The 'Me Generation' The mindset of China's generation born after 1980 is a far cry from their parents. Self-centered and equality-driven, they chase the golden dragon
The cover story of the Beijing Review this week provides the entry to a generation in Chinese society that I have been wanting to get to pray for. The BJ Review calls them the 'Me Generation' - basically they are those born since the end of the Cultural Revolution, and more especially since 1980 when the one child policy became law.
There are three more stories that can be reached from the extension of this page - see below
The Cultural Revolution left China badly battered. During the period 1966-1976 society in China was messed around fundamentally. Many families were separated for years at a time during this period; careers were shattered; distrust nurtured by the culture of betrayal that operated. I will write more another day of those who suffered most during this time. When Mao Zedong died in 1976 it took four years from some degree of normality to return under the growing leadership of Deng Xiaoping. Families came back together, lives and careers were partially restored, and the economy began to be rebuilt.
And children were born. There was only one in most cases; as our articles point out the "One Child Policy" was enacted in 1979. And that has had enormous impact on the social structure and the lives of this generation. But consider also the families these children were being born into. Mum and Dad had had their lives severely messed around for ten years and more. Maybe they had just graduated and married in 1966; they would have spent much of the next ten years apart, with no opportunity to have children. Maybe they were teenagers during that time, and those crucial mind- and heart-shaping years were lost to them. And then they were able to have children.
Those children grew up in families that finally knew some stability and were able to make something of life economically. The children themselves had far more than ever their parents had done. They had no brother or sister to knock them around, to shape them through the rough and tumble of family life. They were the soul object of their family's attention; pouring out love and and attention and things, because they never wanted them to suffer as they had. "Little emperors" they call them in China today. And yet that love also came from people with huge personal need, who were barely able to talk about the pain of the ten years of hell from 1966 to 1976.
We know many of them. They long for more, for love and to know how to love. Many of them are now getting married and having their own children. That is the generation we are praying for today.
