

The announcement on their own web page says the following:

In the next few months American Apparel will be opening its first stores in China with locations already slated in Beijing and in Shanghai.

In a rare industry occurrence, we will be bringing Made in the USA clothing to China and we intend to pay employees there gross wages that exceed the US minimum.

Aside from the fact that the company intends to sell U.S. made clothes and pay above market rates for labor, there is a further obstacle to their success: it is not clear whether Chinese consumers will pay much for clothes that have no obvious brand and therefore no obvious status marker.

Earlier this month, Shaun Rein of the China Market Research Group noted in BusinessWeek that global companies are increasingly targeting China’s young consumers:

In 2007 China posted 17% growth in retail spending.

Much of this continued growth is fueled by Chinese under the age of 32. My firm…conducted in-depth interviews with 500 Chinese between the ages of 22 and 32 in 10 cities to gauge whether fears of a global slowdown would influence their shopping habits. The answer was a resounding no. A full 90% of interviewees said they expected to “spend considerably more” in 2008 than they did in 2007, and the vast majority was “very optimistic” about salary potential in the next two years, with the majority expecting salary increases of 10% to 25% in next year.

As selling to Chinese consumers becomes more important to multinationals’ bottom lines, the key to winning in China is to understand the needs and motivations of Chinese youth. Many multinationals find their core target market in China is much younger than in other countries. Companies, therefore, need to rethink the products they introduce to China, the sales channels they use, and the marketing-communication strategies they employ. It is no longer acceptable to take what worked elsewhere and transfer it here. China is too important a market for such lazy localization.

More from China Digital Times on China’s middle class and consumption:
China’s Classes of Haves
The New Rich in China: Why There Is No New Middle Class
Cooler Living for China’s Youth?
Chinese Students a Major Market Force

© Rhyen Coombs for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: consumption, Economy, fashion, middle class, video, youth
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Many sympathetic Westerners view Chinese society along the lines of what they saw in the waning days of the Soviet Union: a repressive government backed by old hard-liners losing its grip to a new generation of well-educated, liberal-leaning sophisticates. As pleasant as this outlook may be, it’s naïve. Educated young Chinese, far from being embarrassed or upset by their government’s human-rights record, rank among the most patriotic, establishment-supporting people you’ll meet.

…Barring major changes in China’s education system or economy, Westerners are not going to find allies among the vast majority of Chinese on key issues like Tibet, Darfur and the environment for some time. If the debate over Tibet turns this summer’s contests in Beijing into the Human Rights Games, as seems inevitable, Western ticket-holders expecting to find Chinese angry at their government will instead find Chinese angry at them.

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: nationalism, Tibet, youth
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Xinhua, in Chinese, Saturday Morning 1:30 AM

Responsible Person in TAR Says that A Very Small Minority of People are Attacking, Smashing, Shooting and Burning, answering queries from a Xinhua Journalist

Xinhua March 14 Lhasa. In recent days, a very small minority of people have been attacking, smashing, shooting and burning, disturbing public order and harming the safety of the lives and property of the masses. These is sufficient evidence to say that this been plotted, organized and painstakingly planned by the Dalai clique. This has already aroused great anger and strong condemnation among all the nationalities of the TAR. The relevant departments in Tibet are according to law taking appropriate measures. We are entirely capable of preserving Tibet’s social stability and protecting the lives and property of all the nationalities of Tibet. The plots of a small minority is scheming to destroy the stability and harmony of Tibet is not winning the hearts of the people and so is doomed to failure.

The following commentary about the demographics behind the Tibet protests is translated from a Chinese text:

While Tibetans have very serious grievances including racism and broad spectrum oppression, there are also other factors including demography and employment.

Tibet’s population is very young. The median age in a population is according to some scholars linked to phenomena such as violent crime which is committed disproportionately by people in their 20s. Now the median age in the U.S. is 36 years up from about 27 years in 1968. The U.S. 60′s youth culture culminated that year — which also the year the U.S. had the lowest median age over the past 70 years. See here.

Tibet has a developing country population structure (might demographics be a factor in turbulent politics?) while China is reaching a “developed country” population structure.

I did a little looking around and found data on Tibet’s (Tibetan Autonomous Region) median age and China’s median age in 2000. Tibet: 21 years (half the population was under 21 in 2000), China: 28.95 years. China’s population had a median age of 21 back in 1978, just five or so years after China’s birth rate started its sharp decline. Family planning rules are not applied to the TAR countryside, but do apply in cities, particularly for government workers and party members. Thus Tibet has a very different demographic profile than the rest of the PRC. Probably true of Xinjiang as well, where relaxed family planning rules apply in the countryside. China’s median population is projected to increase to 33.21 years in 2010, 35.44 years in 2020, 38.51 years in 2030, and 40.58 years in 2040. So the demographic contrast between the TAR and the PRC will continue to widen for many years to come.

Think about unemployment. Many Chinese provinces let off some pressure by the large numbers of people who go off to other provinces to seek work. This is much harder for Tibetans, (and similarly for Uighurs, I think) because of the big language barrier they face in a Chinese speaking world and the alienness of Han culture to them. So rural unemployment in Tibet is a bigger problem (even allowing for serious poverty and lack of development) since the safety valve can’t work as well as it does in the provinces of the interior. Now discrimination in employment that Tibetans feel is sometimes due to ethnic Han racism against them, but probably is often because many Tibetans can’t speak Chinese as well as migrant competitors from the interior. (I saw the same problem in Xinjiang ten years ago), even so, it is felt as discrimination against them as Tibetans. Then there is discrimination for political reasons, with tour guides being the most famous example, since Tibetan tour guides might say politically incorrect things. Not to mention the herders who are settled in cities with nothing to do.

More about Tibet’s developing country population structure is here (in Chinese).

Here is a video clips from RussiaToday:

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: demographics, Lhasa riots, slideshow, Tibet, Tibet protests, youth
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Every weekend, lusty college couples make a beeline past greasy spoon restaurants and bootleg video game shops for the dim hotel lobbies to book three-hour blocks of privacy. Students fill half the simple but tidy rooms at the Cheng Lin Ming Guang Hotel, a 10-minute walk from Beijing Normal University.

China is in the midst of a sexual revolution, a byproduct of rising prosperity and looser government restrictions on private life. The relaxed attitudes about sex mark a historic turnaround from the days when love and sex were denounced as bourgeois decadence, and unisex Mao suits and drab austerity were the norm.   

© Jenny Chu for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: modern life, sex, tradition, youth
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First, a Chinese teenager kidnapped and murdered by classmates:

David Stanway reported in Beijing that four teenagers were arrested for the murder of their classmate Zhao Shaoxu, the son of a local entrepreneur, whom they kidnapped in an attempt to extort 500,000 yuan (£35,000) in ransom money. Even though president Hu Jintao tightened improvements to the “quality” and “morality” of the new generations, the biggest crime in China has been on the youth, says the Guardian report. [Full Text]

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Read the rest of Recent News about Chinese Students (86 words)

© Sophia Cao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: crime, students, youth
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