Meet the Chinese Millennial: The Post-90s Generation

A new generation of financially savvy digital natives are reshaping what it means to be Chinese. They are more worldly and expressive than any before them. They are also less political, having grown comfortable with their restraints, but still embody the promise of change. They are better equipped to see that promise realized than any generation before.

“We don’t like compromise,” says Hang Deng, a Tourism Management student at Sichuan University. Born in 1993, he is a member of the jiulinghou or “Post-90” generation. “I mean, we don’t like to follow others’ ideas if we don’t like them. We have our own perspective.”

As China’s economy has risen, so has the status of each progressive generation, with the Post-90s being the most affluent of all. This has led to the stereotype that they are a spoiled lot, and suffer too much from Little Emperor Syndrome. But according to one study, this generation doesn’t just have more money; it is more sophisticated in the way that it spends it: Only 13.3 percent cite brand names as a priority, while 70 percent choose to focus instead on “quality and price.”

Consumerism isn’t the only way in which Post-90s express themselves. They have also been exploring new forms of countercultural expression online. One example of this is the so-called huoxing ren or “Martian” script, a type of writing popularly used by Post-90s that employs homoglyphs, homophones, Roman and Cyrillic alphabets, bopomofo, arcane Chinese characters, and even hiragana and katakana. Critics call one variation “Brain-Damaged Script,” as it’s virtually unintelligible to outsiders. But that is part of the appeal, since it grants users a measure of freedom in what they write.

Shrewd consumer instinct and linguistic creativity haven’t won Post-90s popular favor though. A 2010 article by CNN notes that they are regarded as “lazy, promiscuous, confused, selfish, brain damaged” and that “they have no memory of China’s tumultuous past.” In an excellent article for The Chronicle of Higher Education, “The Millennial Muddle,” Eric Hoover nicely depicts the ageism with which older generations have viewed younger generations since the time of Socrates. That is certainly some of what is happening here, but it’s also true that Post-90s don’t push very hard against the wall of censorship (only about 3 percent of the Chinese population owns a VPN) and thus do suffer from a kind of imposed amnesia.

Last month we remembered the June 4, 1989 democracy protests at Tiananmen Square in which thousands of dauntless Chinese raised a voice in the name of human rights, freedom and democracy. The government considered the protestors “terrorists” and massacred hundreds. Many outside China will remember the stirring image of a single lion-hearted individual standing before a column of tanks, over 19 in fact, armed with nothing but an adamantine will and the shopping bags in his hands. Yet many Chinese will not remember this, especially the Post-90s as they were the first children born in the wake of the massacre.

“My friends and I posted a message on Weibo last year,” says my friend Joanna (that’s her English name), a Post-90 teacher at a private English school. The message was “6/4,” the date of the Tiananmen massacre. “All our accounts were blocked for a month after that. There was no warning or anything. We just tried to sign in the next day and couldn’t. After a month the block was gone.”

Joanna said she didn’t repeat the message again this year. She added that most of her colleagues don’t know the most basic details about Tiananmen, or even that there was a massacre. They have no interest in the likes of Facebook or Twitter either. It’s not that they don’t value Internet freedom, it’s simply a practical choice. It isn’t worth potentially losing one’s job or facing arrest over what amounts to a Facebook post. For others, there’s a simpler explanation for this insouciant shrug in the face of Internet restrictions.

“I had a VPN but I rarely used it,” says one student. “None of my friends are on Facebook and I’m not interested in history or current events, so what’s the point?”

Despite a lack of intellectual purchase on the political world, they are still doing better than their predecessors. The Post-90s’ worldview isn’t blinkered by the toady Communism or rabid anti-Japanese sentiment of older generations. They are more likely to travel or study abroad. They enjoy Hollywood movies and listen to K-Pop hits. They idolize basketball players and CEOs instead of Communist Party leaders or war heroes.

They are, in other words, closer in nature to their Western counterparts than any Chinese have ever been, and perhaps this partly explains their negative reputation. But harsh generational judgments cut both ways, and as the Post-90s come into their own, they are shrugging off the values of those who went before and looking upon them with scorn.

“When they apply to colleges,” says Deng, referring to the Post-80s generation, “even if they get into a really good university, in the end their school and major is decided by their parents. But I make my own decision, because then whatever happens in the end, I’ll be happy.”

Deng explains that the most important thing for Post-90s is the ability to make life choices for themselves. The most immediate obstacle to doing this, he explains, isn’t the government, but parents. He believes the Post-90s will make their greatest contribution to China when they have their own kids and raise them with this attitude of independence in mind.

“What if you make a mistake?” I ask. “What if you choose for yourself, but you make the wrong choice? Won’t you regret that?”

“I won’t have regrets about my choices,” says Deng. “Because at least they were mine.”