China's Me Generation
中国自我的一代
来自于《时代周刊》网站，网址：http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1647228-1,00.html
Six friends out on a friday evening, the seafood plentiful, the conversation flowing. Maria Zhang — big hoop earrings, tight velvet jacket and a good deal of meticulously applied makeup — starts to describe an island that everyone is talking about off the east coast of Thailand. It has great diving, she says, and lots of Chinese there so you don't have to worry about language. Her friend Vicky Yang is hunched over a borrowed laptop, downloading an e-mail from a pesky client on her cell phone. An actuary at a consulting firm, Vicky needs to close a project tonight. While she phones a colleague, the dinner-table conversation moves on to snowboarding ("I must have fallen a hundred times") to the relative merits of various iPods ("Shuffle is no good") and the sudden onrush of credit cards in China. Silence Chen, an account executive with advertising giant Ogilvy & Mather in Beijing, tells the group he recently received six different cards in the mail. "Each one has a credit limit of 10,000," he says, laughing. "So suddenly I'm 60,000 yuan richer!" The talk turns to China's online shopping business, before that is interrupted by the arrival of razor clams, chili squid and deep-fried grouper.
六位朋友周五晚上外出就餐，桌上海鲜丰盛，桌下谈笑风生。玛丽亚·张——一个带着大圈耳环，穿着天鹅绒紧身夹克，画着精致妆容的时髦女孩开始给在座的朋友描绘泰国东海岸附近的一个岛屿：“在那潜水真是不错，中国人很多，根本不用提心语言不通”。而她的朋友薇姬·杨正全神贯注地摆弄借来的笔记本电脑，忙着下载一名恼人的客户发来的E-mail，作为保险公司的统计员，今晚她还得完成一个项目。就在她给同事打电话的时候，饭桌上的谈论话题先是从滑雪（“我一定摔了100多跤”），变成了不同型号iPod的优劣（“iPod Shuffle太烂了”），最后又转到了信用卡一下子涌入了中国人生活的问题。一直沉默寡言的陈先生是北京广告巨头Ogilvy & Mather公司的执行总监，他告诉众人他最近邮件里收到了六张不同的信用卡。“每张信用卡的信用额度是10000，”他笑着说，“所以我一下子就赚了6万元”。接着话题转到了中国的网上购物，谈话不时被端上来的牡蛎、色拉和油炸海鲜所打断。
The one subject that doesn't come up — and almost never does when this tight-knit group of friends gets together — is politics. That sets them apart from previous generations of Chinese élites, whose lives were defined by the epic events that shaped China's past half-century: the Cultural Revolution, the opening to the West, the student protests in Tiananmen Square and their subsequent suppression. The conversation at Gang Ji Restaurant suggests today's twentysomethings are tuning all that out. "There's nothing we can do about politics," says Chen. "So there's no point in talking about it or getting involved."
但在他们 的谈话中，有一个话题始终没有出现，而且在这个团结的小圈子的聚会中也几乎从未出现过，那就是政治。这就将他们与那些经历过文化大革命、改革开放和“六四事件”等影响中国半个世纪重大事件的老一辈中国精英区分开来。刚记海鲜酒楼里的谈话表明，如今20多岁的年轻人对这类事情一概闭口不谈。这个小圈子里一员赛伦斯·陈说：“对于政治，我们无能为力，所以谈论或是参与政治都没有什么意义。”
There are roughly 300 million adults in China under age 30, a demographic cohort that serves as a bridge between the closed, xenophobic China of the Mao years and the globalized economic powerhouse that it is becoming. Young Chinese are the drivers and chief beneficiaries of the country's current boom: according to a recent survey by Credit Suisse First Boston, the incomes of 20- to 29-year-olds grew 34% in the past three years, by far the biggest of any age group. And because of their self-interested, apolitical pragmatism, they could turn out to be the salvation of the ruling Communist Party — so long as it keeps delivering the economic goods. Survey young, urban Chinese today, and you will find them drinking Starbucks, wearing Nikes and blogging obsessively. But you will detect little interest in demanding voting rights, let alone overthrowing the country's communist rulers. "On their wish list," says Hong Huang, a publisher of several lifestyle magazines, "a Nintendo Wii comes way ahead of democracy."
如今的中国，30岁以下的成年人大约有3亿，这个人口大军是承上启下的一代，是连接毛泽东时期的中国与正在形成的全球化经济强国的中国的桥梁。中国的年轻人既是中国繁荣的推动者，又是主要受益者：瑞士信贷第一波士顿银行最近所做的一项调查显示，过去3年间，20-29岁年轻人的收入增长了34%，是收入增长最快的年龄层。这些年轻人注重自身利益、不关心政治而注重实际，他们可能成为当政的共产党的拯救者--只要他们能够继续帮助共产党创造经济利益。对现在中国城市里的年轻人作统计调查，就会发现他们喝星巴克咖啡，穿耐克服装，沉迷于写博客，却没有几个有兴趣参与政治投票，更不用说推翻共产党的统治者了。一位时尚杂志的发行人说：“如果问他们想要什么，那么任天堂游戏机肯定比民主排名靠前得多。”
The rise of China's Me generation has implications for the foreign policies of other nations. Sinologists in the West have long predicted that economic growth would eventually bring democracy to China. As James Mann points out in his new book, The China Fantasy, the idea that China will evolve into a democracy as its middle class grows continues to underlie the U.S.'s China policy, providing the central rationale for maintaining close ties with what is, after all, an unapologetically authoritarian regime. But China's Me generation could shatter such long-held assumptions. As the chief beneficiaries of China's economic success, young professionals have more and more tied up in preserving the status quo. The last thing they want is a populist politician winning over the country's hundreds of millions of have-nots on a rural-reform, stick-it-to-the-cities agenda.
中国自我一代的崛起会影响到他国的对华政策。一直以来，西方的汉学家就预言经济增长将会给中国带来民主。詹姆斯·曼在他的新书《中国幻想》中写到，随着中产阶级的扩大，中国将发展成民主国家的这个观点一直是美国对华政策的基础，是美国与一个她不以为然的独裁政权保持密切关系的主要原因。然而，中国的自我一代可能会让这个长期以来的设想彻底破灭。作为中国经济成功的主要受益者，这些年轻白领在维持现状方面越来越齐心。他们最不想看到的就是有政客通过农村改革等方式为广大穷人阶层谋福利。
All of which means democracy isn't likely to come to China anytime soon. And that poses challenges for Western policymakers as they try to engage China without condoning the Communist Party's record of political repression and its failures to improve the lives of the country's rural poor. China watchers say the Me generation's reluctance to agitate for reform is driven in part by a reluctance to tarnish China's moment in the sun. "They are proud of what China has accomplished, and very positive about the government," says P.T. Black, who conducts extensive marketing research for a Shanghai-based company called Jigsaw International. The political passivity of China's new élite makes sense while the good times roll. The question is what will happen to the Me generation — and to China — when they end.
所有这些都说明，中国不可能马上实现民主。这就给西方决策者提出了挑战，因为他们一方面要与中国接触，一方面又指责共产党进行政治镇压，并在改善农村贫困人群生活水平方面工作不力。中国观察者说，自我的一代之所以不愿意进行改革，部分原因是他们不愿意破坏如今“阳光灿烂”的大好形势。“这些年轻人对中国取得的成就感到自豪，对中国政府相当有信心”，布莱克说（布莱克正在为一个以上海为基地的被称为国际电锯（？）的公司进行深入的市场调查。）但问题是，中国年轻精英们的这种政治被动性若是遇到好光景还行，若是好光景结束了，自我的一代和中国又将何去何从呢?
For anyone who visited the workers' paradise when it was still the land of Mao suits and communes, trying to reconcile that China to the one that young élites live in today is disorienting. When I first visited China in 1981, I went to the People's Park in Shanghai with two traveling companions. Our obligatory Foreign Ministry "guide" ushered us through a special gate reserved for "foreign friends." A knot of young Chinese had gathered outside. As we passed, a few made loud comments about the unfairness of having parts of the People's Park reserved only for foreigners. One of my companions, a Mandarin speaker, agreed volubly in Chinese. Immediately a group of young Chinese men and women surrounded us and peppered us with questions that mixed naiveté and aspiration: Are there still slaves in America? Where did you learn to speak Chinese? Do all American families really have three cars? Can you help me go to America?
毛泽东统治的时代是工人的天堂。对于访问过那时中国的人来说，试图调和那时的中国和今天的年轻精英生活的中国是有误导性的。当我1981年首次访问中国的时候，我和两位游伴一起来到上海的人民广场。我们的义务“导游”引领我们通过一个专门为“国外友人”预定的门口。那时已经有很多中国的年轻人聚集在门外面。当我们通过的时候，有几个年轻人大声抱怨说把部分人民广场专门为外国人开放是不公平的。我的一位说普通话的同伴，用汉语大声地表示同意。马上有很多中国的男女青年围上我们，并且问我们各种各样的问题：美国还有黑人奴隶吗？你们从哪里学中文的？真的是所有的美国家庭都有三辆车吗？你们能帮我去美国吗？
That discussion took place 25 years ago, the span usually allotted to a single generation. The naive, wary Chinese I met that day could be the parents of the group gathered for the seafood feast in Beijing. But there is almost nothing about the appearance, attitudes, life experience, education or dreams for the future that those young people in the Shanghai People's Park share with the likes of Vicky and her friends.
那次谈话发生在25年前，而25年的时间通常可以称为一代人。当时我遇到的那些谨慎稚气的中国人可能是现在聚在北京进行海鲜派对的那些年轻人的父母。但是在外形、态度、生活经历、教育程度、未来理想等方面，当年在上海的年轻人和北京派对的薇姬和她的朋友之间却几乎没有任何共同之处。
The most obvious change is demographic. Because of China's one-child policy, instituted in 1978, this is the first generation in the world's history in which a majority are single children, a group whose solipsistic tendencies have been further encouraged by a growing obsession with consumerism, the Internet and video games. At the same time, today's young Chinese are better educated and more worldly than their predecessors. Whereas the so-called Lost Generation that grew up in the Cultural Revolution often struggled to finish high school, today around a quarter of Chinese in their 20s have attended college. The country's opening to the West has allowed many more of its citizens to satisfy their curiosity about the world: some 37 million will travel overseas in 2007. In the next decade, there will be more Chinese tourists traveling the globe than the combined total of those originating in the U.S. and Europe. Rather than fueling restlessness among the Me generation, however, the ease of travel seems to provide more evidence that the benefits of globalization can be had without radical change.
这中间最明显的变化是人口上面的。由于中国1978年开始实行的计划生育政策，现在的年轻人是世界历史上绝大多数人是独生子女的第一代人。而这个群体的倾向性更被刺激去沉溺于消费、互联网和视频游戏。同时，比起过去一代人，如今的中国年轻人受到的教育多，眼界开阔。过去在文化大革命时期成长起来的、所谓的垮掉的一代要混张中学文凭都很难，而如今20多岁的年轻人中40%的人都上了大学。中国的改革开放满足了国人对外界的好奇：2007年出境旅游的人数约为3700万人。此后10年间，中国出境游的人数将超过美国和欧洲的总人口之和。出境游的便利并不会激起自我一代进行变革的决心，而是会让他们感到，即使没有激烈的变革，自己也能享受到全球化所带来的好处。
There's another reason for the lack of political ferment: it's exhausting. Like anyone else, members of the Me generation are shaped by their experiences and those of their families. When their parents talk about the Great Leap Forward (a disastrous Mao campaign in the late 1950s that left 20 million to 30 million dead of starvation) and the subsequent chaos of the Cultural Revolution, they mostly tell horror stories that would put anyone off politics forever. That chapter in Chinese history, which officially ended with Mao's death in 1976, is ancient history to today's young élites. They have known little but peace and an ever increasing economic boom. "We have so much bigger a desire for everything than [our parents]," says Maria Zhang, 27. "And the more we eat, the more we taste and see, the more we want."
政治热情的缺乏还有另外一个原因：政治让人精疲力竭。和其他人一样，中国自我的一代年轻人受他们自身经历和其家庭成员的经历的影响很深。当他们的父母谈到“大跃进”（一场二十世纪五十年代毛泽东发动的灾难性的运动，导致两三千万人饿死）和随后文革的混乱年代时，他们通常会讲起一些可怕的故事，而这些故事足以让任何人永远远离政治。中国历史上的悲惨的时期，在1976年毛泽东死后被正式停止，而这段时期对于现在的年轻人而言仿佛是史前故事。他们仅仅知道和平和持续的经济增长。“我们对于任何东西的期望都比我们的父母高得多，”27岁的玛丽亚.张说，“而且我们吃的越多，我们的品位就越高，见识的就越多，因而我们想要得就更多。”
One event that the Me generation does remember is the crackdown on student activists in Tiananmen Square in 1989. But to young Chinese like Maria and Vicky, the Tiananmen protests are less a source of inspiration than an admonishment. Were popular uprisings like Tiananmen allowed to continue, Vicky believes, they would have provoked a counterreaction by conservative forces and led to a return to fortress China: no more iPods, overseas shopping trips or snowboarding weekends. "I think that the students meant well," says Vicky, who was 11 at the time and has only vague memories of what happened. But the crackdown that ended the demonstrations "certainly was needed."
中国自我的一代年轻人的确记得的事件是1989年天安门广场上学生运动的镇压。但是对于玛丽亚和维克这样的中国年轻人来说，天安门示威游行更是一个告诫，而不是政治热情的激励。维克相信，就算当时当局同意继续天安门这样大规模的运动，这些运动也终究会被导致保守势力的反击而回到闭关锁国的中国，而那时将不会有iPod播放器、海外旅游购物和周末滑雪。维克当年只有11岁，对当时发生的事情只有非常模糊的印象，他说，“我相信那些学生的意愿是好的”，但是终止示威游行的镇压“一定是必需的“。
Vicky embodies the shift in the priorities of young Chinese. She's a purposeful, 29-year-old actuary who rarely smiles but loves nothing better than a party. She and her friends meet so regularly for dinner and at bars that she says she never eats at home anymore. As the pictures on her blog attest, they also throw regular theme parties to mark holidays like Halloween and Christmas, and last year took a holiday to Egypt.
维克身上代表了中国年轻人兴趣的转移。维克是一个29岁的保险公司的统计员，她做事很有目的性，不苟言笑，最喜欢派对。她和她的朋友们外出就餐和参加酒吧是如此频繁，以至于她说她再也不在家里吃饭了。象她的博克上的图片显示的那样，她们也组织主题派对来纪念像万圣节和圣诞节这样的西方节日，而且去年她们去埃及休假。
Encouraged by her new boyfriend Wang Ning, a keen snowboarder, Vicky decided earlier this year to take up the sport as well. To prime for it, she went to a mall in south Beijing that specializes in pricey, imported skiing gear. She chose a gleaming new snowboard made by the Colorado company Never Summer, emblazoned with colorful, psychedelic paintings of butterflies. Along with gloves, goggles and other paraphernalia, the new gear set her back about $700. When asked about the wisdom of spending a small fortune on equipment for a sport she may never take to, she says, "I believe you have to be fully prepared and equipped before you decide to start a new hobby." Besides, she adds, "even if I don't like skiing, think how nice [the gear] will look in the hallway of my apartment. Guests won't know that I don't use it." Vicky smiles to signal she's joking. But she's dead serious when she explains, over coffee at Starbucks, her lack of interest in politics. "It's because our life is pretty good. I care about my rights when it comes to the quality of a waitress in a restaurant or a product I buy. When it comes to democracy and all that, well ..." She shrugs expressively and takes a sip of her latte. "That doesn't play a role in my life."
受她的新男友-一个狂热的滑雪者-王宁的鼓励，维克决定今年早些时候也去参加了这项运动。为了能滑的出众，她先去逛了一个位于北京南部的商场，这个商场专卖昂贵的进口滑雪器具。她挑了一个美国科罗拉多公司生产的光亮的新滑雪板。和手套等其他东西一起，她总共花了大约700美元。
People like Vicky and her friends represent the leading edge, the trailblazers for a huge mass of young, eagerly aspirant consumers. All over China, young professionals like these banter about blogging, travel and work-life balance. ("Work hard, play harder," says Vicky several times, repeating it in case she isn't heard.) If they can't afford to blow $700 on skiing gear, they want to be able to soon.
象维克和她的朋友们代表了时代潮流，他们是大多数年轻狂热消费者的领路人。遍观中国，象他们这样的年轻白领们都热衷于博克、旅游以及保持工作和生活的平衡。
And so for China's leaders, placating the Me generation is seen as critical to ensuring the Communist Party's survival. By 2015, the number of Chinese adults under 30 is expected to swell 61%, to 500 million, equivalent to the entire population of the European Union. From issues of grave consequence to trivialities, the government has made clear that it will do whatever it takes to keep the swelling middle class happy. In Beijing, for example, newly prosperous residents are snapping up automobiles at a rate of 1,000 a day. The number of vehicles on the capital's sclerotic roads has doubled in the past five years, to 3 million. (By comparison, there are about 2 million vehicles registered in all of New York City.) But despite a grim pollution problem (Beijing air quality is among the world's worst) that could embarrass China during next summer's Olympic Games, the central government has made no move to curb vehicle purchases through regulation or taxes. And that, in turn, has made it harder for governments in the developed world to make progress in getting Beijing to do more to fight climate change.
That's just one example of the long-term impact of the government's focus on the Me generation. In an article in the official mouthpiece People's Daily published in February, Premier Wen Jiabao stressed that economic growth should take precedence over democratic reforms for the foreseeable future, a period that he appeared to indicate could stretch to 100 years. And yet for all its machinery of control, the party is vulnerable. Senior cadres from Wen on down have acknowledged in public that growing unrest in the provinces, as farmers clash with police over expropriated land or official corruption, could threaten the party's grip on power.
As a result, China's rulers face a dilemma: the very policies that cater to the urban middle class come at the expense of the rural poor. So far the government is erring on the side of the rich. In March the government pledged to address problems plaguing the country's peasants, such as access to medical treatment and schooling, health insurance and the disparity between urban and rural incomes. And yet a relatively small portion of the budget was set aside to address the concerns of the peasantry, with the bulk of spending still concentrated on stoking the booming economy.
Even more telling was the passage of what was widely viewed as one of the most important pieces of legislation to be put forward in several decades of reform: the revised law on property ownership. Pushed through despite objections from old-line conservatives, the law for the first time gave equal weight to both state- and private-ownership rights. But a look at the fine print shows that the law only protects things dear to the rising middle class: real estate, cars, stock-market assets. Farmers, on the other hand, will still be unable to purchase their land and instead will be forced to lease plots from the government.
If left unchanged, such policies could exacerbate China's rich-poor divide and create conditions for tumultuous social upheaval. The test for China — as the Me generation grows bigger, richer and more powerful — will be whether it begins to push for the social and political reforms that are necessary to ensure China's long-term prosperity and stability. How likely is that? Though they're not exactly clamoring for free elections, members of the new middle class have shown a willingness to stand up to authority when their interests are threatened. Last October police in Beijing attempted to enforce rules limiting each household to a single, registered animal no taller than 14 in. (35 cm). The drive sparked a rare public demonstration by hundreds of well-heeled Chinese, mostly young dog owners. Within a month, according to Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, President Hu Jintao had intervened, ordering the Beijing authorities to back off. It was the first time most Beijingers could remember a public protest drawing a direct intervention by China's top leader.
It was hardly Tiananmen, but a small triumph for free expression nonetheless. And if the West hopes to see China become democratic as well as prosperous, it will have to find ways to encourage modest breakthroughs like these, rather than expect sweeping change. At the Gang Ji Restaurant, where the dishes have been cleared and fresh fruit and more tea brought in, the mood is reflective. "We are lucky compared to our parents," says Maria Zhang, who works as a membership manager in one of the capital's most exclusive clubs. "My parents had nothing themselves. They lived for me." Wang Ning, the snowboarder who runs his own successful advertising company, agrees. "We are more self-centered. We live for ourselves, and that's good. We need to have the strength to contribute to the economy. That's our power. The power to contribute. That's how our generation is going to help the country." China's future will be defined by whether they realize that democracy can help China, too.
