The Builders

Equalizers

A common refrain from the Builders is that although they had it rough, at least everyone was in it together. From that vantage point, they have a tendency to view Chinese society today as unfair and unequal because their hard-scrabbled and disciplined life did not get them ahead, even as younger generations have prospered.

It’s a sentiment captured in what has become a “memeified” quote on Chinese social media: “How come the Jack Mas of the world earn more in a day than we do in a lifetime?” It is a gripe that may sound familiar to anyone following the populist undercurrent in American politics.

This is a generation that is more likely to look approvingly at the recent crackdown against big tech. Not only is it difficult for the Builders to comprehend how tech entrepreneurs acquired vast fortunes in such a short time, they tend to be wary of anyone who appears “too big for their britches.”

In short, the Builders want to double down on the “common” part of common prosperity to equalize a society that has short-changed them. That idea of equality is usually centered on redistribution and stripping the exclusive privileges that the wealthy have on healthcare and education access, as well as private land ownership.

Harmonizers

The Builders may romanticize about the halcyon days of being equally poor, but they’ve also long lost their revolutionary zeal. They want more equality in society, but not at the cost of overturning the status quo. They oppose the excesses of capitalism but are just as critical of extreme leftist politics that ruined their teenage years during the Cultural Revolution.

This may make them seem like “centrists,” but it’s more that they opt for stability and security after a lifetime of lurching from extreme to extreme. Perhaps unsurprisingly, balance and harmony are key for The Builders, making their worldview relatively conservative with a small “c.”

For instance, this is the generation that would have ardently championed then-President Hu Jintao’s “Harmonious Society” agenda in the early-2000s as a long overdue course correction towards embracing the social equality ideals of the Mao era.

Worriers

Stability was a scarce commodity in the Builders’ lives—they took their lumps time and time again as China went through the growing pains of transforming an impoverished, agrarian economy into the world’s leading industrial power. That’s why Xi Jinping’s “stability” mantra rings true to so many Builders. For once in their lives, they want to be able to count on society coming through for them, rather than the other way around.

But when the Builders look at today’s China, they see a country that has seemingly abandoned them. This anxiety-ridden outlook isn’t just the byproduct of misplaced PTSD from their Sent- Down experiences—the Builders have legitimate reasons to worry that society will once again run rough-shod over them in retirement.

Weak social safety nets, combined with a demographic that’s increasingly unbalanced as a result of the One-Child Policy, mean that the Builders see themselves aging into an era of less protection and thinner cushions. With pension funds running low and China already raising retirement age requirements, the Builders might have to sacrifice again for the greater good—one last time.

It’s a tough lot to stomach, but worry and uncertainty aren’t new for a generation wizened by hardship. In fact, the latest worry for the Builders is China’s youngest generation, the Wallflowers. As grandparents might, the Builders often bemoan, and may even resent, the inability of the Wallflowers to “eat bitterness” (吃苦) and their tendency to chase fads. What will happen to the nation they sacrificed so much to build in the hands of their “lying flat” successors?

Opportunists

If the Builders are akin to America’s Greatest Generation, the Pioneers resemble America’s Gilded Age generation, linked by a common thread: opportunity.

The latter capitalized on opportunities emerging from the Second Industrial Revolution, creating some of the wealthiest individuals in history in the process (think Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and Carnegie). The former rode the opportunity train that was “Reform and Opening Up,” which gave rise to an unregulated private sector and unprecedented experimentation and innovation.

The Pioneers were thrust into uncharted territory. What was impossible just a few years before gave way to a world of seemingly limitless potential, and anyone with drive and ambition could make something of it. And make something they did—the Pioneers cultivated a private sector that had been nonexistent, creating a legion of successful companies and new institutions along the way.

Even the phasing out of guaranteed public sector jobs for college graduates didn’t faze the Pioneers much. They saw it as a sink or swim moment—a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to determine their own futures.

Workaholics

To get rich may be glorious, but the path to riches isn’t paved with glory. It requires hustle, drive, and a “pick yourself up by the bootstraps” mentality, which the Pioneers had in spades. That is not to say the Builders didn’t work hard, too. The difference is the Builders’ hard work had little impact on individual outcomes.

Not so for the Pioneers. For this generation, an extraordinary work ethic often led to financial rewards, big and small. So everyone put their nose to the grindstone, from migrant workers on the assembly line in Dongguan to young entrepreneurs raising seed funding for their tech startups.

Not everyone reached the pinnacle of success, but that wasn’t for the lack of effort. Indeed, it was the Pioneers who inculcated China’s “996” work culture of 9:00am to 9:00pm, six days a week. Although 996 has lost its luster, this hard grind mentality is hardly controversial among a generation that lived through an era where six-day work weeks were the norm.

In fact, prominent Pioneers have vehemently defended the spirit, if not the letter, of 996. Alibaba’s Jack Ma has said workers should consider 996 “a huge blessing” and the path to “achieving [success],” while JD.com founder Richard Liu has quipped that 996 opponents are “slackers.”

Rebels

At their core, the Pioneers are rebels—not in the militaristic sense but in terms of their willingness to contest the status quo. The Pioneers didn’t just create new businesses and products, but challenged the foundation upon which Maoist China was built.

It helped that they had a leader in Deng who gave the Pioneers ample runway to break down the old and usher in the new. One of Deng’s favorite sayings was “if you open the window for fresh air, you have to expect some flies to blow in,” tacitly acknowledging that tolerance for antagonism towards existing institutions was necessary for progress.

The Pioneers’ boundary-bending ways did not always end well. Pushing the envelope in the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations led to drastic and demonstrable costs. But even the crackdown didn’t entirely stifle that rebellious streak in the Pioneers, who went on to disrupt industries and create fortunes.

It’s the first generation in modern China to have created its own wealth. Even though they may be more chastened today, the Pioneers, surrounded on either side by more conformist generations, remain China’s only true iconoclastic and irreverent generation.

Materialists

As China’s market matured, the Globalists were supposed to be the “domestic consumption engine” over which global companies salivated. By the time they reached adulthood in the 2000s, the Globalists had unprecedented access to goods and services from anywhere in the world.

This generation is defined more by what they consumed and the brands they wore than the companies they built. Indeed, the Globalists are consumers at heart, combining with the Wallflowers generation to account for over 70% of domestic consumption in 2021.

Moreover, as the first true “one-child” generation, the Globalists had attention lavished upon them from their parents to support their consumption—from education to housing. With singular resources at their disposal, it’s no surprise the Globalists have continued to embrace the “买买买” (“buy, buy, buy”) mindset into adulthood.

This is the generation whose spending turned Singles’ Day into the largest single-day shopping spree in the world, topping out at over $140 billion in sales in 2021. The Globalists are also the ones most likely to be preoccupied with luxury brands, a practical impossibility for the Builders.

Embracers

The Globalists integrated with the outside world like no other generation. It might be most obvious in their propensity for American fast-food chains and European luxury brands, but their acceptance of the global community runs much deeper than simply buying Gucci bags.

Take education. Just 40,000 Chinese were studying abroad when the oldest Globalists turned 21. That number grew exponentially over the next decade and broke 700,000 in 2019. The Globalists didn’t just study abroad, they also stayed abroad: in 2001, only 14% of Chinese studying abroad returned to China.

That flow of people had much to do with the stable environment that anchored global affairs: namely four decades of US-China détente. The oldest members of this generation were born in the year of normalization between the two countries, which shaped their views of the West and made the United States in particular a coveted destination.

So this generation gleefully greeted China’s WTO entry in 2001, optimistic about cooperation with the West and believing China could become a global power without ruffling any feathers. But it wasn’t just about trade—it was a period where Globalist-led Chinese companies were aiming to expand beyond the domestic market.

It is perhaps no coincidence that the first Chinese tech company to truly thrive in Western markets was not Pioneer-founded Tencent or Alibaba but ByteDance, whose Globalist founder made TikTok an international sensation.

Pragmatists

With their global mindset and relative support for Western-style political norms, it might seem counterintuitive that the Globalists don’t manifest as political activists very often. Both the Builders (1976) and Pioneers (1989) had generation-defining protests. The Globalists, in contrast, have been relatively meek.

That’s because the Globalists’ individualistic streak is leavened by an equally powerful desire to avoid upsetting the status quo. As major beneficiaries of the existing system that the Builders and Pioneers built, it would be counter to their self-interest to undermine the very system that’s allowed them to prosper.

If personal success and achievements can be had without rocking the boat, the pragmatic Globalists may wonder why one would bother. This mindset could be a result of the Globalists’ upbringing as only children, where their protective parents who bore witness to an era fraught with social and political instability wanted them to avoid similar outcomes and instead focus on their careers.

This is not to say Globalists don’t hold strong views, and likely wish China could engage in further political reforms. But the Globalists seem less interested in outright activism, preferring to focus on their personal business at hand. Even as Globalists will readily admit China’s flaws, they tend to be clear-headed about working within the system to achieve gradual change.

Glocalists

The Wallflowers are digital natives, having known nothing else other than a world in which information technology and free trade have stitched together the global economy. In fact, they are even more pro-market in orientation than the Globalists but share similar, paternalistic political leanings with the Builders.

While it also accepts globalization as the default reality, this generation is selective about its embrace of globalism. It is less enamored with foreign products and culture, viewing “Made in China” with more pride and adoration. It is not so much that the Wallflowers spurn foreign products, they are simply less envious of them relative to previous generations.

They don’t desire any regression from China’s global integration, but they increasingly want to see China offering its own versions of products, culture, and ideas to the global commons. They want to see “Chineseness” indigenized into those products and brands, which means that localization of foreign brands will be crucial to tap the consumption potential of this generation.

This localization can already be seen on the menus of Chinese KFCs that include fried dough and sticky rice noodles. KFC isn’t the only one—Starbucks has changed its entire beverage design to incorporate Chinese cultural elements and compete in the fast-growing tea market currently dominated by Chinese domestic brands like Hey Tea.

Sinophiles

The tendency to attribute this nativist attitude among China’s youngest generation to the success of patriotic education that began in the 1990s is understandable. But to cast the Wallflowers as “brainwashed knee-jerk nationalists” is overly simplistic.

While there’s no denying the education system had an impact on the Wallflowers’ ideology, their patriotism is more pro-China than it is specifically anti-foreign. That distinction is important.

These young “Sinophiles” have more access to and experience in the world beyond China than any previous generation. Their parents still want them to get an education in Western countries, with some of them starting as early as high school.

But that deep and regular interaction with the West has not been an unalloyed good in terms of shaping perceptions and views. For one, the longer time they’ve spent in the United States or other countries, the more they recognize the deficiencies and warts of foreign systems.

These experiences have “normalized” America not as some idyllic paradise that previous generations had thought, but just a large and messy country with a litany of its own problems. They have a better sense of the “balance sheet” of American strengths and weaknesses, particularly in contrast to their own country.

As the tangible quality of life aspects become more equalized between top tier cities in China and America, the contrast naturally becomes focused on the intangibles of values, culture, and the general environment in which you want to live your life.

The Wallflower generation is the most cognizant of the imperfections of Western countries, even as they acknowledge the shortcomings of China itself. But given the choice between living in two imperfect countries, it is only natural to opt for the more familiar.

Assimilators

Part of what determines the Wallflowers’ choice set is the fact that they tend to be more risk averse. The audacity and irreverence of the Pioneer generation is replaced by a general timidity in the face of insecurity.

The Wallflowers aren’t particularly fond of rocking the boat, nor are they interested in grinding it out like entrepreneurs of previous generations. Not to say there aren’t intrepid entrepreneurs among this generation, but the Wallflower-led “lying flat” movement underscores their stark contrast with the gung-ho, 996 mentality of the Pioneers.

This may be why Xi Jinping has publicly chided this generation, warning that today’s youth need to experience hardship and avoid lying down. Despite Xi’s laments, however, the Wallflowers seem to be standing behind him more than previous generations.

A vocal minority of this generation, called 小粉红 (literally “little pinks”), has regularly praised the government’s heavy-handed approach to handling Covid-19 and eagerly defended Beijing’s response to domestic and international crises.

But it’s not simply this small contingent. There is a sizable “pro-China” element among the Wallflowers generation, which further reinforces that it is a walking contradiction. On the one hand, this generation’s college graduates faced a brutal 26.3% unemployment rate in 2020. On the other, they still would rather return home from abroad in search of cushy public sector jobs.

In short, there seems to be an increasing disconnect between the Wallflowers’ anxiety over their own individual station in Chinese society and their impassioned defense of China as a powerful nation. Whether that contradiction gets resolved as the youngest members mature into their careers and adulthood, realizing the wall has fallen around them, remains to be seen.