Chinese Youth in Transition

Jieying Xi, Yunxiao Sun

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351951944
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Social Sciences

Featuring original research findings from a key Chinese national research centre, this book provides researchers with cutting-edge, reliable and comprehensive information about children and youth in modern China. The book employs a unique methodology to analyze China's youth in terms of human capital development in a transitional economy. Coverage spans a wide range of critical issues, including: children's physical and mental development, leisure and consumption choices, youth employment, pop culture, one-child families, internet use, and juvenile delinquency. Written specifically for undergraduate and graduate courses in Economics, China studies, and Development, the book will also be of interest to those wishing to understand Chinese consumer behaviour in this diverse and dynamic region.

PART I
CHINESE CHILDREN

Chapter 1
Introduction to Chinese Children

Yunxiao Sun¹

Children are the hope of the world and the future of mankind. Presently there are about 2.1 billion children under 18 years old in the world, who are like 2.1 billion precious trees and 2.1 billion beautiful flowers. Their health and all-around development has great impact on the survival of mankind in the future.

China, the most populous nation in the world, has the largest child population. Presently there are 367 million children under 18 years old in China, accounting for about 17.5% of the world child population. Child development in China has always been a worldwide concern. The unswerving efforts made by the Chinese government and society to promote child development have been seen by the world. This report is to present an overview of Chinese children aged from 6 to 14 years old, describing changes in their development and environment, which may showcase Chinese children for people from other countries who are interested. Since the physiological and psychological characteristics of Chinese children are elaborated in Chapter 2, this chapter only generally describes characteristics of Chinese children’s social development and related environmental changes.

Developmental Environment of Chinese Children

Contemporary Chinese children are growing up in an age when dramatic social changes are taking place. During the 20 years, after China carried out the reform and opening up policy in the 1980s, China’s modernization has been progressing at unprecedented speed, scale and scope. The Chinese society, step by step, is transforming from a planned economy into a market one, shifting from a homogenous society to a pluralistic one and becoming more and more integrated into the international community. The transformation of Chinese society has created a development environment for children never seen before, which will undoubtedly have great influence on their development. Therefore, in order to understand characteristics of contemporary Chinese children, we must first understand their development environment.

Parents Pay More Attention to Investment in Children’s Education

China’s transformation from a planned economy into a market economy has increased potential development level of people, strengthened people’s sense of competition and also made parents pay more attention to investment in children’s education.

China’s transformation into a market economy has brought great changes to Chinese society. For the past 20 years, Chinese economic reform has yielded remarkable fruits, greatly enhancing China’s comprehensive economic power. China’s GDP in 2003 reached 11,689.84 billion yuan with a growth rate of 9.1%. Chinese residents’ average living standard has been raised considerably. In 2003, the total balance of the saving deposit of Chinese residents came to 10,361.8 billion yuan; Engel Coefficient (the proportion of the expenses on food to the total consumption expenses) of urban residents dropped from 57.5% in 1978 to 37.1% in 2003 and that of rural residents from 67.7% to 45.6% over the same period (ChinaNet, no date). For the majority of households, economic affluence has also increased their economic resources for investment in children. Chinese children’s development environment in terms of both physical and nurturing aspects has greatly improved at large. Of course, due to the uneven development in China, around 30 million people are still in poverty with an annual per capita income of less than 637 yuan.

The economic transformation has not only bettered people’s lives, but also spurred their strong need for overall social development, and thus enhance their desire for further development. Furthermore, the economic transformation has provided, to some extent, opportunities and means for people to elevate their development level through investing in their own human resources. Moreover, examples of successful people in the society have further raised people’s development expectations. Consequently, contemporary Chinese have higher development expectations and usually place their hope in their children. A survey by the China Youth and Children Research Center in 1998 showed that contemporary young parents in Chinese urban areas have extremely high expectations of their children in terms of education: 97.1% parents expect their children to have at least two years of college education; 70.5% at least a master’s degree; 44.5% at least doctoral education; and 23.5% post-doctoral education (China Youth and Children Research Center, 2001). Parents believe that investment in children’s education is an effective way to elevate the social status of their family.

Meanwhile, in the course of economic transformation, a sense of free competition, a core concept of market economy, has been strengthened among Chinese people and families, which is also the case with parents’ investment in their children’s education. Many parents expect to enhance their children’s competitive edge through more educational investment. Accordingly, parents pay great attention to children’s educational investment. Many parents request their children to attend various training classes on weekends or in the evenings. Most of those after school classes are closely relevant to their school subjects, such as English or Olympic Math classes. Others are interest classes on art and physical education.

To a certain extent, augmentation of educational investment has improved children’s development environment and fostered their development, but it sometimes goes to extremes. For example, over-investment on intellect that forces children to attend “interest classes”, with no interest at all, has made it a burden and put more pressure on children and, thus, deprived children of light-heartedness as well as time for developing other abilities.

Mass Media Rapidly Increase Products Targeting Children

Under the influence of worldwide transformation from an industrial society to an informational society, Chinese society is also undergoing informationization with rapid development of the information industry, diversification of mass media and drastic rise in its supply. At present, there are over 2,000 newspapers, 8,000 periodicals, 282 radio stations and 320 TV stations in China. By the end of 2003, the coverage rate of Chinese radio and television reached 93.7% and 94.9% of the total population, respectively. The number of computers with access to internet reached 30.89 million with 79.50 million netizens, ranking second in the world (ChinaNet, no date). The development of mass media has been a significant social factor in children’s socialization.

The Chinese government has always been very much caring about, and supportive of, the mass media providing excellent products for children. China Central Television (CCTV) started the children’s channel at the end of 2003, broadcasting for 18 hours every day, with domestic-made cartoons occupying 1 hour and 11 minutes daily. Publication of children’s books, newspapers and magazines have also maintained a rising trend. New types of media, such as the internet, have been entering households with children since the late 1990s and are gaining popularity.

The growing popularity of mass media has equipped children with more access to the world, exposing children to more information, entertainment and knowledge resources. Meanwhile, it has also provided them more power to choose information, which is conducive to children’s ability to learn about the world and form their independent ideas and opinions. Internet popularization has particularly facilitated the democratization of information flow, putting children on an equal footing with adults in terms of information acquisition.

However, mass media is a double-edged sword. Unhealthy content provided by mass media, like pornography and violence, exerts an increasingly negative influence on children. A more serious social issue is addiction to internet and video games, which shows that the society needs to improve its management and supervision of what mass media disseminate. Moreover, with economic development, the commercialized entertainment industry prospers thanks to such new media as television and the internet. Tasteless soap operas, mass produced animated cartoons and video games are catching on and changing the growth environment of contemporary children into a picture-reading era. The influence of this change on children is becoming more and more obvious.

The Society becomes Pluralistic

In the era of a planned economy, the mainstream culture of Chinese society encouraged obedience and emphasized subordination of individual interest to collective interest. However, nowadays due to establishment of a market economy, Chinese society places emphasis on pluralism, individuality and freedom of choices. The tolerance in the social and cultural atmosphere and the rapidly developing internet world have jointly created an environment with immense space for choices and development. Children can now make independent choices through accessing and understanding different social values, knowledge and lifestyles. Society has also begun to encourage children to develop their own thoughts, make their own judgments and exercise their own choice, thus inspiring them to display their individuality and creativity.

To a certain extent, pluralism of society has led to the conflict and confusion of different values. Facing fast changing society and pluralistic orientations of values, even adults feel more or less bewildered and baffled. Children, who are immature and more susceptible to this kind of collision, are affected even more. The challenge for Chinese educators is how to teach children to keep balances between obedience and innovation and individualistic freedom and social responsibility.

The Education Goal is Shifting to Train Well-Rounded and High Quality Talents

With the development of globalization and expansion of China’s reform and opening-up, China has become more and more integrated into the international community. Education for Chinese children is also coming in line with that of the international society and has been advancing towards the goal of training internationalized talents. The whole society has begun to value outward-oriented and practical-oriented talents of high quality. Corresponding with this demand, the China State Council issued Resolutions on the Reform and Development of Elementary Education. This document specifies that besides offering foreign language courses in elementary schools, information technology education should be gradually added to curricula of primary and secondary schools region by region. Children in most regions of China have already begun to attend foreign language and computer courses in primary schools. Two other documents have also had great influence on contemporary Chinese education: Resolutions on Further Education Reform and Overall Advancement of Quality-oriented Education issued on June 13, 1999 and Advisories on Enhancing and Improving Minors’ Ethical and Ideological Education on February 26, 2004. Both documents were issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CCCPC) and the State Council. The focus of children’s ethical and ideological education is to cultivate moral characters and polite behaviors, improve essential quality and enhance all-round development in daily life besides promoting patriotism as a core and related idealism, faith and national spirit. Meanwhile, an examination-oriented education is changing to a quality-oriented one, the reform of basic education courses are deepening and all-around development of children are attracting high attention from society.

A rather strong tendency toward instrumentalism and utilitarianism has appeared in the present Chinese society but must be guarded against. Many people have begun to judge one’s gain or loss by his/her money or social status. The public also values individual achievements the most. This results in a lack of vision for children’s education for some members of the society who usually place more emphasis on achieving practical aims, such as good grades, high abilities, and versatile performances, while overlooking long-term objectives like emotional and character development. The present-day “fad for certificate exams” (such as certificate for MS Word) and “fad for grade exams” (such as grade 6 English) reflect the very desire for competition and shows that the profound meaning of “all-round development” is yet to be fully understood.

Children’s Rights are Gaining Respect and Protection

Under the influence of globalization and modernization, children have been viewed differently in China. They are now viewed as able and active citizens who are able to exercise their own rights. At the beginning of the 1990s, the Chinese government signed the United Nations’ Children’s Rights Convention. In order to actively fulfill its commitment to the international community, the Chinese government also published two national action plans for child development: Outline of Development Project for Chinese Children in the 1990s and Chinese Child Development Outline (2001–2010). These publications continue to improve the working mechanism and implementation effectiveness of the policies. Meanwhile, in order to protect children’s rights, the Chinese government is constantly improving relevant policies, laws and regulations. China has now made a series of laws concerning children’s survival, protection and development. The Constitution is the core but other laws include: Criminal Law, General Principles of the Civil Law, Marriage Law, Education Law, Law on Compulsory Education, Law on the Protection of the Disabled Persons, Law on the Protection of Minors, Law on Preventing Juvenile Delinquency, Law on the Protection of Women’s Rights and Interests, Law on Mother and Infant Healthcare, Infectious Diseases Prevention Law and the Adoption Law. The government has also made a series of related regulations and policies, forming a relatively comprehensive legal system for protecting children’s rights and interests.

In addition to legal affirmation and protection, children’s rights have also been acknowledged by the general public. Most people believe that children have their own rights whether they are at school, at home or in the society. Many people have a vague and partial understanding of children’s rights, which is limited to the right to education. However, with more publicity, awareness of children’s rights will take root in hearts of people and the society will pay more attention to children’s rights of survival, protection, development and participation.

An Overview of Child Development in China

Child Population is Decreasing and School Education is Improving

China has about 268 million children under 14, accounting for 21.14% of its total population. Compared with 27.69% reported in the 1990 census, it dropped 6.55 percentage points. At the end of 2002, China had 188 million children between 6 and 14 years of age (around 100 million male and 88 million female, or 53.11% and 46.89%, respectively), accounting for 14.71% of the total population (National Bureau of Statistics, 2003).

The Chinese government pays great attention to the popularization of compulsory education and provides numerous opportunities for children to receive education. According to the statistical communiqué of national education, at the end of 2003, the number of students at primary schools nationwide came to a total of 116,897,400. The enrollment rate of primary school age children reached 98.65%, 98.69% for boys and 98.61% for girls. The dropout rate of primary school students was 0.34% (0.36% for girls); and the rate of staying for five years in primary school was 98.80%. Nationally, the number of middle school students was 66,908,300, with a gross enrollment rate of 92.7%, and the dropout rate of 2.84%, in which 2.43% for girls (Ministry of Education, 2004).

Though children’s compulsory education has made great achievements, there are still prominent problems. Equal right to education for all children is yet to be protected and country girls are more likely to be deprived of education opportunities.

Children Love New Things through Diverse Information Channels

Contemporary Chinese children are brought up in an age where free flow of information transcends over regional, time and generational limits. Everyone can obtain the most updated and valuable information through channels such as radio, television, newspaper, magazine, computer and the internet. In such a situation, contemporary Chinese children enjoy a variety of ways to learn. They can obtain new knowledge and concepts not only from adults but also from various media. Faced with new media, especially computers and internet, children are often able to operate them better than their parents. Many children already know how to use the computer, or even surf the internet, to search for information that interests them and to communicate with others. The information age has put children on a relative equal footing with adults in terms of obtaining knowledge and grasping information unknown to their parents and teachers. Obviously, in comparison with children of the last generation, contemporary children enjoy more diversified channels to get information, which has broadened their vision.

Furthermore, since contemporary children are growing up in a colorful environment, they are more willing to accept new things and ideas. The increase of novel stimuli in their developmental environment, plus increasing means of l...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Part I Chinese Children
• Part II Chinese Youth
• Part III Chinese Children and Youth
• Index