"Don't think they're all mean": 5 faces of China's younger generation
Author: Fu Yu Guiyong, Department of Sociology, Fudan University
Source: Culture Magazine, April 2022; Culture Horizon
WeChat platform editor: Zhou Yue
【Introduction】
"I don't do the work of the weekend!" The "declaration" of a college student's job search has made many people marvel at the employment concept of the new generation of young people. How do we view the different choices of contemporary youth for their personal destiny and path? What does this mean for the state and society?
This article defines this generation of young people as the "abundance generation", in which China experienced rapid economic growth during their formative years, and after they grew up, they encountered an "asset society", in which the difference in the return on assets and labor services and the amount of assets owned are more decisive than the quality of job performance, which determines personal opportunities. The abundant material life has made this generation of young people show distinct individual characteristics and spiritual pursuits on the basis of materials; but the "bourgeois society" continues to exacerbate social differentiation, and the latecomers among them have a heavy sense of powerlessness and bottom- Affected by this
Contemporary Chinese youth show five characteristics in terms of social mentality and action orientation: using "lying flat" to fight power, longing for "35-year-old financial freedom", calling for a new economic order, integrating into a powerful state, and surviving in circles. The author reminds, in understanding
On the basis of these unique social mentalities and cognitive models, it is also necessary to see the new forms of conflict that may be derived from them, and clearly understand and properly respond to a series of challenges at the socio-cultural level.
This article was originally published in the April 2022 issue of Culture, originally titled "When the Abundant Generation Encounters the Asset Society: Interpreting the Social Mentality of Contemporary Youth".
It only represents the views of the author and is for the reference of all the kings.
The "post-90s" are gradually becoming the backbone of our society, and their social mentality has also largely demonstrated the evolution and change of the concept of the times. In the process of long-term follow-up study of the social mentality of this group, we have observed a series of potential or emerging conflicts, including dissatisfaction with the established pattern of economic interest distribution (e.g., "lying flatness"), rebellion against capital and work (e.g., "996.ICU"), and disapproval of mainstream family order and lifestyle (e.g., "parents are a scourge", "no love, no marriage, no children"), and conflicts between subcultural communities and pan-ideologies (e.g., rice circles, feminism, LGBTQ, etc.). Completely different from the traditional forms of conflict that arise in the context of specific social structures and systems, with the distribution of real economic benefits as the core demand, and interest disputes, rights protection, and protests as the main forms of expression, behind these new conflicts are the unique concepts and cognitive models of young people. Therefore, the widespread controversies of public opinion are not insignificant "disputes of will", on the contrary, they may become a source of another form of social conflict, and even become a dynamic mechanism to influence the direction of social consensus. It is necessary for us to stand at the height of macro-economic and social development and understand the characteristics of the social mentality of contemporary youth groups and their consequences.
(In addition to the requirement of double rest, young people would rather stay unemployed than seek perfection, and salary and working hours, corporate culture, and even travel may become decisive factors in choosing a job))
Specific to the level of social mentality, the contemporary youth group presents a lot of intriguing paradoxes: they are not only an open-minded, diverse and inclusive generation, willing to accept those controversial concepts, behaviors and groups, but also a generation that cannot tolerate sand in their eyes, and "one-click reporting" and "human flesh search" have appeared frequently. They are highly identified with and full of confidence in the development path of the country and the nation, but they are confused and anxious about the future of their personal destiny. They embrace materialism and yearn for financial freedom, but they sneer at the wealth elite and ridicule them to the extreme. On the one hand, they are eager to fall in love and get married, and live the ideal "two people, three meals a day and four seasons" of a good life, but on the other hand, they are too lazy to fall in love and get married, and they just want to raise a cat and spend a "lying flat" weekend with themselves. They are real-life "social phobia sufferers" who spend the night reveling in the online world. These paradoxes seem to be opposites, but behind them point to the common background of the times, and it is the core concepts shaped by the latter that determine the social mentality characteristics and social action orientation of young people, and some of them become potential problems that May be encountered in China's economic and social development.
Based on this, we try to come up with an analytical framework. This article argues that the core key to understanding the social mentality of the young generation is related to the background of the times: the young generation grew up in the period of rapid Economic growth in China, which can be called the "abundant generation"; after they grow up, they encounter the "asset society" in which the importance of assets is gradually improved relative to the performance of the labor market. The abundance generation has shaped the individual characteristics of the younger generation and the spiritual pursuit on the basis of materials, and the asset society has shaped the sense of powerlessness and the bottom of this generation, and the combined effect of these core concepts has led to a series of social mentality characteristics, including the use of lying flat against power, the desire for "35-year-old financial freedom", calling for a new economic order, integrating into a strong state, and presenting a unique state of "circled survival" of contemporary youth groups.
▍A rich generation growing up under the high-speed economic growth
The Abundance Generation not only generally possessed more abundant and abundant material conditions, but also witnessed the rapid growth of China's economy since the new millennium in its growth stage. The narrative of "prosperity" and "growth", represented by the process of high-quality urbanization, popularization of higher education, and popularization of the Internet, and the collective memory represented by major historical events such as the successful hosting of the Beijing Olympic Games, China's economic aggregate leaping to the second place in the world, and the fight against the new crown pneumonia epidemic, constitute the two logical main lines shaping the abundant generation.
"Abundance" is reflected not only in terms of material conditions, but also in social mobility such as education, work, and settlement. More importantly, in the first 15 years of the new century, China's GDP has always maintained a rapid growth rate of more than 7% per year, and the resonance of the times and generations has formed between the high spirit of the "post-90s" personal life course and the vigorous development of the country's future. If the collective memory of the "post-50s" and "post-60s" breathing with the country is based on the experience of "scarcity" of the blue wisps of the yanlu road and the qishan forest, then the generational experience of the "post-90s" and the common destiny of the nation is contained in the "abundance" vision of young China and the future.
Economic growth has led to two outcomes at the conceptual level of contemporary youth groups, namely, individualization and spiritual pursuit on a material basis.
Individuation is manifested as the pursuit of personal value realization, guided by personal interests, values and concepts. In the era of market economy, the state no longer morally assumes the responsibility of ensuring the equal life opportunities for all people, but is the coordinator of the market economic order, and the individual is pushed to the stage of the times as the main body of the market economy. When economic individualism became a zeitgeist, younger generations increasingly took personal interests and values as the starting point for thinking about economic action. At the same time, the abundant material foundation has created conditions for the "post-90s" to pursue self and individuality on top of food and clothing, and "I" and "personality" as the origin of the spiritual coordinates of this generation have been enlarged and extended as never before. Today's younger generation is not only a generation that "lives for itself", but also a generation that understands and understands the world from individual experience.
The spiritual pursuit on the basis of material means a desire for a comfortable, free, fulfilling state of life and life experience, while presupposing relatively favorable material conditions and manifesting at the conceptual level as both valuing and despising matter. The narrative with prosperity and growth as the main theme shapes the optimistic myth of the young generation about material life, and at the conceptual level, it shapes two orientations with hidden contradictions and conflicts: on the one hand, they have the courage to aspire to an ideal lifestyle that transcends material wealth, and agree that "wealth is only a by-product of the pursuit of dreams and self-realization"; on the other hand, this optimistic imagination of material foundations, once hit hard by reality, will in turn fundamentally shake their confidence and expectations about personal development.
▍ "Devolution" of asset society and latecomers
With the deepening of economic monetization, the status of finance in the economic system has been rising. The process of financialization of the world economic system has not only greatly changed the national governance model and economic organizational structure, but also profoundly changed the logic of wealth distribution and social differentiation.
Assets play an increasingly important role in a financialized economic system. Factors and resources that were once unable (or should not be) marketized and monetized (e.g., housing, entrepreneurial activities, public infrastructure) were wrapped up in the wave of financialization and became various forms of computable and tradable financial assets that were incorporated into the process of capital turnover and circulation. The logic of self-proliferation and compound interest growth of capital thus dominates, and asset prices are accompanied by deepening financialization, showing an upward trend that far exceeds the economic growth rate.
Globally, assets account for an increasing proportion of national wealth, and the wealth gap between groups with different initial asset holdings has widened rapidly, and the phenomenon of "asset stratification" has emerged. Those who acquire assets in non-market forms or buy assets at lower prices in the early stages of financialization become the "upstart class" and continue to leverage larger assets at a lower cost in the process of financialization. Thus, a hierarchical system with the financial market as the hub and the asset abundance as the mechanism, superimposed on the existing hierarchical system with the labor market as the hub and education, occupation and income as the mechanism, constitutes the basic logic of our understanding of the asset society and the consequences of its concepts.
The full rise of the financialized asset society has also shaped the core concepts of both dimensions.
First, the sense of powerlessness of the latecomers to the bourgeois society. Financialization exacerbates the scissors gap between labor-asset returns, and the compound interest growth and self-proliferation of assets further widen the scissors gap; while the transfer of assets led by pre-estivism makes the intergenerational cumulative disadvantage continue to enlarge, and intergenerational reproduction is achieved in a stable and non-legal challenge. Asset prices and the speed of appreciation have replaced elite education and career access as the basis for social closure, hoping that the "small town makers" who hope to "carp leaping dragon gate" will lose in front of the difficult asset gap, "big money depends on life, small money depends on earning" has become the truest portrayal of this sense of powerlessness.
Second, the sense of the bottom of the asset society latecomers. The hierarchical system with financial markets as the hub and the asset abundance as the social closure mechanism makes assets a key factor in determining life opportunities, which means that the career advancements and income growth obtained by the younger generation through hard work in the labor market can only be converted into financial assets, which may lead to an improvement in the quality of life and psychological state. However, due to the existence of scissors, income growth often "can't keep up with the speed of house price rise", and eventually becomes "working for the landlord", which leads to the creation of a sense of the bottom. This sense of the bottom layer largely explains the popularity of Internet buzzwords such as "hit workers" and "inner volume", and also explains why even highly educated and high-income groups show a lower subjective socio-economic status (such as self-deprecating "financial migrant workers" and "code farmers").
▍When the Abundance Generation Encounters an Asset Society: The Characteristics of the Social Mentality of Young People
The superposition of the abundance generation and the bourgeois society has led to a series of social mentality characteristics, which are embodied in the use of "lying flat" to fight against power, the desire for "35-year-old financial freedom", the call for a new economic order, and the integration into a strong state.
(1) Use "lying flat" against power
Why do young people "lie flat"? Putting aside value judgments, returning to the background of the times and its core concepts that shaped the social mentality of young people, the author believes that the following two issues must be paid attention to:
First, the individualized abundance of generations aspires to be freed from the shackles of external responsibilities on the individual. This bondage may come from the ethical order of the traditional family (e.g., "no filial piety has three, no posterity is greater"), may come from the work ethics of the collectivist era (e.g., "hard work" and "giving up a small family for everyone"), may come from the corporate culture of the workplace (e.g., "996 is a big blessing newspaper"), or it may come from the stereotypes of public opinion (e.g., "leftover women"). In the view of the younger generation, since only "I am responsible for my own life" and other social actors do not bear the consequences of their own life choices at the level of moral or practical interests, only "I" are qualified to determine the individual's way of life, and only "I" interests, values and ideas need to be considered.
As a result, social behaviors that once appealed to value are stripped away into rational calculations at the level of individual welfare. Once proven to be unsilient to the improvement of individual welfare, young people naturally choose to resist this external responsibility and role expectation. In our research, "feeling troublesome" and "worrying about the decline in quality of life" have become the main reasons why many young people choose to "lie flat" on marriage and love issues; even young people who are already married will choose to postpone childbearing or even "Dink" because "childbirth affects career development" and "raising children is too expensive".
Second, young people who are unable to meet the expectations of material conditions try to jump out of the structural dilemma of the asset society. When young people who are looking forward to "graduating for ten years and earning an annual salary of one million" have suffered realistic "beatings" (can't afford to buy a house, can't afford to get married, can't afford to have children), a strong gap has spawned a confused anxiety about the future of their personal destiny. Young people who are unable to acquire assets through intergenerational transfers are either fighting for excess pay in the labor market by overtime in exchange for the possibility of acquiring assets, or they are forced to suffer the scissors difference in the rate of return on labor-capital in the face of accelerating asset prices. Although the actor seems to be "free choice", no matter how he chooses, it is difficult to break free from the structural shackles of power and become a person "trapped in the system".
In the face of the structural dilemma of individual inability to surpass, "lying flat" has become an effective strategy to bridge the psychological gap and get rid of the real dilemma - "once the 'lying flat' is decided, what else can be 'rolled', go to work to 'touch the fish', and get off work at the point of departure." From this point of view, "lying flat" also has a sense of confrontation with power.
When we understand the background and dynamic mechanism of the times behind the phenomenon of "lying flat", it is not difficult to infer that blindly accusing the negative impact of "lying flat" on the whole society may be counterproductive, making young people who are eager to get rid of constraints and difficulties more resistant. Only by reshaping the consensus of social values and breaking the dilemma of asset society can it be possible for the younger generation to get rid of the expectation of "lying flat" and returning to mainstream values.
(ii) Desire for "35-year-old financial freedom"
When personal interest and self-worth override the material needs of survival, the younger generation shows a post-materialistic tendency, has the courage and confidence to stop taking material conditions as the goal of life, and instead pursues "poetry and distance" beyond the material level. However, everything is preconditioned by a material basis. As a means of attaining "poetry and distance", whether to work or not or what kind of work to do is essentially based on the choice of return on investment. Thus, in contrast to post-materialism when it comes to the meaning of life, younger generations show a clear materialistic tendency when choosing jobs. Our survey data shows that even in the face of a severe employment situation, more than half of college students still refuse to compromise on "salary and treatment", which is much higher than the industry, position, place of work, nature of the enterprise and so on. However, the characteristics of the era of asset society determine the scissor difference between labor and capital returns. Faced with an asset divide that cannot be crossed, work/struggle is no longer a means of self-actualization, but rather an obstacle.
Along the above logic, it is not difficult to understand why among the younger generation who believe that "choice is more important than effort", the traditional work ethic of advocating struggle is declining; why more and more young people frequently jump jobs or even "naked words" and are not willing to "grow with enterprises". When younger generations have more diverse opportunities to "make money" than the previous generation and higher expectations of material conditions, working hard and delaying satisfaction become an option with a low rate of return.
The "35-year-old crisis" has set a clear time node for anxious young people: if "financial freedom" is not achieved before the age of 35, and there are assets as a material foundation, then spiritual pursuits (freedom, comfort, sense of achievement) are also in jeopardy. When the rapid rise in asset prices shakes or even breaks the material basis that the younger generation expects, "beating a bicycle into a motorcycle" is no longer a joke, but has become a "means of asset allocation".
Among them, the most prominent example is the speculation of encrypted digital currencies represented by Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. Young people who are addicted to "speculating in coins" are not lacking in financial common sense or unaware of the risks involved, but that conventional wealth accumulation methods can no longer meet their desire to cross the asset gap. Similarly, according to data released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, more than 60% of the victims of telecommunications fraud are "post-90s", breaking the stereotype that "only the elderly will be deceived". The reason is that the material foundation on which the abundance generation relies to support spiritual pursuits and the sense of powerlessness shaped by the asset society jointly determine the young generation's desire for "35-year-old financial freedom", which allows the "post-90s" to seek the rapid accumulation of material wealth through unconventional means while "lying flat".
(3) Calling for a new economic order
The narrative of prosperity and growth as the main theme shaped the optimistic myth of the abundance generation about material life. However, once this optimistic imagination is hit relentlessly by the bourgeois society, it will in turn fundamentally shake the confidence and expectations of personal development. Whether it is the "heart-wrenching problems" on "Zhihu" that often exceed tens of millions of views (such as "how desperate do housing prices make contemporary youth"), or the more than 100,000 "Douban" netizens who laugh at themselves for "985 waste", they are the doubts and wanderings after the bankruptcy of this optimistic myth. Thus, the admiration (e.g., "optimistic, confident, pursuing generation") and criticism (e.g., "unable to withstand setbacks, always complaining") are nothing more than the consequences of the two-sided social mentality of the abundant generation resulting from the core concept of "spiritual pursuit on the basis of material foundations".
When assets become a key factor in determining life opportunities, the young generation who struggle hard but still struggle to get rid of the sense of the bottom inevitably attribute their personal life situation to structures and institutions that transcend the individual level. This attribution mechanism echoes their experience of daily life and ultimately points to abstract or even false social opposites, such as intergenerational ("house prices are the exploitation of young people by middle-aged people"), or capital ("capital uses us to create a better world, but we are expelled"), or more abstract markets ("free market is the freedom to hype house prices"), or even to point to the state in extreme cases.
According to our tracking of multiple social media platforms, the attitude of the younger generation towards capital (including the "996 work system", "big and small weeks", "fresh graduate salaries upside down" and "options instead of wages" as a embodied operation strategy, and the super-rich group that obtains excess returns through the capital market) has undergone subversive changes in the past two or three years, from the past worship of the super-rich group, the recognition of overtime work in exchange for excess compensation, to the questioning and rebellion of capital and its operation strategy - the underlying sense of the asset society is accompanied by "the bottom layer of the asset society" News events such as "unemployment at the age of 35" and "sudden death of 'post-90s' employees" became more and more real and intense, until the term "hit workers" became popular on the Internet in 2020. So that the "post-90s" who have never really experienced the era of planned economy have begun to miss the 80s when "graduation distribution and unit housing" were "distributed. "Taking the exam for the public" (that is, taking the civil service exam) has once again become a popular choice for careers. Younger generations are calling for a new economic order that will free them from the sense of understory and achieve spiritual pursuits.
Catalyzed by specific public opinion hotspots, the general dissatisfaction of young people with capital may be transformed into collective resistance. In March 2019, a project called "996.ICU" (i.e. "Work 996, Sick ICU") was born on GitHub, an open source hosting platform, which aims to expose businesses that implement the "996 work system". In just two weeks, more than 200,000 people responded to the project and issued an "Anti-996-License" that prohibits companies on the "996 Company List" from using their own contributed open source code. Since then, the initiators have also created the "955.WLB" project, which rates more than 1300 companies, encourages "voting with their feet", and refuses to join the "996 company list".
It should be pointed out that the "996 work system" is only one of the many manifestations of deep contradictions, and the root cause is still the conflict between the material basis on which the abundant generation relies to realize spiritual pursuits and the sense of the bottom of the asset society's latecomers. After internet companies no longer implement the "996 working system", those young people who have lost excess income have not obtained the coveted "freedom, comfort, and sense of achievement", and the reflection and doubt of the existing economic order will still be hidden in the hearts of the young generation.
(iv) Integration into a strong state
Many media reports and institutional studies have pointed out that the "post-90s" generation is a generation of high patriotic sentiment. Most of the sources of this emotion are attributed to rich living conditions, high-level education, extensive media propaganda, etc., ignoring the ideological concepts and social mentality characteristics of this generation. This paper argues that the individualized characteristics of the Abundance generation determine that the patriotic feelings of the "post-90s" have their own unique generation mechanism, and the sense of the bottom caused by the asset society makes them have ardent expectations for a strong country.
On the one hand, the younger generation sincerely believes that China's political and economic achievements prove the superiority of the Chinese path, and this recognition comes not from external propaganda, but from daily life experience. When this value judgment derived from life experience is questioned externally, younger generations tend to consciously look for cases from personal life experience to refute and criticize. Only under this logic can we understand why young people are happy to be called "self-made five". On the other hand, the abundance generation, eager to break free from the shackles, no longer regards the family or the collective as the source of meaning in life, but needs to find a more abstract and grand object to obtain a sense of meaning, against the infernity of value and the emptiness of meaning caused by individuation. The love of the state allows the younger generation to integrate the trivial, vulgar practices of daily life into the grand community without the need for additional constraints. As a result, retweeting, liking, and commenting on patriotic-related content no longer expresses only personal feelings, but also a sense of community.
At the same time, the sense of understory caused by the asset society makes the younger generation eager to find an external force that is strong enough to break the logic that assets determine life opportunities. Attribution of the sense of the bottom often points to the super-rich, capital, and even the market, while the hope of a new economic order is pinned on the state. Younger generations aspire to integrate into powerful states to confront abstract and even fictional social antagonisms.
It should be pointed out, however, that whether it is an epistemology derived from the experience of individual life, or a source of meaning that escapes trivialities and banalities, or an external force that expects to transcend the sense of the underclass, it is premised on the strength of the community. This means that when the national economic development is facing downside risks, it may trigger a series of faith crises. Similarly, if the state proves unable to tame "evil" capital, or is considered part of the structural forces of an asset society, the object of questioning and challenge is equally likely to be directed at the state. Therefore, we should calmly and objectively look at the current patriotic enthusiasm of the young generation and the expectations of the country in terms of performance and morality behind this phenomenon.
▍ Circled Survival: The Subculture and Pan-Ideology of Young People
For the Abundance Generation, individualization amplifies and confirms the value and significance of "me", and subcultural communities based on personal interests and values (e.g., rice circles, gender issues/LGBTQ, constellations, animal protection, etc.) play an increasingly important role in the socialization of young people. These cyberspace-rooted communities provide a way for young generations struggling with the powerlessness of the asset society to explain reality, transcend the possibilities of the bottom, and the spiritual pursuit of self-fulfillment is embodied as a "big god" recognized by a particular community. We call this state "circle survival."
Although there are occasional "out of the circle" incidents, in general, the circle is mostly "non-ideological", that is, relatively niche, no conflict with mainstream values, and no clear political demands. However, this does not mean that such communities do not have the ability to frame and organize mobilization. On the contrary, because it has a set of self-contained theories and logics (such as gender issues/LGBTQ), or has developed a specific set of behavior patterns and value judgment criteria (such as rice circles) in the process of daily practice, members can reach an agreement at the level of value and behavior, that is, internal solidarity and external exclusion, which can both frame specific issues and become potential mobilization and organizational channels. Therefore, it has a "pan-ideological" character.
Taking gender issues as an example, a small number of extreme gender issue communities have re-framed social issues such as the "three-child" policy and the "seven-child" gender ratio (such as "letting go of the three-child system so that women can't find jobs"), leading public discussion to the contradictions and confrontations between different genders and different groups. This kind of public opinion tearing and antagonism, far from making members reflect on their views and cognitive frameworks, strengthens their psychological identification with internal unity and external exclusion.
Further, pan-ideological characteristics are particularly prominent when the same social issue or public opinion hotspot is framed and mobilized within different communities to point to opposite value propositions or action orientations. For example, in the widely influential "227 Incident", the "Rice Circle" community used the framework of "maintaining public order and good customs" to report a large number of related works, while the "Yumei" community used the framework of "creative freedom" and "boycotting inferior artists" to cause multiple brands to announce the termination of contracts with the artist. In this case, both the "rice circle" community and the "Tanmei" community have borrowed mainstream discourse to complete the framework of their own value propositions, and have also achieved large-scale organizational mobilization within the community, and strengthened the identity and boundaries of the community in the process of social performance.
From this point of view, both the rice circle and the gender issue community have different degrees of new religious nature. This new religious nature is reflected both in the construction of social reality and the shaping of psychological identity, as well as in the organization and mobilization of collective action. In the context of the stratified survival of contemporary youth groups and the rise of pan-ideological communities, it is not excluded that specific issues show a trend of extremism and populism in the process of framework construction and evolution, nor does it rule out the possibility of multiple issues overlapping to form large-scale organizational mobilization.
▍ Conclusion
This article argues that the abundance generation and the bourgeois society constitute two epochal contexts for our understanding of the core concepts of contemporary youth groups. The former shapes the individualization characterized by self-commitment of life opportunities and self-value amplification, and pursues freedom, comfort and sense of achievement beyond food and clothing; the latter determines personal life opportunities to a greater extent due to the difference in the rate of return on assets and labor services and the fact that the number of assets is better or worse than the performance of the labor market, resulting in a sense of powerlessness and bottom layer of the latecomers.
The above core ideas lead to a series of social psychological consequences: First, the use of "lying flat" against power. The desire to be freed from external responsibilities and the inability to achieve expectations of material conditions has led younger generations to resist mainstream expectations in terms of marriage and work. Second, the desire for "35-year-old financial freedom." The material basis underpinning spiritual pursuits cannot be satisfied through labor/career income, the work ethic of advocating struggle is declining, and high-risk speculation is generally accepted. Third, call for a new economic order. Personal life opportunities are determined by assets, difficult to achieve through the labor market, spiritual pursuits are frustrated, and young generations are eager to break the existing economic order. Fourth, integration into strong nations. Patriotism, derived from individual experience, has allowed individualized young generations to find a possible path out of the barrenness of meaning and beyond the sense of the underclass. Fifth, circle survival. Circles based on individual values and interests provide a source of spiritual satisfaction and value for the younger generation, as well as a mobilization framework and organizational capacity for social action.
The abundance generation and the bourgeois society have shaped the unique social mentality and cognitive model of contemporary youth groups, and may produce new forms of conflict with the young generation entering the society. Among them, some negative factors, if further fermented under certain circumstances, may constitute potential risks to China's economic and social development. The author believes that at least the following three aspects of the problem are worth noting:
First, if individual types of social mentality are further polarized, it is not excluded that within a certain range, it will cause doubts about the current order, and even lead to ideological risks.
Under the role of the framework ability of pan-ideology and the organizational mobilization ability of relevant communities, the discussion of specific public issues may be combined with those abstract and fictional social opposites with broad mobilization ability, simplifying the public policy process into a resource competition between different generations and different groups, inducing populist sentiment, squeezing decision-making space, and not excluding tensions between mainstream ideologies in specific periods and specific issues (especially capital, gender, marriage and childbearing issues). The finger of contention may be directed at the current system.
Second, if individual types of social mentality are too spread, it may lead to a decline in capital dividends and insufficient cultivation of human capital, affecting economic development.
The rapid rise in asset prices and excessive advocacy of aggressive investment strategies may exacerbate the low savings rate and high debt ratio of the younger generation, further generate structural financial risks, and bring hidden dangers to the smooth operation of the Chinese economy. Human capital can be challenged in terms of quantity, quality and work ethics. Quantitatively, the desire to "lie flat" inhibits the willingness of the younger generation to have children; in terms of quality, the asset gap that is difficult to cross adds a new footnote to the "uselessness of reading"; in terms of work ethics, the struggle to bear both the blame of the "inner volume" and the reality of "poor busyness".
Third, the polarization of specific social mentalities may lead to conflicting values and tearing consensus, and the development of new concepts of marriage and childbearing and the prevalence of consumerism may cause a series of challenges at the socio-cultural level.
Individualized ideas dissolve traditional values of marriage and childbearing and portray specific individual choices as the "right to lie flat" (e.g., sexual minorities, non-marriageism) that are catalyzed and disseminated by pan-ideological communities among younger generations. The combination of consumerism and Internet finance provides a possible outlet for material desires that cannot be satisfied by professional income, and speculative behaviors such as "speculating in coins", "flipping shoes", "speculating in blind boxes" and "speculating in NFTs" are shaped into investment strategies to achieve "financial freedom". Consumerism echoes the wealth anxieties of younger generations on a psychosocial level, leading to greater participation.
*Disclaimer: This article only represents the personal views of the author and does not represent the position of this official account
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