The Generation Game

The boys and girls working on the Great Fire Wall must be busy these days. First it was removing all references to Egypt and Tunisia but now the “democratic thing” seems to be sweeping through the entire region. Algeria, Libya, Bahrain, Morocco, Yemen and Iran, who’s to say where it will all end? Why, the Chinese 'protectors of consciousness' should probably just consider omitting the word ‘Arab’ from the Motherland’s intranet and be done with it.

The new G2, the US and China are both struggling to get a handle on things in 2011 and must be wishing for the calm, predictable days of 2010. The US foreign policy seems to be bouncing around like a kiddy in a candy store,

“We love democracy. Ay, but we love user-friendly authoritarian governments to too, oh, which to choose, which to choose? Can I have both, daddy?

Meanwhile, China is skulking up the corner like a moody teenager as it sees its global dream of authoritarian capitalism, led by it, literally go up in smoke as one model authoritarian government after another gets ravaged and seduced by the high school hunk, Democracy.

So, will the unrest spread to China?

Probably not, not yet anyway.

You see, it’s a generation thing and China hasn’t peaked. Economists would like you to believe that as long as there’s growth then there will be stability. The CCP is betting ‘big-time’ on this maxim and so keeps churning out the rhetoric on all the things Chinese people have now and didn’t have back then and how it could all be lost very quickly.

For sure, in places like Egypt and Tunisia, the dictators tried to use the same ‘development’ card,

“Look how far we’ve come with me in power.”

But it didn’t work, because in reality they hadn’t really come far at all. No one can say this about China. When the CCP extorts how much life has changed, everyone agrees, because it’s true.

Those approaching retirement now in China, were once Red Guards, or suffered in the Cultural Revolution, they know how bad things can get.

Their children were then the ‘children of opportunity.’ As reforms opened up in China, the kids born in the 70s and 80s were the ones that rolled up their sleeves and really began to create the new China. In the 90s and 00s these hard working Chinese grafted in sweat shops and factories to buy houses in their hometowns, TVs , refrigerators and toys and for their children. Earning 500 a month in a Guangdong textile factory was infinitely better than stay at home and starving.

The GenYs, those born in the late 80s and 90s, despite suffering from the malaise of the Information Age, still get it. They know what their parents went through to provide them with nice homes, education and opportunities. Deep down, they know the system is wrong, they know it’s unfair and full of social injustice, but they also don’t want to risk losing what they have. So, no one could describe them as contented citizens, but they’re not revolutionaries. It’s not in their blood to rebel. It’s their responsibility to live the life their parents worked so hard to create for them. So, they wont throw it all away over some whimsical notion like democracy or social justice.

But…

It’s the GenZs you need to look out for… who can tell what they will want from their lives?

They are suitably removed from all levels of chaos and suffering to be hot in the veins once more. This is the “Generation Game” that the CCP is playing and has played out in China for centuries.

Right now the ‘fix-all panacea’ of growth and stability definitely appeals to a broad spectrum of society, from the hopeful GenY to the retiring old Red Guard. It’s a case of “use it or lose it,” and millions of Chinese are not prepared to lose it... not yet.

But GenZs?

As yet it’s not clear what they want, but I’ll guess that it wont be more of the same of what their parents and their parents before them suffered. It will be the choices of the GenZs that shape the future of China, as they wont be as compliant as generations that have gone before them. Which means it is not the time of the 'princelings' led by Xi Xinping, who are now jockeying for power, thinking it's their time in the sun. Their life of luxury will end with the GenZs.