“These millennials represent a radical change from previous generations,” said Keyu Jin, a professor at the London School of Economics and consultant to Richemont, the world’s second-biggest luxury goods company. “They are confident. They’re prosperous. They’re privileged. And, most importantly, they’re incredibly proud of their nation and its economic prospects.”
Despite the caveats about measuring public opinion, Jin said: “There has been a radical shift, even in the last few years. The new generation does not believe that democracy is suitable for China. It does not even believe that a multiparty system might be better for China than what it currently has.”
The fractious US election campaign is a source of fascination but also of reassurance in a country where there are no democratic complications. “Many Chinese watch the US presidential election with a sense of astonishment and relief,” said Andy Mok, a Beijing-based American business analyst. “Astonishment that so much money and political energy is spent. And relief that they do not live under a system of such political dysfunction that erupts in this sad and wasteful spectacle every four years.”...
And Yun Sun, director of the China programme at the Stimson Centre think tank in Washington, said: “I think the Chinese are often confused about how chaotic and ‘indecent’ American election politics could be. To a large extent, it signifies the undesirability of the western democratic system to the Chinese and the genuine conviction in China that the US system is flawed.... In a country where there is no free media or free flow of information, independent public opinion is a myth, if not an illusion. Since the information about US elections and US-China relations is processed and provided by the state and the Chinese public, including the youth, do not have an alternative source of information, their views have indeed become more pro-Beijing, patriotic and hawkish.”...
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72 comments:
Of course we don't have a democracy in America, we have a republic. Putting that aside, history shows that totalitarian regime always offers the illusion of stability, which those who live under it compare favorably against the chaos of representative rule. Unfortunately, one man or one party rule inevitably becomes out of touch with the times, and turns into a repressive regime unable to change with the changing mores of the public.
If currently the millennials in China consider themselves fortunate for their material wealth, it's entirely possible that 10 or 20 years will produce a disconnect between their desires and the governments. We'll ask them again later.
So, opening trade with China has not opened up China and has imported a lot of their practices here. Clearly, we need more of it now.
That's 'cause they don't know any better. Political freedom goes hand in hand with economic freedom. Eventually the yoke will chafe. It always does.
I met a young Chinese movie director at the Casa Del Mar in Santa Monica and he told me the same thing.
The economists seem stuck in the 90’s. The Chinese cultural guy has a clearer eyed view of the situation. China isn’t censoring news about the Hong Kong democracy movement because nobody wants to see it, they censor it because they don’t want anybody to see it.
Ask Kenyu Jin about May 35th.
Someone has probably already posted this informative Codevilla piece about China: Empire of Emperors: What Is China, and Why You Should Worry About It
There's a Trollope (or is it Saki?) short story about 2 rural ladies who come to town during an English election campaign and believe all the horrible invective they overhear, first from one side, then the other. In retrospect, that was a time when there was very little difference between the parties.
And I should believe the Chinese-authoritarian-loving media? Why?
Well, what can I say? They're Commies, and naturally they'll be nonbelievers.
All of this Biden corruption that is being freely reported on the Chinese language web just underscores their point. Obama can put children in cages and nobody bats an eye. It’s all about propaganda. We just want it to be our guy who wields the iron fist, nobody really cares about the tactics unless it’s the other guy.
The American Experiment lasted just about 200 years. Now we are going fascist when Biden wins, or in four years if Trump wins again. But good people need not fear.
Wonder how the Uyghurs feel about democracy or the CCP? I also wonder how the millennials in China feel about the Uyghurs.
And unfortunately, I now also have to wonder how the Economist themselves feel about the Uyghurs. And how does the Economist feel about how the Chinese millennials feel about the Uyghurs?
Democracy is an open outcry market for votes, Period. that messiness can distract people from what is the crus of the matter. The real genius of the United States is the constitution and the efficiency of how it protects •individual• rights. If we lose that – if we stop loving and upholding the constitution – we’re doomed. Then it doesn’t matter if it’s a single party mob rule or democratic mob rule, it would be the same tyrany and oppression.
Willing to sacrifice freedom for the illusion of security. The Chinese can be excused, their twitter has been pushing propaganda for many more decades in China than in the United States. And we can see here in the US youngsters and leftist dont just accept govt control of their lives, they demand it.
The covid response is very illustrative. It is impossible for the federal govt to prevent me contracting covid. It cant be done. To think DC could even move the needle deserves its own psychoanalysis. How do people get to the point the think the federal govt should, let alone could, "contain" this virus? Healthy School age kids are at risk of dying from covid is less than seasonal flu, yet in the face of facts schools went virtual, harming millings. Governments are useless in making personal decisions for people. The Chineses millenials of course only believe the govt is doing the right thing because that is the only information the govt gives them
1. “They prefer iPhones over democracy” is a strangely self-refuting statement because you don’t get innovation like iPhones outside of free democratic societies.
2. “Public opinion” might just be more difficult to measure in this total surveillance state than in a free country like ours. YMMV and all that.
3. WTF is the purpose of this stupid article anyway, especially at a time when a Chinese puppet is currently leading the fakenews polls, China is threatening Taiwan having already subdued Hong Kong, and the rest of the world is pushing back against Sino aggression in the form of coercive trade policy and the use of technology to further China’s tentacles into technology as a way to spy on the West?
These are the same sentiments that lead many to consider it "wasteful" that we, in the United States, have so many options for toilet paper in our grocery stores. Wouldn't it be "less wasteful" to have only one option?
They don't understand the advantage that competition brings to create better options.
Some people are just reassured that someone is making all of those decisions for them. Do I want 2 ply or 3 ply - Chairman Mao please tell me!
They eat bats and monkeys and shit. Just sayin.
So cool!
Move over, Fonzie. The Chinese millenials are here.
All those happy workers out in the cotton fields, singing their troubles away. They like living in those shacks.
Next we'll get Stakhanovite tales of hyperproduction from the Chinese teeming millions.
Isn’t that the plot of “The Matrix”.
Democracy (i.e. majority rule) offers people an illusion of control and thereby acts as a psychoactive agent to normalize affirmative sublimation. I will vote.
That said, the founders of America may have recognized this legerdemain and selected a republican form of government specifically to dissuade this deception.
It's not like the US is a multi-party system either, unless you say Trump is one party and Democrats/NeverTrumpers are the other.
Chinese have never known choice. Of course it will be scary for them.
And, most importantly, they’re incredibly proud of their nation and its economic prospects.
It's good when they are but not when we are?
This attitude is coming soon to America. I wish I was wrong.
Of course a salesman of luxury goods thinks people should shut up about politics and buy luxury goods. He makes his living saying things like that.
If they said something else, what would happen to them?
Millennials in China are "incredibly proud of their nation." If true, that's a huge, fundamental difference from young Americans, who are taught by their culture to be ashamed of their nation.
Of course, we're just reading the words of "analysts." Don't know if it's true.
They don't understand the advantage that competition brings to create better options.
Religion (i.e. universal frame) or ethics (i.e. relativistic frame) to moderate people capable of self-moderation. Competing interests to mitigate progress of others running amuck. Separately, a feedback mechanism in dynamically adaptive systems to minimize perturbations and optimize outcomes following a fitness function. An assembly, a union of laboratories operating with a common framework.
"People living under totalitarian regime tell reporters how happy they are living under totalitarian regime."
Yes, I'm sure young Chinese are going to tell you the truth, and not what the government that can destroy their lives wants them to say.
Our MSM just keep making the same mistakes over and over again.
An obvious disadvantage of being the most visible, if no longer the most powerful, country on earth -- all our dirty laundry and mud-slinging are on full display. Germany, France, Canada, or Japan might present young Chinese a more acceptable face of multi-party government than the US, but that is because they are less democratic -- or at least less boisterously democratic, less diverse, and less divided -- than our country.
Like the young in the US, the young in China don't know what they don't know. They've been purposely miseducated, indoctrinated. Both groups are funneled a bit different barrel of sludge, but both are getting a purposefully directed education away from their roots and their history.
The greater bulk of the Chinese population is not wealthy, does not live in all of the cities, and will, at some point come eye to eye with those wealthy young, praising iPhones and communist run governments, to see how millions of their own live in poverty outside of the modern glitz afforded party members.
The young in the US have no understanding of the constitutionally limited Republic that they have been handed. They're ready for a majority rule concept that would allow 2 wolves and 1 lamb to decide what's for dinner.
The young in both nations are in for a rude awakening at some point.
"That's 'cause they don't know any better. Political freedom goes hand in hand with economic freedom. Eventually the yoke will chafe. It always does."
Well said! This is the reason the folks in Hong Kong can be in open rebellion over a potentially oppressive law at the same time folks in mainland China will even ignore the genocide going on with the Uighurs. Hong Kong has known both political freedom property rights for decades while the mainlanders only recently gained any economic security at all, let alone political or economic freedom. Wait until all the Chinese bellies have been full for a decade or so and see what happens.
I, for one, expect that the prospect of being arrested and executed for any violation of social, political, economic or other requirements detailed, and changed at at will, by the Chinese Communist Party remains a firm guide to support for the regime.
There are 90,000,000 Communist Party members in China. The country would not miss any one of them, should the locals decide to hang him from a street lamp. Or any 90,000,000 of them.
Interesting post.
There has long been a tension between freedom and security. This country has evolved so that one party (Democrats) stand for security while the other (Republicans) stand for freedom, which implies flexibility and not being constrained by top down government. It shouldn’t be surprising that the last five Dem nominees for President have bee essentially bought and paid for by the CCP - because deep down, a lot of Dems aren’t nearly as repulsed by the ChiComs’ top down power structure. That is what they prefer themselves, with them, of course being the at the very top of their top down utopia.
There are a number of reasons why the economy boomed under Trump, While it stagnated for the previous eight years under Obama/Biden. Partly it was the removal of a significant number of top down regulations. Partly it was cutting taxes. And partly, maybe, it was that flexibility was in the air.
On the flip side, it very much looks like China is very likely going to pay the price for putting security above freedom, and top dow control over flexibility. I expect them to have an ever harder time competing, including militarily, because We are far more innovative. They put a lot of money into hypersonic missiles. We jumped in late, and very shortly jumped ahead. Sure they may have more such missiles deployed, but that we will shortly have more, faster, and more maneuverable hypersonic missiles deployed. We have jumped way ahead of them in the space race, by taking a lot of power away from centralized authority (NASA), and instead allowed companies to innovate. Sure, they inevitably, and compulsively, steal our technology (aided and abetted by top Dem politicians, like Bide and Clinton, who they have purchased) but that just means that they are always playing catch up,nand inevitably admitting the inferiority of their economic andcpolitical system.
But there are also indications that their middle class economy is starting to collapse. In several years, these millennials may not be able to afford their iPhones and iPads. It very much looks like their top down fascist socialist government is a big reason why the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus was constructed, negligently released into their general population, and that release hidden from their central government in Beijing, and the rest of the world, until it was too late to contain, resulting in millions of deaths around the world. And the world woke up to the threat of Chinese hegemony. We had become dependent upon them as part of our supply chains, and they had prove unreliable. They were selling us inferior products, and much of their electronics they were selling us, had been compromised, from a security point of view, under orders of their central government. More and more companies around the world responded by switching as much of their supply chains out of China as they could. Meanwhile, countries that they had previously been able to play off against each other were forming and strengthening alliances against the Chinese. We are likely talking tens, if not hundreds, of millions of middle class Chinese jobs disappearing over the next several years. And that is going to be very disruptive. Te deal the Chinese people made with their government was that they would accept the top down authoritarian government, as long as that government kept providing them with good paying, middle class jobs. And those promised jobs are startupingvto disappear.
Like wackamole Thomas Friedman keeps showing up everywhere. So powerful that even cruel neutrality cannot neutralize it, even though it can overcome Hunter Biden laptop.
The media also tell us that China has handled covid much better than Trump has. Did you know nobody there dies of it anymore?
If only we had welded shut the apartment doors of covid sufferers back in March!
They are not free to say what they believe.
They are all Green Grocers.
So we are reporting polls again in an authoritarian country where providing the wrong answer can end your life prospects and said authoritarian government has a good chance to find out that you strayed. Seems legit.
Bread and circuses, to coin a phrase.
I suppose I should also mention that China has a long history of the people being content with the current regime in charge until said regime falters - losing the "Mandate of Heaven" in their terminology - at which point things get more difficult. The lucky dynasties survive multiple overthrow attempts before exiting the scene; the less lucky ones get tossed out fairly quickly. Of note, The Ch'in dynasty, which was the first imperial dynasty of a united China and also provided outsiders with the name of "China" for the country, was one of the shortest lived dynasties, lasting all of 14 years and 3 emperors. Qin Shi Huang was very competent and also extremely unlikeable. Once he died the successors retained the "extremely unlikable" trait but nothing else. In China, an unassailable position can become dead and gone very quickly when it comes to government.
It occurs to me when I watch Star Trek: Why aren't there more Chinese characters? What happened to China in between now and 2200?
The Chinese Communist Party is rewriting the Bible. Quote,
Jesus once said to the angry crowd who was trying to stone a woman who had sinned, “He who is without sin among you, let him cast a stone at her.” When his words came to their ears, they stopped moving forward. When everyone went out, Jesus stoned the woman himself, and said, “I am also a sinner.”
from ChinaAid
This is nothing new and the same sort of rewrites have been repeatedly done to Chinese history. Chinese history isn't real. It's what the Chinese government, and to a lessor extent previously governments, wants or wanted people to believe. Therefore Chinese history is consistently an account of how wonderful China is and how terrible everyone else is.
Racism and nationalism are the constant unifying themes that people growing up in China are surrounded by. There may have been a short period over the last few decades when Western movies challenged that ideology, but it has been a short-lived impact as China now has an abundance of homegrown movies and TV shows.
Most of us have seen Communism massively fail in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in our lives. We assume others know that. But if you go into our schools, let alone Chinese schools, you'll see that the young people have no idea and little chance to discover that this ever happened.
Germans in 1936 saw no need for things like democracy. They were happy and proud of their country.
Orwell never thought that people would actually voluntarily pay hundreds of dollars a month to carry their telscreens around with them. He tried to be cynical, but it’s impossible to keep up.
Now do US millennials.
"In a country where there is no free media or free flow of information, independent public opinion is a myth, if not an illusion."
And this is precisely what our would-be Tech Overlords are striving to bring us here. Want to express your Wrongthink about Biden's corruption on Althouse's blog? Fine, be our guest. But just don't assume you can take that flight to Zurich next summer without some unpleasantness from Homeland Security at the airport. Or that position at a S&P 500 firm? Good luck with that.
Hmm, a useful article. It made me realize that risible Millennials whose claptrap I should ignore are not geographically limited to America. (Which of course makes those fools even more frightening in the big picture.)
iPhones; the new opiate of the masses.
It's glorious to be a happy, content, obedient subject.
The funny thing is: they aren't completely wrong. Getting to vote for your overbearing tyrannical masters isn't much of a step up from having them thrust upon you by a geriatric politburo.
It's not voting that makes people free. It's respect for constitutional limits on what the government can do to you, whether elected, appointed, inherited or drawn by lot.
We're a week away from a voting exercise in which 130 million strangers will get a significant say in how my life is run. I'm sure many of them are fine people, but I don't actually want them to have that much power.
This sounds like Chi-com disinformation. "Don't worry about China not having any freedom, they don't even want it".
Isn't it odd how the MSM (which all marches in lock-step) never criticizes the Chinese Communist dictatorship and never praises Putin? You have to wonder why, and what's the motivation.
Millennials in China look askance at American democracy? Funny coincidence: so do most of the American oldsters who comment at Althouse's blog.
"Democracy (i.e. majority rule) offers people an illusion of control and thereby acts as a psychoactive agent to normalize affirmative sublimation. I will vote.
"That said, the founders of America may have recognized this legerdemain and selected a republican form of government specifically to dissuade this deception."
They established the form of government they did to mitigate the power of the people at large to direct the activities of government--to have any actual control--and to protect the prerogatives and power of the wealthy. In essence, they did what you say they didn't: they gave us an illusion of control.
bread and circuses for a new generation
Add the London Times to the list.
The mind meld is WORKING.
"That is what they prefer themselves, with them, of course being the at the very top of their top down utopia."
Which is why they howl like banshees when someone other than themselves manages to get ahold of the reins of power, as they assume they're going to have done to them what they'd happily do to others.
"Millennials in China look askance at American democracy."
So they're giving us the old squint eye, eh?
“They are confident. They’re prosperous. They’re privileged. And, most importantly, they’re incredibly proud of their nation and its economic prospects.
Just like Lebron! He's all that and proud of China too!
If they still have those ghost cities, perhaps we could send them Portland OR.
This is going to end with most assets in the United States owned by ethnic Chinese if something doesn't change pretty soon. Our politicians are for sale and some of them are foreign owned, and the percentage that are foreign owned is ever increasing.
Most of our media are struggling financially and they can be heavily influenced by relatively small gifts of money.
The only parts of our media that are thriving -- Google, Facebook, and Twitter -- are left-wing and are already semi sort of in bed with the CCP ideologically.
Our universities are left-wing and again admire the CCP. A dramatic example of this is the suppression of research, and the suppression of the publication of research, on the origins of the Covid-19 virus despite all the clues and logic that would suggest the virus passed through a lab.
Meanwhile we continue to have an approximately half trillion dollar yearly trade deficit with China which inevitably means that a half trillion dollars of US assets, including land and companies, are passing to China's control each year. Many people imagine that this is fair in some sense because in many cases China is producing goods more cheaply. What they aren't aware of is that most US goods are effectively illegal to sell in China regardless of whether there is a demand for them or not.
People don't understand that with the asymmetric rules of trade we have now, China is guaranteed to win.
The great majority of Chinese people in China and quite likely in the US -- not everyone but the great majority -- think that they are smarter, harder working, and more deserving than Westerners and that they deserve to rule us.
I wonder what impact there would be on the authority figures quoted, Keyu Jin and Andy Mok, on themselves, their business, and/or family in China, if they had come to different conclusions?
"They established the form of government they did to mitigate the power of the people at large to direct the activities of government--to have any actual control--and to protect the prerogatives and power of the wealthy. In essence, they did what you say they didn't: they gave us an illusion of control."
You're sort of right. The purpose of the a limited constitutional republic is, in part, to prevent 'the people at large' from directing the activities of government. That is a very good thing. 'The people at large' need to mind their own business, live and let live, rather than going into the voting booth in order to give an air of legitimacy to their desires to get something for nothing.
What utterly silly dreck about what "400 million" millennials in China supposedly think on such complicated topics as stability and prosperity in relation to autocratic vs democratic forms of government. As for the powers-that-be running the PRC, their actions suggest strongly that their real concern is focused on the success of democracy in Taiwan, and to a lesser extent Hong Kong, Singapore, S. Korea and Japan, than it is the US or any other Western democracy.
Cook: "They established the form of government they did to mitigate the power of the people at large to direct the activities of government--to have any actual control--and to protect the prerogatives and power of the wealthy. In essence, they did what you say they didn't: they gave us an illusion of control."
It is not productive to listen to Stalinists explain the founding of America.
Or economics.
Or basically anything really.
robert Cook said:
They established the form of government they did to mitigate the power of the people at large to direct the activities of government--to have any actual control--and to protect the prerogatives and power of the wealthy. In essence, they did what you say they didn't: they gave us an illusion of control.
****************
Yeah, that Bill of Rights thingy was just another method of giving us proles the "illusion of control".
SNORT
Chinese civilization is about five thousand years old and but for Hong Kong and Taiwan has never had a democracy. Interesting is the only Chinese democracies are the ones the Chinese Communist want to eliminate. As for the polling, in a country with the social credit system the CCP has set up who in their right mind would say anything against the CCP party line? As it is there are plenty of local actions against the provincial governments that rarely reported in the west.
"...The new generation does not believe that democracy is suitable for China...." Do the idiots at the London Times also include those same 'Millennials' now demonstrating and rioting in H.K. Nope! The London Times propoganda will need to be revised when the CCP starts to begin retreating from the World stage like in times of the past. "...400 million prosperous..." compared to abject poverty of the past, maybe? But what about the 600 million Chinese only making less than $150 a month according the the number #2 leader in the CCP -Li Keqiang? That's almost half the population of China. Just another propoganda spiel (contempt) to those who read this gibberish. I guess the largest Democracy in the World, India, got it wrong?
It's the very totalitarian system that caused the China Flu pandemic. Reporting that a virus escaped your lab is bad for your career, maybe even fatally bad. Your supervisor faces the same damning consequences. You are a defeatist. You are undermining the great and glorious Chinese Communist Party by reporting the release of the virus. Such news would upset the Emperor, err, the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party. So, it's better to keep quiet and keep your head than try to contain a virus spill and prevent millions of deaths due to your screwup. That is the way with all empires.
"The new generation does not believe that democracy is suitable for China."
Then it doesn't it matter what they think.
"... they’re incredibly proud of their nation and its economic prospects...”
Reliant on theft, and slave labor, but they better be proud, or else.
From what I've seen a lot of American millenials agree with them.
@bagoh20
"Then it doesn't it matter what they think."
This is the correct answer.
Coming to a country near you...
Democracy does not present much value beyond aiding peaceful reconciliation of disagreements to favor majorities. Why would they choose it in a homogeneous society of 400 million, 1 billion, more? #PrinciplesMatter
From what I've seen a lot of American millenials agree with them.
They're democratic until it infringes their special and peculiar interests, then they protest, cancel to force a consensus with the minority... founded on false premises.
I took two courses in college (Boston U. 1969-73 decades before AOC) on Chinese history in reverse order; recent first (Ching and later), then earlier later. Good professor, Dr. Merle Goldman, wife of Marshall at MIT. Her very last lecture she posed the question: Mao & Company as an interregnum between Chinese dynastic periods. Now that Xi (?) is Life Leader--it is to be debated whether he is the first of a new dynasty of nominated Emperors like the Roman Empire from 96AD to the end of Marcus Aurelius which was only vaguely hereditary. Discuss.
Chinese people have never been exposed to democracy, so their opinion on the subject is of limited value. It's like asking a blind man about colors. With that said, there is no political system in the world which can deal with such high levels of population growth. Very soon, the Chinese people will be drowning under a ocean of elderly, all of whom need care. And it's the same in America. So regardless of which political system the Chinese prefer, they can't take care of a billion old people. America can't either. Some other solution will have to be found. There's the rub.
If you think Trump voters are shy, imagine that any critique of your rulers could easily lower your FICO score 300 points or even get you jailed or disappeared. Then imagine that, as a result, you, everyone you see or hear every day, and all the pollsters have grown up with the habit of extreme caution and circumspection in any criticism of your rulers and system.
GIGO.
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