So this post isn't strictly limited to one-child issues, but the idea was in my head when I woke up this morning, and I am eager to get it down.
Why is corruption so insidious in some societies, and relatively unimpactive in others? For the sake of this discussion, corruption is held to mean systemic activity that takes place outside the law, but is institutionalized sufficiently to require most people in a society to take part in order to meet basic needs. Western societies have put official procedures and rule of law on a pedestal, and even small breaks in the dominance of such systems have largely resulted in total chaos. However, in places like China, relatively low levels of corruption allow for an otherwise rigid system to flex to the needs of the society, with little negative impact on the overall health of the society (of course, larger-scale corruption causes tremendous problems, but I am talking about the little processes like using family connections to gain access to officials, etc).
I think the key difference is the role of the individual. The efficacy of the Chinese system is measured by its own people largely by how is serves society as a whole. Individuals left behind are not considered significant points of failure if the society as a whole flourishes (the measure of which varies, but usually security and economic prosperity as the primary evaluated factors). Western societies, however, view the larger system as a means of serving individual needs, often protecting individuals from the 'tyranny of the majority'. To the extent that a corrupt system may exclude certain participants, that system has failed. The simple existence of corruption signals a failure in the system in a way that is not true in Chinese society.
Furthermore, the concept that the system exists at the consent of the individuals it serves, and the notion that an individual has an obligation only to established law- the system exists in some part to protect those that opt out of societal norms- means that individuals feel little obligation to honor the norms established by a corrupt system in a Western society. Since there is no law governing, and since the individual sees his primary obligation to law and his own interests, a corrupt system provides an opportunity to further his own interests at the expense of the group. As a result, western societies have little tolerance for corrupt systems, as they result in an insidious pattern of behavior. In Chinese society, the individual's primary obligation is to society as a whole, not to the law; thus the unofficial rules governing a corrupt society are coercive to him, and his behavior is constrained from seeking to exploit the system fully for his own advantage.
Of course the other side of this is that the scope of the group to which one feels a primary obligation matters. In China, where the scope of the system (national) rougly matches the scope of the group (the Chinese nation), the unofficial rules of an extralegal system are largely respected. However, in societies in which that group is smaller than the system (tribal societies in a multi-ethnic nation state), primary loyalty to the group instead of law or the nation ensures that corrupt systems are exploited by subgroups to serve their own interests.
In sum, a society with rule of law does not tolerate corrupt systems, as corruption facilitates too much individual exploitation. Societies in which participants feel a primary obligation to the same group that is served by the corrupt system (the nation, in the case of China) constrain individual exploitation with social norms, and a corrupt system can thrive. However, in societies for which there is no effective rule of law and in which groups feel a primary loyalty to a group smaller than that defined by the system (loyalty to tribe in a mutli-tribal nation with little national identity, for example), corruption facilitates the clear and relatively unconstrained exploitation of the corrupt system by one group, usually to the detriment of another. This often results in state failure, or something akin to it. These are the examples held up as evidence of the superiority of rule of law. Ironically, strong identification with a sub-national group is often the cause of the corrupt system; rule of law does not allow a group to effectively privilege itself in the acquisition of limited resources, so alternative means are constructed.
As mentioned in a previous post, the one-child policy will considerably limit the unofficial 'guanxi' networks that are the foundation of the extra-legal system. This post has argued that unique cultural characteristics of the Chinese allow this system to exist and society to flourish under it; the big questions then is what replaces it? Or what networks fill the gaps when family connections no longer exist?
Friday, February 13, 2009
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
A Dangerously Unsatisfied Generation?
So the previous post brought forward an idea which has significant long-term impact: the increasing mismatch between expectation and opportunity amongst the current 15-30 yr old generation of Chinese only-child elites.
While previous posts have discussed the potential ramifications of a generation of unmarried uneducated young men at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder who cannot find mates, this post will explore the opposite end of the spectrum- overeducated elites with high economic expectations who cannot find an opportunity to earn the lifestyle they desire or utilize the education they have achieved.
With each only child having as many as six family members (parents, grandparents) focused on their achievement as not only a source of pride but the family's primary source of economic well-being in the long term, especially given limited state-provided social security, Chinese only-children are subject to an enormous amount of pressure to achieve. The ramifications on health and well-being are tremendous. Suicide has become the leading cause of death for those aged 20-35, and many have become addicted to the virtual escape of video games, which the Chinese government has deemed a national epidemic in light of the severe consequences of a near-total withdrawal from reality that many succumb to (Taylor 2008). 2000 qualified therapists for 1.3 billion people in a nation with a long and deeply embedded resistance to and suspicion of mental health treatment beyond drugs and electro-shock ensures that these mental health problems are likely to persist and grow in the long-term. Universities have invested heavily in psychology programs, but it will take years and significant cultural change in order to catch up.
Luxury goods and high-class lifestyles have rapidly expanded into China, and media outlets glorify these as the pinnacle of achievement. With little long-term cultural experience with the pressures of material success, parents and grandparents are unprepared for how to raise children to resist defining their success on material achievement. Indeed, in many cases, parents who have known scarcity their entire lives contribute to the equation of success with material wealth in the psyche of their children. Although this stems from a genuine desire to save them the suffering they themselves endured, the combination of little practical understanding of the marketplace and a near desperate desire not to be left behind by the economic boom ensure parents often reinforce unrealistic expectations for achievement in their children. The result is a generation of only children who has "become modern too quickly, glutted as is is with televisions, access to computers, cash to buy name brands, and the same expectations of middle-class success as Western kids." (Taylor, 2008)
The fact that this generation is comprised almost entirely of only children is significant beyond their role as exclusive providers. Parents of only children have traditionally exceptionalized their children to a greater degree than multiple children. Parental experience with a single child often causes parents to loose perspective on the actual abilities of their child compared to peers. The only child is seen as exceptional for lack of children with whom he can be compared. The lack of cousins in second-generation only child families only exacerbates this phenomenon. The fact that this child is a family's 'only hope' means that there is a stronger incentive to see only the positive potential in a child. Admitting that one's only child is sub-average, or anything less than exceptional, is deeply troubling to parents, especially given the negative long-term implications for parents and grandparents own financial and social security. Options such as relying on siblings, nieces and nephews, or other current/future children are no longer available.
The pressure to achieve is tremendous for China's youth. Parents, many of whom were themselves robbed of the opportunities now available by the Cultural Revolution, often live vicariously through their children. A personal narrative that would be a tragic tale of lost hope had it ended with their experience is transformed into an inspirational story of self-sacrifice when it includes the eventual achievement of future generations. The dramatic uncertainty characteristic of the average lives of Chinese throughout the centuries makes this multi-generational narrative a deeply embedded psychological coping mechanism and way of explaining the meaning behind lives that would otherwise often seem brief and tragic. Chinese parents today, in understanding their own suffering and sacrifices as part of a larger story leading to the eventual success and triumph of their children and grandchildren are meetly perpetuating a cultural view of the order of society. The cycle of hardship-success-hardship-success that many westerners come to understand as core to an individual life is multi-generational in Chinese thinking.
This desire for achievement first manifests itself in expectations for educational achievement. 90% of parents surveyed indicated the desired children become university graduates, and 45% indicated a desire for advanced degrees. (Taylor 2008)Even if these sorts of education goals were attainable on such a massive scale, opportunities for these skilled professionals do not exist in equivalent numbers. This means that many will be left out in the cold, unable to find work 'worthy' of their education in an economy that is still developing. Even the government champions high-achieving elite, but the country cannot yet universally provide the lifestyle that these elites have been acculturated to expect. Taylor writes, "faced with bleak prospects, elite only-children often don't know how to cope; they've been brought up to do only one thing: succeed," (taylor, 2008). When success as it has been narrowly defined is not available, many find themselves isolated and without the coping skills more well-rounded individuals would have.
The sacrifices that many parents make for their children's success only add to the pressure. Many parents spend significant percentages of their income on education for children, and often migrate far away for years in order to support their child's education and health needs. On the positive side, Chinese children have a tremendous sense of being loved and cared for as a result of this attention. However, there is also a tremendous pressure to repay these parental sacrifices, honor parental wishes, and care for the family in the long-term. Children too begin to understand themselves as part of a multi-generational cycle, and feel pressure to succeed not only to achieve their own material desires, but also to fulfill the wishes of their ancestors and family. Its an awfully big burden for a 13 yr old.
Much attention has been paid to the differences in only-children themselves. Many conceive of Chinese only-children as spoiled and bratty- however, most research indicates that they are no more so than their multi-children counterparts in both China and the west (Taylor 2008). The common perception of these children as having a higher desire for instant gratification, material well-being, etc is not so much attributable to their being only children, but rather to their being raised in a wealth-crazy society. Although being an only-child increases the pressure on these children to achieve, it does not, it would seem, increase their own sense of entitlement any more than the same levels of wealth, education, and glorification of material success would for a child with siblings.
The implication here is then that the lack of siblings does not directly cause the distress, depression, and other ill effects on the health of China's elite children. Rather these effects are products of parental and societal pressure, which is indirectly exacerbated when there is only one child to carry the family through the future.
The result of all of this is a generation of highly educated elites with limited job prospects and high expectations for material wealth. This is exactly the sort of demographic that could challenge the establishment if consistently frustrated enough. Once material wealth seems out of reach, individuals tend to search for meaning elsewhere, and a turn on the establishment which failed them. If this generation in China were to continue growing, those that do not succumb to mental illness would be prime candidates for fomenting political dissent. So long as success seems possible, parents and children will continue to buy into the system. However, if the pressure to succeed and lack of opportunities reaches a point where hopelessness becomes widespread, China may face a dangerous generation of well-educated angry individuals in their late teens and early twenties who feel they have nothing to loose. Fearful for the economic future of their families and themselves, they may push to slow or roll back economic reforms if things are seen as having left too many behind, or even promote democratic reforms if convinced that they are not being heard. Either of these would be extremely destabilizing to the central government.
China has made baby steps towards addressing issues, but so long as material wealth dominates as the primary measure of success, those prevented from achieving it will hunger for an alternative to put in its place. The search for alternative values, or for scapegoats to explain why certain levels of government-promoted success are not available to all, may prove a dangerous proposition for China in the long term.
While previous posts have discussed the potential ramifications of a generation of unmarried uneducated young men at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder who cannot find mates, this post will explore the opposite end of the spectrum- overeducated elites with high economic expectations who cannot find an opportunity to earn the lifestyle they desire or utilize the education they have achieved.
With each only child having as many as six family members (parents, grandparents) focused on their achievement as not only a source of pride but the family's primary source of economic well-being in the long term, especially given limited state-provided social security, Chinese only-children are subject to an enormous amount of pressure to achieve. The ramifications on health and well-being are tremendous. Suicide has become the leading cause of death for those aged 20-35, and many have become addicted to the virtual escape of video games, which the Chinese government has deemed a national epidemic in light of the severe consequences of a near-total withdrawal from reality that many succumb to (Taylor 2008). 2000 qualified therapists for 1.3 billion people in a nation with a long and deeply embedded resistance to and suspicion of mental health treatment beyond drugs and electro-shock ensures that these mental health problems are likely to persist and grow in the long-term. Universities have invested heavily in psychology programs, but it will take years and significant cultural change in order to catch up.
Luxury goods and high-class lifestyles have rapidly expanded into China, and media outlets glorify these as the pinnacle of achievement. With little long-term cultural experience with the pressures of material success, parents and grandparents are unprepared for how to raise children to resist defining their success on material achievement. Indeed, in many cases, parents who have known scarcity their entire lives contribute to the equation of success with material wealth in the psyche of their children. Although this stems from a genuine desire to save them the suffering they themselves endured, the combination of little practical understanding of the marketplace and a near desperate desire not to be left behind by the economic boom ensure parents often reinforce unrealistic expectations for achievement in their children. The result is a generation of only children who has "become modern too quickly, glutted as is is with televisions, access to computers, cash to buy name brands, and the same expectations of middle-class success as Western kids." (Taylor, 2008)
The fact that this generation is comprised almost entirely of only children is significant beyond their role as exclusive providers. Parents of only children have traditionally exceptionalized their children to a greater degree than multiple children. Parental experience with a single child often causes parents to loose perspective on the actual abilities of their child compared to peers. The only child is seen as exceptional for lack of children with whom he can be compared. The lack of cousins in second-generation only child families only exacerbates this phenomenon. The fact that this child is a family's 'only hope' means that there is a stronger incentive to see only the positive potential in a child. Admitting that one's only child is sub-average, or anything less than exceptional, is deeply troubling to parents, especially given the negative long-term implications for parents and grandparents own financial and social security. Options such as relying on siblings, nieces and nephews, or other current/future children are no longer available.
The pressure to achieve is tremendous for China's youth. Parents, many of whom were themselves robbed of the opportunities now available by the Cultural Revolution, often live vicariously through their children. A personal narrative that would be a tragic tale of lost hope had it ended with their experience is transformed into an inspirational story of self-sacrifice when it includes the eventual achievement of future generations. The dramatic uncertainty characteristic of the average lives of Chinese throughout the centuries makes this multi-generational narrative a deeply embedded psychological coping mechanism and way of explaining the meaning behind lives that would otherwise often seem brief and tragic. Chinese parents today, in understanding their own suffering and sacrifices as part of a larger story leading to the eventual success and triumph of their children and grandchildren are meetly perpetuating a cultural view of the order of society. The cycle of hardship-success-hardship-success that many westerners come to understand as core to an individual life is multi-generational in Chinese thinking.
This desire for achievement first manifests itself in expectations for educational achievement. 90% of parents surveyed indicated the desired children become university graduates, and 45% indicated a desire for advanced degrees. (Taylor 2008)Even if these sorts of education goals were attainable on such a massive scale, opportunities for these skilled professionals do not exist in equivalent numbers. This means that many will be left out in the cold, unable to find work 'worthy' of their education in an economy that is still developing. Even the government champions high-achieving elite, but the country cannot yet universally provide the lifestyle that these elites have been acculturated to expect. Taylor writes, "faced with bleak prospects, elite only-children often don't know how to cope; they've been brought up to do only one thing: succeed," (taylor, 2008). When success as it has been narrowly defined is not available, many find themselves isolated and without the coping skills more well-rounded individuals would have.
The sacrifices that many parents make for their children's success only add to the pressure. Many parents spend significant percentages of their income on education for children, and often migrate far away for years in order to support their child's education and health needs. On the positive side, Chinese children have a tremendous sense of being loved and cared for as a result of this attention. However, there is also a tremendous pressure to repay these parental sacrifices, honor parental wishes, and care for the family in the long-term. Children too begin to understand themselves as part of a multi-generational cycle, and feel pressure to succeed not only to achieve their own material desires, but also to fulfill the wishes of their ancestors and family. Its an awfully big burden for a 13 yr old.
Much attention has been paid to the differences in only-children themselves. Many conceive of Chinese only-children as spoiled and bratty- however, most research indicates that they are no more so than their multi-children counterparts in both China and the west (Taylor 2008). The common perception of these children as having a higher desire for instant gratification, material well-being, etc is not so much attributable to their being only children, but rather to their being raised in a wealth-crazy society. Although being an only-child increases the pressure on these children to achieve, it does not, it would seem, increase their own sense of entitlement any more than the same levels of wealth, education, and glorification of material success would for a child with siblings.
The implication here is then that the lack of siblings does not directly cause the distress, depression, and other ill effects on the health of China's elite children. Rather these effects are products of parental and societal pressure, which is indirectly exacerbated when there is only one child to carry the family through the future.
The result of all of this is a generation of highly educated elites with limited job prospects and high expectations for material wealth. This is exactly the sort of demographic that could challenge the establishment if consistently frustrated enough. Once material wealth seems out of reach, individuals tend to search for meaning elsewhere, and a turn on the establishment which failed them. If this generation in China were to continue growing, those that do not succumb to mental illness would be prime candidates for fomenting political dissent. So long as success seems possible, parents and children will continue to buy into the system. However, if the pressure to succeed and lack of opportunities reaches a point where hopelessness becomes widespread, China may face a dangerous generation of well-educated angry individuals in their late teens and early twenties who feel they have nothing to loose. Fearful for the economic future of their families and themselves, they may push to slow or roll back economic reforms if things are seen as having left too many behind, or even promote democratic reforms if convinced that they are not being heard. Either of these would be extremely destabilizing to the central government.
China has made baby steps towards addressing issues, but so long as material wealth dominates as the primary measure of success, those prevented from achieving it will hunger for an alternative to put in its place. The search for alternative values, or for scapegoats to explain why certain levels of government-promoted success are not available to all, may prove a dangerous proposition for China in the long term.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
The Crushing Weight of Expectation
A few interesting articles below about the tremendous pressure accumulating on only-children in a country with a sorely lacking social welfare program for the elderly....
http://vodkasoda.wordpress.com/2008/08/12/all-your-eggs-in-one-basket-chinas-one-child-policy/#comment-453
All Your Eggs in One Basket - China’s One Child Policy
Chinese boys
High expectations are placed on Chinese children
China’s One Child Policy was introduced in 1979 to alleviate social and environmental problems that the country was facing. Unfortunately, a whole new series of issues have arisen from this policy, not least amongst them are those that are psychological in nature:
Youth Research Centre, a branch under the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences conducted a research, wherein they visited nearly 3,000 families in few localities. The main target behind the survey was to know the educational expectations that the parents have from their children.
Almost ninety percent of the parents said that they want their children to go for higher education - a university graduate.
Many believe that without being a university graduate, life will be a total failure. Among the interviewees, almost 45% of them wanted their child to get a masters degree.
However, the pressure is more on the boys and the girls are spared, because they are not expected to have a successful career.
Experts say that too much pressure on the child may lead to unnecessary hassle such as depression and mental trauma.
These children are showered with attention and are expected to become academic dynamos, but the competition is fierce and the psychological impact of the pressure is even worse.
Taylor Clark takes a look at this issue in the excellent article Plight of the Little Emperors.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=pto-20080623-000004&print=1
Plight of the Little Emperors
Coddled from infancy and raised to be academic machines, China's only children expect the world. Now they're buckling under the pressure of their parents' deferred dreams.
By: Taylor Clark
When Dawei Liu was growing up in the coastal city of Tai'an during the 1990s, all of his classmates—95 percent of whom were only children—received plenty of doting parental support. One student, however, truly stood out from the rest. Every day, this boy went from class to class with an entourage of one: his mother, who had given up the income of her day job to monitor his studies full-time, sitting beside him constantly in order to ensure perfect attention. "The teacher was OK with it," Liu shrugs. "He might not focus as much on class if his parent wasn't there."
Across China, stories of parents going to incredible lengths to give their only children a competitive edge have become commonplace. Throughout Jing Zhang's youth in Beijing, her parents took her to weekly résumé-boosting painting classes, waiting outside the school building for two hours each time, even in winter. Yanming Lin enjoyed perfect silence in her family's one-room Shanghai apartment throughout her five-plus hours of nightly homework; besides nixing the television, her mother kept perpetual watch over her to make sure she stayed on task. "By high school, my parents knew I could control myself and only do homework," Lin says. "Because I knew the situation."
The situation for urban young people in today's China, from preschoolers on up, is this: Your entire future hinges on one test, the national college entrance exam—China's magnified version of the SAT. The Chinese call it gao kao, or "tall test," because it looms so large. If students do well, they win spots at China's top universities and an easy route to a middle-class lifestyle. If not, they must confront the kind of tough, blue-collar lives their parents faced. With such high stakes, families dedicate themselves to their child's test prep virtually from infancy. "Many people come home to have dinner and then study until bed," says Liu. "You have to do it to go to the best university and get a good job. You must do this to live."
When China began limiting couples to one child 30 years ago, the policy's most obvious goal was to contain a mushrooming population. For the Chinese people, however, the policy's greater purpose was to turn out a group of young elites who would each enjoy the undivided resources of their whole family—the so-called xiao huangdi, or "little emperors." The plan was to "produce a generation of high-quality children to facilitate China's introduction as a global power," explains Susan Greenhalgh, an expert on the policy. But while these well-educated, driven achievers are fueling the nation's economic boom, their generation has become too modern too quickly, glutted as it is with televisions, access to computers, cash to buy name brands, and the same expectations of middle-class success as Western kids.
The shift in temperament has happened too fast for society to handle. China is still a developing nation with limited opportunity, leaving millions of ambitious little emperors out in the cold; the country now churns out more than 4 million university graduates yearly, but only 1.6 million new college-level jobs. Even the strivers end up as security guards. China may be the world's next great superpower, but it's facing a looming crisis as millions of overpressurized, hypereducated only children come of age in a nation that can't fulfill their expectations.
This culture of pressure and frustration has sparked a mental-health crisis for young Chinese. Many simmer in depression or unemployment, unwilling to take jobs they consider beneath them. Millions, afraid to face the real world, escape into video games, which the government considers a national epidemic. And a disturbing number decide to end it all; suicide is now China's leading cause of death for those aged 20 to 35. "People in China—especially parents and college students—are suddenly becoming aware of huge depression and anxiety problems in young people," says Yu Zeng, a 23-year-old from Sichuan province. "The media report on new campus suicides all the time."
"In this generation, every child is raised to be at the top," says Vanessa Fong, a Harvard education professor and author of Only Hope: Coming of Age under China's One-Child Policy. "They've worked hard for it, and it's what their parents have focused their lives on. But the problem is that the country can't provide the lifestyle they feel they deserve. Only a few will get it." China's accomplished young elites are celebrated on billboards as the vanguard of the nation, yet they're quickly becoming victims of their own lofty expectations.
Bringing up a high-achieving child in a crowded and impoverished city like Hohhot, parents sometimes have to get creative. Since the government issued minuscule rations of milk, for instance, Yu Wang's parents scraped together the money to buy a sheep and kept it with relatives outside the city. Every day, Wang's father cycled 40 minutes to fetch fresh milk for his son. Out of his parents' meager monthly salary of 45 RMB (about $6), 35 RMB went to Wang's education—including a packed slate of piano, painting, guitar, and even dancing classes.
The pressure to succeed was all the greater given that his parents' own dreams had been dashed during China's Cultural Revolution, when Mao Zedong closed schools and sent difficult-to-control intellectuals to be "reeducated" by working the fields. Wang's father spent eight years herding goats. His own dreams destroyed, he poured all his hopes and ambitions into his son. "Because of the Cultural Revolution, my parents literally wasted 10 years," explains Wang, 29, who was among the first Chinese only kids born under the one-child policy. "I was explicitly told that they had lost a lot in their lives, so they wanted me to get it back for them."
In recent years, however, Chinese parents have sometimes blurred the line between sacrifice and slavery in aiding their child's success: Mothers carry their child's backpack around; couples forgo lunch so their kid can have plentiful snacks or new Nikes. Vanessa Fong recalls meeting one mother who resisted hospitalization for her heart and kidney troubles because she feared it might interfere with her daughter's gao kao preparation; when Fong gave the mother money for medication, it mostly went to expensive food for her daughter.
Parents go to such lengths in part because Chinese culture has always emphasized success, but also for a more pressing reason: Traditionally, children support their parents in old age. With only one child to carry the load, parents' fortunes are tied to their child's, and they push (and pamper) the little ones accordingly. "In China, the term for a one-child family is a 'risky family,'" says Baochang Gu, a demography professor at Beijing's Renmin University who advises the Chinese government on the one-child policy. "If something happened to that child, it would be a disaster. So from the parents' point of view, the spoiling is all necessary to protect them."
Since the policy's inception, the Chinese have worried that the extreme combination of discipline and indulgence would result in maladjusted kids, self-centered brats who can't take criticism and don't understand sharing. Asked if he wished he'd had siblings, one 22-year-old from Sichuan province replied, "Does this mean everything I have would have to be cut in half or shared? No, I don't want that."
Yet despite the stereotype, the research has revealed no evidence that only kids have more negative traits than their peers with siblings—in China or anywhere else. "The only way only children are reliably different from others is they score slightly higher in academic achievement," explains Toni Falbo, a University of Texas psychology professor who has gathered data on more than 4,000 Chinese only kids. Sure, some little emperors are bratty, but no more than children with siblings.
This isn't to say Chinese only kids are pictures of mental health—it's just that their psychological issues stem not from a lack of siblings but from the harsh academic competition and parental prodding that pervade their lives. Susan Newman, a New Jersey psychologist and only-child expert, says the notion that little emperors are bossy, self-obsessed little brats is simply part of the greater myth of only kids as damaged goods. "Pinning their problems on having no siblings is really making them a scapegoat," she says. Being an only child is not the problem.
Chinese parents bemoan their only child's desire for instant gratification, excessive consumption, and a life free of hardship, but such complaints are just proof that the policy worked: The children are like little Americans. "These kids have the same dreams as all middle-class kids: to go to college, to get white-collar jobs, to own their own home, to have Nikes and name brands," says Fong. "They expect things that are normal in developed countries, but by China's standards, are unheard of."
Yu Zeng remembers hearing of the first suicide at his school in 2005, when he was a junior at Sichuan University. By the next year, three more of his classmates had leapt to their deaths from campus buildings, and Zeng noticed a wave of news stories about suicides—all of them for a similar, perplexing reason. "It was after they got a bad grade on a test," Zeng says. "They think to die is better than to have that bad mark."
In the pressurized world of Chinese academics, any setback can seem fatal. Last January, for example, one 17-year-old Beijing girl tried to kill herself after learning that a paperwork snafu might prevent her from registering for the gao kao. Suicide has become China's fifth most common cause of death overall, with young urban intellectuals at highest risk. A study by the Society Survey Institute of China concluded that over 25 percent of university students have had suicidal thoughts, compared to 6 percent in the United States.
The number of Chinese college graduates per year has nearly tripled in the last half-decade—from 1.5 million in 2002 to 4.1 million in 2007—which means more than 2 million grads a year end up with expensive diplomas, but no job. With so few top positions available and so many seekers, urban only children must study constantly just to have a shot. Out of Yanming Lin's five hours of schoolwork per night, four hours went to "voluntary" homework designed to boost test scores. "That one grade becomes the only standard to justify you as a person," says Zeng. "If you have a good personality or maybe you're good in math but not Chinese, all of that is your downfall, because it's all about your grade."
The extra homework is not required by the teacher, explains Lin. "But all the other students do the extra homework, so if you do not do it you will lag behind." At one top Beijing kindergarten, students must know pi to 100 digits by age 3.
Many young only children opt for escape from reality through online gaming worlds. Every day, the nation's 113,000 Internet cafes teem with twitchy, solitary players—high school and university students, dropouts, and unemployed graduates—an alarming number of whom remain in place for days without food or sleep. Official estimates put the number of Chinese Internet addicts at over 2 million, and the government considers it such a serious threat that it deploys volunteer groups to prowl the streets and prevent teens from entering Internet cafes.
The mostly male youth who turn to virtual realms find there a place to realize ambitions that are frustrated in real life, says Kimberly Young, a psychologist and Internet addiction expert who has advised Chinese therapists. "With the click of a button, they go from a 19-year-old with no social life to a great warrior in World of Warcraft," Young says. "Why bother doing things in the real world when they can be in this game and be fulfilled?" Burnt-out and overtaxed, even kids who did well on the gao kao turn into virtual dropouts, choosing the respite of computer games over the university spots they worked so hard to win. Without a parent to push them, many stop going to class. "In Chinese universities, so many just give up," says Howe, a college student from Chengdu.
Faced with bleak prospects, elite only children often don't know how to cope; they've been brought up to do only one thing: succeed. Indeed, in a 2007 survey on stress in young people by the Chinese Internet portal Sina.com, most respondents—56 percent—blamed their misery on the gap between China's developing-world reality and their own high expectations. "They have trouble adjusting to the idea that they're going to be working-class," says Fong.
For the frustrated, depressed, and anxious Chinese kids buckling under the constant pressure—the news agency Xinhua estimates there are 30 million Chinese under 17 with significant mental-health problems—finding someone to talk to can be tough. Taught to strive and achieve from an early age, they've never had the time for heart-to-heart chats. "It's not like American universities where you have many friends," says Yu Zeng. "At Chinese universities, you compete for limited resources and everyone is concerned about themselves. And if you wanted to talk to your parents, they wouldn't understand. When they were your age, they were reading Mao's little red book." Plus, the conversation would be strained even if you did find a sympathetic ear. "In the 20th century, the term 'depression' didn't even exist in China," Toni Falbo says. "It couldn't be talked about because there was no vocabulary for it yet."
Nor is professional help readily available. When Mao cracked down on intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution, he decimated the nation's already thin psychological establishment. "Back then, every mental problem was seen as anti-socialist," says Kaiping Peng, a University of California Berkeley professor who was among the first generation of Chinese psychologists to receive formal clinical training, in the late 1970s. "If you were depressed, they thought you were politically impure and sent you to a labor camp." For decades, Chinese psychiatrists dealt exclusively in pills and electroshock, and until recently, China had just a handful of university psychology programs—which is why Peng believes there are only about 2,000 qualified therapists at work there today for a population of 1.3 billion.
But as universities work to churn out qualified psychologists and as teens and twentysomethings realize they need more help with their unrealistic expectations than with their grades, Peng grows optimistic. "People in China have more knowledge about mental health today," he says. "Now there are books and popular magazines about it, and the training infrastructure gets better all the time." Cities are also experimenting with crisis hotlines. China's inaugural suicide-prevention line debuted in 2003; it received more than 220,000 calls over its first two years.
Meanwhile, Chinese officials are taking steps to ease the pressure on young students. Schools no longer publicly announce each student's exam scores and class rank, for one, and the government is also asking parents to let their precious little emperors actually play every once in a while.
Besides, all of that studying can only take you so far. "On your resume, you can't put, '1988 to 2001: studied 10 hours every day,' " laughs Howe, the Chengdu student. "You have to actually do stuff."
Psychology Today Magazine, Jul/Aug 2008
Last Reviewed 23 Sep 2008
Article ID: 4616
Psychology Today © Copyright 1991-2008 Sussex Publishers, LLC
115 East 23rd Street, 9th Floor, New York, NY 10010
http://vodkasoda.wordpress.com/2008/08/12/all-your-eggs-in-one-basket-chinas-one-child-policy/#comment-453
All Your Eggs in One Basket - China’s One Child Policy
Chinese boys
High expectations are placed on Chinese children
China’s One Child Policy was introduced in 1979 to alleviate social and environmental problems that the country was facing. Unfortunately, a whole new series of issues have arisen from this policy, not least amongst them are those that are psychological in nature:
Youth Research Centre, a branch under the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences conducted a research, wherein they visited nearly 3,000 families in few localities. The main target behind the survey was to know the educational expectations that the parents have from their children.
Almost ninety percent of the parents said that they want their children to go for higher education - a university graduate.
Many believe that without being a university graduate, life will be a total failure. Among the interviewees, almost 45% of them wanted their child to get a masters degree.
However, the pressure is more on the boys and the girls are spared, because they are not expected to have a successful career.
Experts say that too much pressure on the child may lead to unnecessary hassle such as depression and mental trauma.
These children are showered with attention and are expected to become academic dynamos, but the competition is fierce and the psychological impact of the pressure is even worse.
Taylor Clark takes a look at this issue in the excellent article Plight of the Little Emperors.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=pto-20080623-000004&print=1
Plight of the Little Emperors
Coddled from infancy and raised to be academic machines, China's only children expect the world. Now they're buckling under the pressure of their parents' deferred dreams.
By: Taylor Clark
When Dawei Liu was growing up in the coastal city of Tai'an during the 1990s, all of his classmates—95 percent of whom were only children—received plenty of doting parental support. One student, however, truly stood out from the rest. Every day, this boy went from class to class with an entourage of one: his mother, who had given up the income of her day job to monitor his studies full-time, sitting beside him constantly in order to ensure perfect attention. "The teacher was OK with it," Liu shrugs. "He might not focus as much on class if his parent wasn't there."
Across China, stories of parents going to incredible lengths to give their only children a competitive edge have become commonplace. Throughout Jing Zhang's youth in Beijing, her parents took her to weekly résumé-boosting painting classes, waiting outside the school building for two hours each time, even in winter. Yanming Lin enjoyed perfect silence in her family's one-room Shanghai apartment throughout her five-plus hours of nightly homework; besides nixing the television, her mother kept perpetual watch over her to make sure she stayed on task. "By high school, my parents knew I could control myself and only do homework," Lin says. "Because I knew the situation."
The situation for urban young people in today's China, from preschoolers on up, is this: Your entire future hinges on one test, the national college entrance exam—China's magnified version of the SAT. The Chinese call it gao kao, or "tall test," because it looms so large. If students do well, they win spots at China's top universities and an easy route to a middle-class lifestyle. If not, they must confront the kind of tough, blue-collar lives their parents faced. With such high stakes, families dedicate themselves to their child's test prep virtually from infancy. "Many people come home to have dinner and then study until bed," says Liu. "You have to do it to go to the best university and get a good job. You must do this to live."
When China began limiting couples to one child 30 years ago, the policy's most obvious goal was to contain a mushrooming population. For the Chinese people, however, the policy's greater purpose was to turn out a group of young elites who would each enjoy the undivided resources of their whole family—the so-called xiao huangdi, or "little emperors." The plan was to "produce a generation of high-quality children to facilitate China's introduction as a global power," explains Susan Greenhalgh, an expert on the policy. But while these well-educated, driven achievers are fueling the nation's economic boom, their generation has become too modern too quickly, glutted as it is with televisions, access to computers, cash to buy name brands, and the same expectations of middle-class success as Western kids.
The shift in temperament has happened too fast for society to handle. China is still a developing nation with limited opportunity, leaving millions of ambitious little emperors out in the cold; the country now churns out more than 4 million university graduates yearly, but only 1.6 million new college-level jobs. Even the strivers end up as security guards. China may be the world's next great superpower, but it's facing a looming crisis as millions of overpressurized, hypereducated only children come of age in a nation that can't fulfill their expectations.
This culture of pressure and frustration has sparked a mental-health crisis for young Chinese. Many simmer in depression or unemployment, unwilling to take jobs they consider beneath them. Millions, afraid to face the real world, escape into video games, which the government considers a national epidemic. And a disturbing number decide to end it all; suicide is now China's leading cause of death for those aged 20 to 35. "People in China—especially parents and college students—are suddenly becoming aware of huge depression and anxiety problems in young people," says Yu Zeng, a 23-year-old from Sichuan province. "The media report on new campus suicides all the time."
"In this generation, every child is raised to be at the top," says Vanessa Fong, a Harvard education professor and author of Only Hope: Coming of Age under China's One-Child Policy. "They've worked hard for it, and it's what their parents have focused their lives on. But the problem is that the country can't provide the lifestyle they feel they deserve. Only a few will get it." China's accomplished young elites are celebrated on billboards as the vanguard of the nation, yet they're quickly becoming victims of their own lofty expectations.
Bringing up a high-achieving child in a crowded and impoverished city like Hohhot, parents sometimes have to get creative. Since the government issued minuscule rations of milk, for instance, Yu Wang's parents scraped together the money to buy a sheep and kept it with relatives outside the city. Every day, Wang's father cycled 40 minutes to fetch fresh milk for his son. Out of his parents' meager monthly salary of 45 RMB (about $6), 35 RMB went to Wang's education—including a packed slate of piano, painting, guitar, and even dancing classes.
The pressure to succeed was all the greater given that his parents' own dreams had been dashed during China's Cultural Revolution, when Mao Zedong closed schools and sent difficult-to-control intellectuals to be "reeducated" by working the fields. Wang's father spent eight years herding goats. His own dreams destroyed, he poured all his hopes and ambitions into his son. "Because of the Cultural Revolution, my parents literally wasted 10 years," explains Wang, 29, who was among the first Chinese only kids born under the one-child policy. "I was explicitly told that they had lost a lot in their lives, so they wanted me to get it back for them."
In recent years, however, Chinese parents have sometimes blurred the line between sacrifice and slavery in aiding their child's success: Mothers carry their child's backpack around; couples forgo lunch so their kid can have plentiful snacks or new Nikes. Vanessa Fong recalls meeting one mother who resisted hospitalization for her heart and kidney troubles because she feared it might interfere with her daughter's gao kao preparation; when Fong gave the mother money for medication, it mostly went to expensive food for her daughter.
Parents go to such lengths in part because Chinese culture has always emphasized success, but also for a more pressing reason: Traditionally, children support their parents in old age. With only one child to carry the load, parents' fortunes are tied to their child's, and they push (and pamper) the little ones accordingly. "In China, the term for a one-child family is a 'risky family,'" says Baochang Gu, a demography professor at Beijing's Renmin University who advises the Chinese government on the one-child policy. "If something happened to that child, it would be a disaster. So from the parents' point of view, the spoiling is all necessary to protect them."
Since the policy's inception, the Chinese have worried that the extreme combination of discipline and indulgence would result in maladjusted kids, self-centered brats who can't take criticism and don't understand sharing. Asked if he wished he'd had siblings, one 22-year-old from Sichuan province replied, "Does this mean everything I have would have to be cut in half or shared? No, I don't want that."
Yet despite the stereotype, the research has revealed no evidence that only kids have more negative traits than their peers with siblings—in China or anywhere else. "The only way only children are reliably different from others is they score slightly higher in academic achievement," explains Toni Falbo, a University of Texas psychology professor who has gathered data on more than 4,000 Chinese only kids. Sure, some little emperors are bratty, but no more than children with siblings.
This isn't to say Chinese only kids are pictures of mental health—it's just that their psychological issues stem not from a lack of siblings but from the harsh academic competition and parental prodding that pervade their lives. Susan Newman, a New Jersey psychologist and only-child expert, says the notion that little emperors are bossy, self-obsessed little brats is simply part of the greater myth of only kids as damaged goods. "Pinning their problems on having no siblings is really making them a scapegoat," she says. Being an only child is not the problem.
Chinese parents bemoan their only child's desire for instant gratification, excessive consumption, and a life free of hardship, but such complaints are just proof that the policy worked: The children are like little Americans. "These kids have the same dreams as all middle-class kids: to go to college, to get white-collar jobs, to own their own home, to have Nikes and name brands," says Fong. "They expect things that are normal in developed countries, but by China's standards, are unheard of."
Yu Zeng remembers hearing of the first suicide at his school in 2005, when he was a junior at Sichuan University. By the next year, three more of his classmates had leapt to their deaths from campus buildings, and Zeng noticed a wave of news stories about suicides—all of them for a similar, perplexing reason. "It was after they got a bad grade on a test," Zeng says. "They think to die is better than to have that bad mark."
In the pressurized world of Chinese academics, any setback can seem fatal. Last January, for example, one 17-year-old Beijing girl tried to kill herself after learning that a paperwork snafu might prevent her from registering for the gao kao. Suicide has become China's fifth most common cause of death overall, with young urban intellectuals at highest risk. A study by the Society Survey Institute of China concluded that over 25 percent of university students have had suicidal thoughts, compared to 6 percent in the United States.
The number of Chinese college graduates per year has nearly tripled in the last half-decade—from 1.5 million in 2002 to 4.1 million in 2007—which means more than 2 million grads a year end up with expensive diplomas, but no job. With so few top positions available and so many seekers, urban only children must study constantly just to have a shot. Out of Yanming Lin's five hours of schoolwork per night, four hours went to "voluntary" homework designed to boost test scores. "That one grade becomes the only standard to justify you as a person," says Zeng. "If you have a good personality or maybe you're good in math but not Chinese, all of that is your downfall, because it's all about your grade."
The extra homework is not required by the teacher, explains Lin. "But all the other students do the extra homework, so if you do not do it you will lag behind." At one top Beijing kindergarten, students must know pi to 100 digits by age 3.
Many young only children opt for escape from reality through online gaming worlds. Every day, the nation's 113,000 Internet cafes teem with twitchy, solitary players—high school and university students, dropouts, and unemployed graduates—an alarming number of whom remain in place for days without food or sleep. Official estimates put the number of Chinese Internet addicts at over 2 million, and the government considers it such a serious threat that it deploys volunteer groups to prowl the streets and prevent teens from entering Internet cafes.
The mostly male youth who turn to virtual realms find there a place to realize ambitions that are frustrated in real life, says Kimberly Young, a psychologist and Internet addiction expert who has advised Chinese therapists. "With the click of a button, they go from a 19-year-old with no social life to a great warrior in World of Warcraft," Young says. "Why bother doing things in the real world when they can be in this game and be fulfilled?" Burnt-out and overtaxed, even kids who did well on the gao kao turn into virtual dropouts, choosing the respite of computer games over the university spots they worked so hard to win. Without a parent to push them, many stop going to class. "In Chinese universities, so many just give up," says Howe, a college student from Chengdu.
Faced with bleak prospects, elite only children often don't know how to cope; they've been brought up to do only one thing: succeed. Indeed, in a 2007 survey on stress in young people by the Chinese Internet portal Sina.com, most respondents—56 percent—blamed their misery on the gap between China's developing-world reality and their own high expectations. "They have trouble adjusting to the idea that they're going to be working-class," says Fong.
For the frustrated, depressed, and anxious Chinese kids buckling under the constant pressure—the news agency Xinhua estimates there are 30 million Chinese under 17 with significant mental-health problems—finding someone to talk to can be tough. Taught to strive and achieve from an early age, they've never had the time for heart-to-heart chats. "It's not like American universities where you have many friends," says Yu Zeng. "At Chinese universities, you compete for limited resources and everyone is concerned about themselves. And if you wanted to talk to your parents, they wouldn't understand. When they were your age, they were reading Mao's little red book." Plus, the conversation would be strained even if you did find a sympathetic ear. "In the 20th century, the term 'depression' didn't even exist in China," Toni Falbo says. "It couldn't be talked about because there was no vocabulary for it yet."
Nor is professional help readily available. When Mao cracked down on intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution, he decimated the nation's already thin psychological establishment. "Back then, every mental problem was seen as anti-socialist," says Kaiping Peng, a University of California Berkeley professor who was among the first generation of Chinese psychologists to receive formal clinical training, in the late 1970s. "If you were depressed, they thought you were politically impure and sent you to a labor camp." For decades, Chinese psychiatrists dealt exclusively in pills and electroshock, and until recently, China had just a handful of university psychology programs—which is why Peng believes there are only about 2,000 qualified therapists at work there today for a population of 1.3 billion.
But as universities work to churn out qualified psychologists and as teens and twentysomethings realize they need more help with their unrealistic expectations than with their grades, Peng grows optimistic. "People in China have more knowledge about mental health today," he says. "Now there are books and popular magazines about it, and the training infrastructure gets better all the time." Cities are also experimenting with crisis hotlines. China's inaugural suicide-prevention line debuted in 2003; it received more than 220,000 calls over its first two years.
Meanwhile, Chinese officials are taking steps to ease the pressure on young students. Schools no longer publicly announce each student's exam scores and class rank, for one, and the government is also asking parents to let their precious little emperors actually play every once in a while.
Besides, all of that studying can only take you so far. "On your resume, you can't put, '1988 to 2001: studied 10 hours every day,' " laughs Howe, the Chengdu student. "You have to actually do stuff."
Psychology Today Magazine, Jul/Aug 2008
Last Reviewed 23 Sep 2008
Article ID: 4616
Psychology Today © Copyright 1991-2008 Sussex Publishers, LLC
115 East 23rd Street, 9th Floor, New York, NY 10010
Environmental impacts
For now, I am just posting this article, but I think there is considerable discussion to be had on the practical environmental impact of the policy for China...I am especially interested in folks who know of resource or consumption studies that might address this, or that correlate population growth rates with consumption patterns....
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/scotland/Anger-as-moderator-says-Chinas.4652331.jp
Published Date: 02 November 2008
By Kate Foster
GO FORTH, but don't multiply. One of Scotland's leading churchmen has sparked controversy by claiming China's one-child policy has benefited the environment more than anything else in the world.
The Right Reverend David Lunan, the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, said the fact that the country had enforced the controversial rules limiting couples to having one child meant it had limited its damage to the planet.
The single child policy was introduced in 1979 to try to stop the population from growing too rapidly.
Human rights campaigners and religious groups oppose the policy amid concerns about abortion and female infanticide.
Lunan, who is concerned with environmental issues, spoke out during an interview with Cathy MacDonald for her BBC Alba series Cuide Ri Cathy. He said: "
Interestingly enough, the country that is doing the most for the planet is China. People talk about the smoke and pollution from China, but they have limited their population in a way that no other country has or will, and that in itself will have an effect on not using up the Earth's resources."
Last night, his comments were criticised by John Deighan, parliamentary officer for the Catholic Church in Scotland, who said: "China's one-child policy is recognised by most people as reprehensible.
"Its policy of abortion and giving licences to women before they are allowed to have children is incompatible with human dignity and the respect that women and families are naturally entitled to.
"There's a massive imbalance in the population and a social breakdown where children do not have the opportunity to interact with siblings or extended family.
"We do not sacrifice human lives for the environment."
Lunan, a father of four, took over as Moderator in May this year.
The interview will be broadcast at 10pm tomorrow
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/scotland/Anger-as-moderator-says-Chinas.4652331.jp
Published Date: 02 November 2008
By Kate Foster
GO FORTH, but don't multiply. One of Scotland's leading churchmen has sparked controversy by claiming China's one-child policy has benefited the environment more than anything else in the world.
The Right Reverend David Lunan, the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, said the fact that the country had enforced the controversial rules limiting couples to having one child meant it had limited its damage to the planet.
The single child policy was introduced in 1979 to try to stop the population from growing too rapidly.
Human rights campaigners and religious groups oppose the policy amid concerns about abortion and female infanticide.
Lunan, who is concerned with environmental issues, spoke out during an interview with Cathy MacDonald for her BBC Alba series Cuide Ri Cathy. He said: "
Interestingly enough, the country that is doing the most for the planet is China. People talk about the smoke and pollution from China, but they have limited their population in a way that no other country has or will, and that in itself will have an effect on not using up the Earth's resources."
Last night, his comments were criticised by John Deighan, parliamentary officer for the Catholic Church in Scotland, who said: "China's one-child policy is recognised by most people as reprehensible.
"Its policy of abortion and giving licences to women before they are allowed to have children is incompatible with human dignity and the respect that women and families are naturally entitled to.
"There's a massive imbalance in the population and a social breakdown where children do not have the opportunity to interact with siblings or extended family.
"We do not sacrifice human lives for the environment."
Lunan, a father of four, took over as Moderator in May this year.
The interview will be broadcast at 10pm tomorrow
Friday, December 12, 2008
Implications on Prenatal Care
Dr. Leung Wing-Cheong, a consultant Obstetrician from the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, Kwong Wah Hospital HKSAR brought up the point today at the conference that many of the mainland women seeking to give birth in HKSAR, when asked about prenatal care recieved, explain that this is thier second child. Since in many cases, the One-Child policy limits state-substidized care for second (and all subsequent births), pre-natal care suffers dramatically for those families that choose to have more than one child in spite of governmental bans. I see several potential effects of this:
1. Those 'illegal' second children born in the mainland will have significantly lower access to healthcare, schooling, and other social benefits, creating a sub-class of children within the middle- and upper-classes (for whom the one-child policy most stringently applies) who do not accure the usual benefits of thier class. This is especially interesting, as many of those seeking to have additional children inspite of laws against this do so in order to have a son. This means that these highly desired sons are nevertheless inelligible for the health and educational benefits that would facilitate them achiving the positions that thier families would seek for them (in order for them to fulfill the traditioanl role of elder son- providing economically and socially for the family). As a result, even in families with strong son preferences, the female child born first will still often be in a position of being the primary family provider in adulthood.
There is also a risk that son unable to live up to expectation will find themselves disenfranchised and ostracized from thier peers and family. A large population in such a position poses a significant political and criminal risk to what was a stable element of society.
2. Many mainland mothers have sought to give birth in Hong Kong, or overseas, to avoid these penalties. This affords these second children a long-term position of privilage, as they accrue the benefits of overseas or HKSAR citizenship. I have long-argued that the one-child policy creates a super-elite within Chinese society. Those that it applies to most stringently, middle- and upper-class urban families, already formed an elite within Chinese society, especially given the disproportionately rapidly growing wealth in this demograpic. The only-children of this group enjoy all the fiancial and emotional support of parents and grandparents. They essentially have an unpredented amount of education, healthcare, familial care, and attention paid to them, ensuring the best possible opportunity for success, as it is defined by the class culture (primary prestige- and financially-based). Second children, who previously were forced to share these resources without the advantages of being first-born, are now able to access the superior education, healthcare, and economic opportunity afforded to HKSAR residents. Although initially at a disadvantage, due to poor pre-natal care and long commutes across the border for schooling and healthcare, in the long-term, these children accrue a long-term advantage that is just as significant as thier only-child counterparts. Perhaps the only one who is at a disadvantage in this case is the first-born child, which now has to share resources without the advantages of HKSAR residency. This may prove even more profound when that first-born is a female; whatever advantages accured to women as single-children are mitigated when a second child son is born with status in another governmental area, particuarily if that status requires more expense that similiar status in the mainland would (schooling/heathcare is more expensive in HKSAR, for example).
1. Those 'illegal' second children born in the mainland will have significantly lower access to healthcare, schooling, and other social benefits, creating a sub-class of children within the middle- and upper-classes (for whom the one-child policy most stringently applies) who do not accure the usual benefits of thier class. This is especially interesting, as many of those seeking to have additional children inspite of laws against this do so in order to have a son. This means that these highly desired sons are nevertheless inelligible for the health and educational benefits that would facilitate them achiving the positions that thier families would seek for them (in order for them to fulfill the traditioanl role of elder son- providing economically and socially for the family). As a result, even in families with strong son preferences, the female child born first will still often be in a position of being the primary family provider in adulthood.
There is also a risk that son unable to live up to expectation will find themselves disenfranchised and ostracized from thier peers and family. A large population in such a position poses a significant political and criminal risk to what was a stable element of society.
2. Many mainland mothers have sought to give birth in Hong Kong, or overseas, to avoid these penalties. This affords these second children a long-term position of privilage, as they accrue the benefits of overseas or HKSAR citizenship. I have long-argued that the one-child policy creates a super-elite within Chinese society. Those that it applies to most stringently, middle- and upper-class urban families, already formed an elite within Chinese society, especially given the disproportionately rapidly growing wealth in this demograpic. The only-children of this group enjoy all the fiancial and emotional support of parents and grandparents. They essentially have an unpredented amount of education, healthcare, familial care, and attention paid to them, ensuring the best possible opportunity for success, as it is defined by the class culture (primary prestige- and financially-based). Second children, who previously were forced to share these resources without the advantages of being first-born, are now able to access the superior education, healthcare, and economic opportunity afforded to HKSAR residents. Although initially at a disadvantage, due to poor pre-natal care and long commutes across the border for schooling and healthcare, in the long-term, these children accrue a long-term advantage that is just as significant as thier only-child counterparts. Perhaps the only one who is at a disadvantage in this case is the first-born child, which now has to share resources without the advantages of HKSAR residency. This may prove even more profound when that first-born is a female; whatever advantages accured to women as single-children are mitigated when a second child son is born with status in another governmental area, particuarily if that status requires more expense that similiar status in the mainland would (schooling/heathcare is more expensive in HKSAR, for example).
Gender and Family in East Asia
Well, today is the final day of the Gender and Family in East Asia Conference. Aside from a personal diversion to go play in Hong Kong yesterday (cable cars, very cool), I have been attentive and engaged. Really.
Many of the papers are more academic in nature, and while interesting, nevertheless irrelevant to my research. A few, however, touch on aspects of the policy or potential implications from similiar social transformations that give me reason to think.
A few pertinent points I pulled from yesterdays presentations.
Laurel Kendall of the American Museum of Natural History and Columbia University gave the Keynote, titled Marriages and Families in Asia: Something Old and New.
Dr Kendall made the point in her paper that the westernization of marriage rites in East Asia at the turn of the century coincided with a wider trend of embracig western ways as a means of overcoming western subjugation. Western dominance and the consequent 'Eastern Humiliation' of of the region was largely understood to be possible because of the backwards ways of local culture. Modernity, as it was understood to be represented by western culture, was viewed as the only means of throwing off western subjugation of the east. Thus a grievance with the West did not result in a rejection of all things western; rather it resulted in the cultural desire to utilize the means of subjegation as a means of strengthening the local against the outsider. Thus the modernization of family policy was indistinguishable from the 'Westernization'.
In many ways, the One-Child policy represents a diversion from this. Overpopulation is viewed as a uniquely non-western phenomenon. The fact that this challenge is largely loosed from the often habitually invoked crutch of blaming social ills on historical western subjugation or colonizations (an often justifiable, if not helpful tendency) in the cultural psyche has facilitated the development of a uniquely Chinese response to this challenge. The One-Child policy represents an unprecedented governmental strategy that is often perceived as a gross violation of individual privacy and fundamental human rights to western scholars, governments, and general public. The right to determine the size and timing of children is actually codified in the UN Human Rights Charter.
In the face of a dramatic social challenge from within, China has turned away from Western normative understandings of family law and policy, and has embraced and integrated a local solution to a local problem. As China begins to negotiate its role in the world of the 21st century, the One-Child policy represents a greater trend of moving past the notion of embracing Western cultural family practices as a component of a greater strategy of using western cultural norms to 'modernize' and overcome national challenges. Rather, China throughout the 20th century, and particularly in the last 25 years, has developed family and social policies that are anathema to Western values in many ways, but nevertheless are effective and locally understood to be acceptable in the face of the perceived greater threat of population to locally understood human rights.
The future of social policy in China- innovative solutions to challenges that the West has not yet faced in modern times. Often these solutions will be viewed as oppressive or violating human rights from a western perspective; however, differing understandings of what 'basic human rights' means will facilitate local acceptance. My sense is that those who view Chinese cultual adoption of western morality as an inevitable consequence of development and increased information accessibility will be frustrated with seeming lack of 'cultural progress' in the development of future family social policy in China.
Many of the papers are more academic in nature, and while interesting, nevertheless irrelevant to my research. A few, however, touch on aspects of the policy or potential implications from similiar social transformations that give me reason to think.
A few pertinent points I pulled from yesterdays presentations.
Laurel Kendall of the American Museum of Natural History and Columbia University gave the Keynote, titled Marriages and Families in Asia: Something Old and New.
Dr Kendall made the point in her paper that the westernization of marriage rites in East Asia at the turn of the century coincided with a wider trend of embracig western ways as a means of overcoming western subjugation. Western dominance and the consequent 'Eastern Humiliation' of of the region was largely understood to be possible because of the backwards ways of local culture. Modernity, as it was understood to be represented by western culture, was viewed as the only means of throwing off western subjugation of the east. Thus a grievance with the West did not result in a rejection of all things western; rather it resulted in the cultural desire to utilize the means of subjegation as a means of strengthening the local against the outsider. Thus the modernization of family policy was indistinguishable from the 'Westernization'.
In many ways, the One-Child policy represents a diversion from this. Overpopulation is viewed as a uniquely non-western phenomenon. The fact that this challenge is largely loosed from the often habitually invoked crutch of blaming social ills on historical western subjugation or colonizations (an often justifiable, if not helpful tendency) in the cultural psyche has facilitated the development of a uniquely Chinese response to this challenge. The One-Child policy represents an unprecedented governmental strategy that is often perceived as a gross violation of individual privacy and fundamental human rights to western scholars, governments, and general public. The right to determine the size and timing of children is actually codified in the UN Human Rights Charter.
In the face of a dramatic social challenge from within, China has turned away from Western normative understandings of family law and policy, and has embraced and integrated a local solution to a local problem. As China begins to negotiate its role in the world of the 21st century, the One-Child policy represents a greater trend of moving past the notion of embracing Western cultural family practices as a component of a greater strategy of using western cultural norms to 'modernize' and overcome national challenges. Rather, China throughout the 20th century, and particularly in the last 25 years, has developed family and social policies that are anathema to Western values in many ways, but nevertheless are effective and locally understood to be acceptable in the face of the perceived greater threat of population to locally understood human rights.
The future of social policy in China- innovative solutions to challenges that the West has not yet faced in modern times. Often these solutions will be viewed as oppressive or violating human rights from a western perspective; however, differing understandings of what 'basic human rights' means will facilitate local acceptance. My sense is that those who view Chinese cultual adoption of western morality as an inevitable consequence of development and increased information accessibility will be frustrated with seeming lack of 'cultural progress' in the development of future family social policy in China.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Sex Ratios: a destabilizing factor?
Unmarried young men have been cited as an acceleration to a wide variety of social ills, from political unrest to rising crime rates (Messner & Sampson (1991); Posner (1992); Barber (2000); Hudson & De Boer (2002)). China's One-Child Policy has coincided with a growing sex disparity reflected in Chinese demographic data. The previous generation's preference for a son and the increased accuracy and affordability of ultrasound technology that can instantly determine the sex of a fetus, when combined with the Policy's restriction of urban Han Chinese families to one child, have been a primary cause of this demographic shift ((Zeng et al. (1993); Miller (2001); Chu (2001); Li (2002); Yang & Chen (2004); Das Gupta (2005)). This shift ensures that there will be a significant amount of young males in China who are not able to find spouses. This article seeks to explore how this will impact the stability of Chinese society, particularly in the areas of crime and political unrest.
The sex disparity between young men and young women in the 16-25 yr old range (traditional age of a first marriage in China) increased by almost 80% from 1988 through 2004, when the first children born of the One-Child Policy were coming of marriageable age. (Edlund et al. (2007)).
The coincidence of the One-Child policy with increased standard of living measures throughout the country and decreased population growth rates (particularly amongst the historically crime prone 18-24 yr old demographic) has in many ways helped isolate sex disparity as a variable in this evaluation. Traditionally, societies which have increasing sex differentials and increased crime rates also have increased economic disenfranchisement and demand for resources in this demographic. Economic strain and resource scarcity are both heavily correlated with increased crime and unrest, making it exceptionally difficult for a analyst to isolate the effect of sex disparity. In China's case, however, relative prosperity and access to wealth has actually increased during this same time period, driving analysts to look for other casual relationships. This post postulates that sex disparity is one such causal factor.
One caveat to this analysis is the fact that a better economic situation may in many ways be an indirect cause to more crime. As previously subsistence-based groups are able to now participate nominally in a consumer economy, energies previously directed towards survival may be reoriented towards accumulation of wealth. As neighbors, friends, and family begin to acquire 'luxury' goods such as TVs, mobiles, clothing, etc, social envy among the particularly emotional 18-24 yr old group may emerge. Add to that this generations high-exposure to consumption-based advertising through media and lack of experience with 'rugged' socialism of the Cultural Revolution, and you have a generation ripe for consumption by any means, to include crime.
Mitigating this factor, however, has been the continuing increase in wealth among these generations. As their consumption desires have increase, so has, for the most part, their ability to participate in consumerism. Moreover, the overall national mood of hope and belief in a more prosperous future (need citation here, I have seen these studies, but cannot remember where) imbibes youth with a sense that participation in the legal status-quo will inevitably enable to them to consume more as time goes on. Even in rural areas where there is dissent regarding the pace of economic development, the crux of the complaint is that certain individuals are not getting wealthier as fast as others (especially in urban areas). Implicit in this complaint is an acceptance that one is still getting more wealthy. So long as that is true, there is a material and emotional incentive for this young demographic to operate within the law. Although the effects require further study, it is presumably a small overall consideration in explaining higher crime rates.
During the period between 1988-2004, criminal offenses rose nearly 12.5% annually, and arrest rates rose 82.4% (population adjusted)(Hu (2006); Edlund et al. (2007). 16-25 yr old men were 60-70% of these arrests (Hu (2006); Law Yearbook of China (2001), a number well disproportionate to population makeup. Since the one-child policy was implemented at a local level, with a disparity in timing of up to ten years in some cases, one can compare the movement of arrest rates to that of Policy implementation. Using this methodology to isolate for the correlation between Policy inception and crime increase, the increasing sex disparity in the Chinese population may account for as much as 1/7 of the overall rise in crime (Edlund et al. (2007)). This same study also indicates that it is more than just 'maleness' that drives this trend; rather, 'unmarried maleness' is the significant variable in determining crime rates.
The long term implications are ambiguous. The great majority of females (who were not selected against in the womb or at birth) have benefited from more education, attention, care, and expectation than any generation in Chinese history. Presumably these women will go on to have families that show little to no sex-based preference, and in the long-term there will be a significant decrease in the overall sex disparity. The question remains, however, will second generation females be empowered to not choose marriage, thus perpetuating the trend? As studies consistently show higher academic achievement rates for females in Chinese society, will these women show less of an inclination to be married early. Data thus far already indicates a later marriage age for only-child females. If this generation is able to delay marriage, and exert more discrimination in choosing a spouse (enhanced by the relative abundance of men on the marriage market), this will only perpetuate a 'lost generation of men' at the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid during this vulnerable age. This is particularly disconcerting in the long term.
Several remedies to this present themselves, and have already been observed in China and neighboring countries. First, the invigoration of monastic life in China provides an outlet and a 'catch' for young men as it has historically in Southeast Asia. As china loosens religious controls, this becomes an option. However, if a family has only one son, and the state welfare system continues to place the burdens of elder care on children individually, a humble and impoverished life as a monk is an increasingly untenable option. Furthermore, unrest in Tibet continues to slow government support for or even tolerance of Buddhist religious orders in Western regions.
Military Service provides a second option. Historically, this has provided much-needed jobs and stability world-wide for this generation of men. However, as China seeks to professionalize its military force, universal conscription is unlikely to be a persistently desirable option. Volunteer forces may provide some options; however, Chinese military forces are likely to shrink in the long term. Furthermore, unlike monastic clergy, military service provides only a temporary solution. Although it may allow men to delay marriage in the short-term, military service does not assuage the log-term marriage requirement.
The third option, already readily observable, is the importation of spouses from neighboring countries, particularly Mongolia and Vietnam. Culturally similar, these groups are able to assimilate into traditional roles in Chinese society. Their relatively subjugated positions may also serve to perpetuate a son preference in the long-term, effectively offsetting some of the mitigation of this preference demonstrated by the previously discussed generation of only-child Chinese females.
The sex disparity between young men and young women in the 16-25 yr old range (traditional age of a first marriage in China) increased by almost 80% from 1988 through 2004, when the first children born of the One-Child Policy were coming of marriageable age. (Edlund et al. (2007)).
The coincidence of the One-Child policy with increased standard of living measures throughout the country and decreased population growth rates (particularly amongst the historically crime prone 18-24 yr old demographic) has in many ways helped isolate sex disparity as a variable in this evaluation. Traditionally, societies which have increasing sex differentials and increased crime rates also have increased economic disenfranchisement and demand for resources in this demographic. Economic strain and resource scarcity are both heavily correlated with increased crime and unrest, making it exceptionally difficult for a analyst to isolate the effect of sex disparity. In China's case, however, relative prosperity and access to wealth has actually increased during this same time period, driving analysts to look for other casual relationships. This post postulates that sex disparity is one such causal factor.
One caveat to this analysis is the fact that a better economic situation may in many ways be an indirect cause to more crime. As previously subsistence-based groups are able to now participate nominally in a consumer economy, energies previously directed towards survival may be reoriented towards accumulation of wealth. As neighbors, friends, and family begin to acquire 'luxury' goods such as TVs, mobiles, clothing, etc, social envy among the particularly emotional 18-24 yr old group may emerge. Add to that this generations high-exposure to consumption-based advertising through media and lack of experience with 'rugged' socialism of the Cultural Revolution, and you have a generation ripe for consumption by any means, to include crime.
Mitigating this factor, however, has been the continuing increase in wealth among these generations. As their consumption desires have increase, so has, for the most part, their ability to participate in consumerism. Moreover, the overall national mood of hope and belief in a more prosperous future (need citation here, I have seen these studies, but cannot remember where) imbibes youth with a sense that participation in the legal status-quo will inevitably enable to them to consume more as time goes on. Even in rural areas where there is dissent regarding the pace of economic development, the crux of the complaint is that certain individuals are not getting wealthier as fast as others (especially in urban areas). Implicit in this complaint is an acceptance that one is still getting more wealthy. So long as that is true, there is a material and emotional incentive for this young demographic to operate within the law. Although the effects require further study, it is presumably a small overall consideration in explaining higher crime rates.
During the period between 1988-2004, criminal offenses rose nearly 12.5% annually, and arrest rates rose 82.4% (population adjusted)(Hu (2006); Edlund et al. (2007). 16-25 yr old men were 60-70% of these arrests (Hu (2006); Law Yearbook of China (2001), a number well disproportionate to population makeup. Since the one-child policy was implemented at a local level, with a disparity in timing of up to ten years in some cases, one can compare the movement of arrest rates to that of Policy implementation. Using this methodology to isolate for the correlation between Policy inception and crime increase, the increasing sex disparity in the Chinese population may account for as much as 1/7 of the overall rise in crime (Edlund et al. (2007)). This same study also indicates that it is more than just 'maleness' that drives this trend; rather, 'unmarried maleness' is the significant variable in determining crime rates.
The long term implications are ambiguous. The great majority of females (who were not selected against in the womb or at birth) have benefited from more education, attention, care, and expectation than any generation in Chinese history. Presumably these women will go on to have families that show little to no sex-based preference, and in the long-term there will be a significant decrease in the overall sex disparity. The question remains, however, will second generation females be empowered to not choose marriage, thus perpetuating the trend? As studies consistently show higher academic achievement rates for females in Chinese society, will these women show less of an inclination to be married early. Data thus far already indicates a later marriage age for only-child females. If this generation is able to delay marriage, and exert more discrimination in choosing a spouse (enhanced by the relative abundance of men on the marriage market), this will only perpetuate a 'lost generation of men' at the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid during this vulnerable age. This is particularly disconcerting in the long term.
Several remedies to this present themselves, and have already been observed in China and neighboring countries. First, the invigoration of monastic life in China provides an outlet and a 'catch' for young men as it has historically in Southeast Asia. As china loosens religious controls, this becomes an option. However, if a family has only one son, and the state welfare system continues to place the burdens of elder care on children individually, a humble and impoverished life as a monk is an increasingly untenable option. Furthermore, unrest in Tibet continues to slow government support for or even tolerance of Buddhist religious orders in Western regions.
Military Service provides a second option. Historically, this has provided much-needed jobs and stability world-wide for this generation of men. However, as China seeks to professionalize its military force, universal conscription is unlikely to be a persistently desirable option. Volunteer forces may provide some options; however, Chinese military forces are likely to shrink in the long term. Furthermore, unlike monastic clergy, military service provides only a temporary solution. Although it may allow men to delay marriage in the short-term, military service does not assuage the log-term marriage requirement.
The third option, already readily observable, is the importation of spouses from neighboring countries, particularly Mongolia and Vietnam. Culturally similar, these groups are able to assimilate into traditional roles in Chinese society. Their relatively subjugated positions may also serve to perpetuate a son preference in the long-term, effectively offsetting some of the mitigation of this preference demonstrated by the previously discussed generation of only-child Chinese females.
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