Youths and Delinquency in a Changing China
The âOpen Doorâ policy of economic reform in China started in the rural agricultural sector in 1978 and gradually expanded to sectors in urban areas from the early 1980s. Chinaâs far-reaching economic reform and accompanying social transformations have brought remarkable economic achievements to Chinese society and its people. Hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty in rural areas, major improvements in infrastructure have been made, and more opportunities for youths in higher education have been created. Profound changes in the economic structure have also led to Chinaâs strong ties to the outside world, contributing to its status as a major role player in the world economy. The Open Door economic policy has repositioned China not only as one of the largest trading nations, but also the largest recipient of foreign investment in the world (Garcia 2004). With a population of 1.4 billion and among the most rapidly growing economies in the world, China has become the worldâs second largest economy (after the USA), and is increasingly playing an important and influential role in the global economy. As China has moved toward a market economy, individuals enjoy both inter- and intra-generation upward mobility and have more opportunity for financial success. As a consequence of Chinaâs economic reform and its impacts on productivity, income, and consumption, the average personâs living standard has improved substantially. Affluence in Chinese households has increased their economic resources for investment in their childrenâs education, recreation, and nutrition.
Coexisting with Chinaâs prosperity and development after the economic reform of the early 1980s, however, is a dramatic increase in crime, especially among youths in urban areas. Youth delinquency in China refers to crimes committed by youth aged 14 to 25 years, who violate the law and are subject to criminal punishment; crimes committed by minors aged 14 to 18 years are defined as juvenile delinquency . According to Criminal Law in China, the minimum age for criminal responsibility is 14 and the age of 18 is the baseline for adult legal accountability. Even so, the guiding principle in handling juvenile offenders is education rather than punishment (Wong 2001). Juvenile delinquency is a global issue, known as one of the worldâs âthree major public hazards (i.e., environmental pollution, delinquency, and drug abuseâ (Xiu 2011). In line with the global trend, delinquency has become not only a legal issue, but also a serious social problem facing China today. Juvenile delinquency did not appear as a major issue in China until the late 1970s when dramatic social changes took place. It constituted about 20% of the total crime in the 1950s and increased during the Cultural Revolution (i.e., 1966â1976) (Shen 2003; Liu and Qin 2004). However, the country experienced a sharp rise in crime and delinquency in the 1980s and the trend continued into the 1990s, when the deepening social transition from a traditional society to a modern society and from an agricultural society to an industrial society led to many internal and external problems. In 1980, 61.2% of total crimes were committed by youths (14â25) and the percentage increased to 74.1% in 1990 (Curran and Cook 1993). Youth crime as a percentage of overall crime was one of the highest in the world in the 1990s (Epstein 2003). Although this proportion has declined since 2009, partly because of the implementation of the Juvenile Delinquency Prevention Act in 1999 and the Juvenile Protection Law in 2007 (Xia et al. 2010), it has still maintained a level of about 65% (Xiu 2011). In addition, the number of juvenile offenders rose from 33,000 in 1998 to an estimated 80,000 in 2007 (China Daily 2007). Juvenile delinquents have started offending at an earlier age, and more students are committing crime while they are still in school (Epstein 2003; Guan 2006). They tend to be middle- and high-school, or even senior elementary-school students who experience difficulty in school and have poor academic performance (Xue 1991). Of juvenile delinquency cases, crime committed by youths 14 to 18 years old increased from 7% in 1980 to almost 20% in 1989, and 70% in recent years (Xiu 2011; Yan 2014). A national survey in 2001 showed that among urban delinquents, their minor delinquent acts such as drinking alcohol, staying out at night, playing truant, fighting, gambling, and petty theft began at the average age of 13 when they were in middle school, and the average age was lower than it was for rural delinquents (Guan 2006). As the female delinquency rate has increased significantly, the gender gap has become smaller. According to a 2007 survey, female delinquents (14â18) constituted 45% of the total juvenile delinquency and they were more likely to be involved in drug addiction and trafficking, and prostitution than males (Deng and Han 2014). Although an increase in violent crimes (i.e., murder, rape, and assault) has been observed, crimes for financial gain (e.g., theft and robbery) have especially been on the rise more than other types of crime since the 1990s (Curran and Cook 1993; Wang and Han 2014). It is estimated that robbery and theft accounted for 71% of the total delinquent offenses in 2003 (Xi 2006; Y. Liu 2015b). As a consequence of the profound economic inequality, the long-standing sense of relative poverty in Chinese society may explain the high property crime rate among both adults and youths. I elaborate the point in the economic Inequality section in Chap. 2. With the rapid development of information technology, new types of offense such as network fraud, identity theft, forgery, pornography, and computer network safety endangerment are also on the rise (Xi 2006; H. Liu 2015a). With regard to the nature of crimes, delinquent gangs have emerged with about 70% of delinquency being gang-related (i.e., three or more persons involved in one crime) (Xiang 1999; Wang and Han 2014). With limited life experiences and more psychological dependence on peers than parents during adolescence , youths tend to commit crime with other associates to reduce a feeling of fear and enhance a sense of safety (Huang 2001). The fact that youth crime has generally grown faster in urban areas than rural areas is a manifestation of the uneven economic development in the country, different family structures, different styles of parenting, and a varying degree of exposure to delinquent subculture as well as criminogenic social conditions. The result of my survey (Bao et al. 2002) showed that compared with rural students, urban students were much more likely to live with a single parent and working mothers, experienced parental punishment and negative relations with parents , and perceived problems in neighborhoods and society. These ârisk factorsâ in urban environment are discussed in detail in Chaps. 2 and 3.
In China, as elsewhere in East Asia, juvenile delinquency has generally been less of a problem than in Western Europe or North America, where most of the research on the subject has been done. Even after immigrating to a new country like the USA, Japanese and Chinese youth tend to retain their lower delinquency rates (Toby 1967; Chambliss and Nagasawa 1969). The most plausible explanation for this is socialization into a collectivist culture , where children are taught to strive to uphold the honor of the family and to think of their actionsâ consequences for the groups to which they belong. After the Chinese Revolution of 1949, the traditional Confucian emphasis on respect for elders was supplemented with the Communist ideology of self-sacrifice and self-control for the good of the community. Such philosophies discourage selfish and impulsive behavior, but in the context of rapid social change, their impact has been weakened, leading to a sharp increase in delinquency. This is evident, not only in the Chinese context, but also from Pyleâs study (1969) of Japanese youth during the Meiji era of the late nineteenth century, when the emperor ordered rapid, systematic transformation of Japanese institutions in an effort to catch up with Western technology. Likewise, when the traditional social system collapsed after Japanâs defeat in World War II, crime rates rose, especially among adolescents (Toby 1967) (Source: Bao and Haas 2009: 286). ...