中国"小皇帝"成长的烦恼

　　China's youth can get a bad press. In most accounts, they are the "Little Emperors" or the "Me Generation", the spoilt and apolitical offspring of one-child families who are interested in fast cars, video games and designer goods but little else. At the main Shanghai store of Louis Vuitton there is a queue to get in at weekends – young women wait patiently in the rope line, as if they were trying to get into the hottest new LA club。

　　Yet the Me Generation is beginning to show its teeth. Simmering discontent about soaring house prices and the recent wave of strikes at car plants and other factories both speak of the rising and sometimes frustrated expectations of younger Chinese, who want more from their lives than their parents could dream of. It is a phenomenon that could have all sorts of consequences for China's future。

　　There are lots of good explanations for the strikes of the past two months, including low pay and a demographic shift that is reducing the number of young people entering the workforce. But there is also a generational shift at play. Chinese often talk about their capacity to chi ku, or "eat bitterness", which helps explain their resilience amid the chaos and privations of the past century. But the generation born in the 1980s and 1990s has grown up among much wider prosperity, even in poor parts of the countryside。

　　Twenty years ago, the main goal of many migrant workers in city factories was to send money home to struggling village families. Now they see the factory as part of a personal project, a first step towards an urban life. Internet access has made them worldlier and since a labor law passed in 2008 they have a stronger sense of their rights。

　　The economist Andy Xie said, "Today's young adults and their parents may as well be from different centuries. They want to settle down in big cities and have interesting, well-paying jobs – just like their counterparts in other countries."

　　For the tens of millions of young Chinese graduates, buying a flat is a central part of their plan to live a modern, middle-class life. Young Chinese men feel the social pressure the most。

　　The same generational forces have been behind the discontent over the cost of housing. There have been no mass demonstrations about property prices but the tensions are real enough。

　　It is the young who are hit most by rising prices. Many young Chinese now feel priced out. Beijing and other cities have thousands of what Chinese media call the "ant tribe", young graduates who live in precarious housing on the outskirts as they try to land their first job。

　　On the recent occasions when young Chinese have expressed strong political opinions, nationalism has been the dominant tone. Yet it is not a contradiction for young people to be more patriotic, but also more demanding and individualistic. Modernization has unleashed powerful forces – pride and confidence in China's achievements but also high expectations about the life that can be lived. The signs of restlessness among young Chinese make for a less predictable political future。