1 00:00:13,879 --> 00:00:19,200 Thank you very much Professor Robyn McNeal for the invitation and thanks to 2 00:00:19,200 --> 00:00:25,020 everyone here for coming and giving me this opportunity to share my recent 3 00:00:25,020 --> 00:00:31,140 research with you and today's topic is a hardly new, hardly original. Basically 4 00:00:31,140 --> 00:00:37,199 I'm telling you, trying to tell you that family is important, that family life is 5 00:00:37,199 --> 00:00:40,379 important, intergenerational relationship in China 6 00:00:40,379 --> 00:00:46,530 has been improved so on and so forth . Nothing new, nothing remarkable unless you 7 00:00:46,530 --> 00:00:51,809 know I'm sure some of you know the family institution used to be condemned 8 00:00:51,809 --> 00:00:58,530 as a bad thing. As I said some of the most radical intellectuals in China used 9 00:00:58,530 --> 00:01:06,650 to call it the square one of all evil things so in other words the family 10 00:01:06,650 --> 00:01:15,930 institution unlike its counterpart in the US has been very much in the center 11 00:01:15,930 --> 00:01:23,340 of the political ideological struggles and it also was one of the strategies 12 00:01:23,340 --> 00:01:32,719 that China pursued modernization which is also something doesn't sound so 13 00:01:32,719 --> 00:01:40,009 extraordinary to us because here always feel this very personally even 14 00:01:40,009 --> 00:01:45,929 modernization in the u.s. coming slowly and many of us who were born into 15 00:01:45,929 --> 00:01:52,679 modernization - I cannot imagine anybody here born before modernization but 16 00:01:52,679 --> 00:01:58,590 people in China like, even in my generation, those people witnessed 17 00:01:58,590 --> 00:02:04,679 the arrival of a modernity, a modernization in a rather very fast radical 18 00:02:04,679 --> 00:02:11,250 way and yet that pursuit for modernization in China has ever since 19 00:02:11,250 --> 00:02:18,360 the turn of the 19th century has been almost like a Holy Grail that the entire 20 00:02:18,360 --> 00:02:26,180 nation was trying so hard to get and even at whatever price it would take 21 00:02:26,180 --> 00:02:34,050 right so if the price was to overthrow the imperial system and build a republic 22 00:02:34,050 --> 00:02:40,020 they wanted to do it and they did it. If the price was it to have a new 23 00:02:40,020 --> 00:02:45,990 constitution they tried and then they did it. And then the price was to figure to 24 00:02:45,990 --> 00:02:51,360 get rid of the family and they tried to do it as well so that's why the first 25 00:02:51,360 --> 00:02:58,740 point I want to talk - quickly go over - is the fall and the rise of the family and 26 00:02:58,740 --> 00:03:03,510 this may not be a very rewarding part because as some of you know this part 27 00:03:03,510 --> 00:03:08,790 of history very well, others may not know well so I'm trying to pitch in 28 00:03:08,790 --> 00:03:13,050 somewhere in the middle but for those who know well it is too simple for the 29 00:03:13,050 --> 00:03:17,940 for those who don't know at all it's just too difficult so bear with me 30 00:03:17,940 --> 00:03:24,840 with this part and then I will go down to two case studies which out of my own 31 00:03:24,840 --> 00:03:32,730 research, one is about urban youth in China, how their divorce was arranged by 32 00:03:32,730 --> 00:03:38,190 their parents. That one sounds interesting right and the second case 33 00:03:38,190 --> 00:03:43,970 study moved to the countryside in rural families I described how 34 00:03:43,970 --> 00:03:50,000 intergenerational gap has been diminishing and intergenerational 35 00:03:50,000 --> 00:03:59,700 relationship even intimacy I began to appear and so as a second study but then 36 00:03:59,700 --> 00:04:06,240 toward the last section I will try to argue all this seemingly good 37 00:04:06,240 --> 00:04:12,720 news may not indicate all good things and that there's a potential downside or 38 00:04:12,720 --> 00:04:18,690 even dark side - a dark side of a familism or the resurgence of the new 39 00:04:18,690 --> 00:04:22,729 familism in China. Okay. 40 00:04:23,270 --> 00:04:30,660 Familism as I use it as a term here is defined as a mode of a social organization in 41 00:04:30,660 --> 00:04:35,879 which the family works as a cooperate group. If you imagine how a company 42 00:04:35,879 --> 00:04:40,139 operates a family operates like that way, meaning they rely on a 43 00:04:40,139 --> 00:04:44,189 hierarchical arrangement of gender, sexual and intergenerational 44 00:04:44,189 --> 00:04:49,270 relationship, and also in the case of China there is hierarchy based on age as 45 00:04:49,270 --> 00:04:56,259 well and therefore the second defining point of familism is the interest 46 00:04:56,259 --> 00:05:01,900 that the family took over and overshadowed the interests of the individual and a 47 00:05:01,900 --> 00:05:09,129 loyalty to family overshadowed loyalty toward any kind of social organisations. 48 00:05:09,129 --> 00:05:14,860 Therefore if they're in a society there is a strong familism chances are 49 00:05:14,860 --> 00:05:22,060 there would be low social trust and a weak civic culture because the 50 00:05:22,060 --> 00:05:26,680 familism turns the people inwards, they trust only their own family members and 51 00:05:26,680 --> 00:05:33,189 not interested in public affairs, civic affairs and not even engaging in 52 00:05:33,189 --> 00:05:41,259 much into civic activities. Hence the notion of amoral familism founded 53 00:05:41,259 --> 00:05:50,110 in 1958 by the Harvard political scientist Edward Banford and the 54 00:05:50,110 --> 00:05:56,199 exactly - oh I jump over a little bit but now in the West 55 00:05:56,199 --> 00:06:05,050 ever since 1990s the term of familism seems to be changed at least and getting 56 00:06:05,050 --> 00:06:09,580 rid of some of these previous negative connotations as we are 57 00:06:09,580 --> 00:06:16,599 increasingly emphasizing family values and there is a turn - a return back to 58 00:06:16,599 --> 00:06:21,310 families and family Values in contemporary Western societies yet I 59 00:06:21,310 --> 00:06:27,250 want to point out that when study the return of family Values in contemporary 60 00:06:27,250 --> 00:06:34,589 Western society one thing we needed to pay attention to that is the family - a 61 00:06:34,589 --> 00:06:47,830 means to an end or the family is end in and of itself and the bottom line is 62 00:06:47,830 --> 00:06:54,820 if whether the individual - the happiness of the individual - is at a center. 63 00:06:54,820 --> 00:06:59,950 Why we want a family? In our contemporary Western society probably 64 00:06:59,950 --> 00:07:05,260 family is a necessary means if you believe in family values to reach your 65 00:07:05,260 --> 00:07:10,510 individual happiness. You does not want to family - to have a family for the sake 66 00:07:10,510 --> 00:07:18,760 of having a family but that is not a familism. Familism by definition 67 00:07:18,760 --> 00:07:24,370 means your individual interests, your individual happiness would be secondary 68 00:07:24,370 --> 00:07:31,210 to that of the family. Therefore you must have a family. Okay, because of that 69 00:07:31,210 --> 00:07:38,260 compulsory and even oppressive nature of the family institution back to the turn 70 00:07:38,260 --> 00:07:42,970 of the 19th century many Chinese elites both in the intellectual and the 71 00:07:42,970 --> 00:07:48,730 political circles began to blame the family institution as one of the root 72 00:07:48,730 --> 00:07:55,840 causes of China falling behind, become so a backward and so weak. Therefore 73 00:07:55,840 --> 00:08:02,080 they were calling for a complete family revolution to change the institution for 74 00:08:02,080 --> 00:08:07,510 the purpose of liberating the individual out of the family institution. Therefore 75 00:08:07,510 --> 00:08:12,790 individuals could become independent and strong and therefore could make up a 76 00:08:12,790 --> 00:08:18,610 strong independent nation and therefore China could be modernised. So the 77 00:08:18,610 --> 00:08:24,880 logic is quite simple and therefore for those who know this history well 78 00:08:24,880 --> 00:08:31,900 and you recognize some names. Chen Duxiu, the first one, was 79 00:08:31,900 --> 00:08:37,599 also the First Party Secretary - General Secretary of the Chinese 80 00:08:37,599 --> 00:08:43,210 Communist Party and he was one of among the first to call for a family 81 00:08:43,210 --> 00:08:49,750 revolution. Hu Shih - got his PhD in Columbia, from Columbia University - was 82 00:08:49,750 --> 00:08:56,500 considered to be the representative of liberalism in China and he used to 83 00:08:56,500 --> 00:09:02,740 work as the ambassador to the United States for the KMT government and is on 84 00:09:02,740 --> 00:09:08,410 the other end of the political spectrum. He too was 85 00:09:08,410 --> 00:09:14,589 among those will call for family revolution and Fu Sinian was a typical 86 00:09:14,589 --> 00:09:20,199 typical scholar and he served as the President of Taiwan National 87 00:09:20,199 --> 00:09:26,500 University and he was the person who first called the family as the origin of 88 00:09:26,500 --> 00:09:35,560 our evils. So that was the trend and yet despite all these intellects' efforts to 89 00:09:35,560 --> 00:09:39,939 get rid of the family and push for family revolutions until 1950s 90 00:09:39,939 --> 00:09:47,949 nothing actually changed down there out there at the lower levels of 91 00:09:47,949 --> 00:09:53,980 the society or in social practices. Family revolution by and large remained as 92 00:09:53,980 --> 00:10:03,550 an ideological cultural movement and why? The simple reason was the familial mode 93 00:10:03,550 --> 00:10:10,720 of a social organization was not changed at all. Go to the very basic thing. 94 00:10:10,720 --> 00:10:18,310 Production, economic activities, were more or less still organized through 95 00:10:18,310 --> 00:10:24,939 family. All of this began to change after the Chinese Communist Party took 96 00:10:24,939 --> 00:10:33,120 national power in 1949 and to start the socialist transformations and 97 00:10:33,120 --> 00:10:38,920 the first one - one of those important landmarks - the first one is 1950 98 00:10:38,920 --> 00:10:44,709 marriage law, purely in terms of the law the legal code, was probably not as ready 99 00:10:44,709 --> 00:10:51,850 not not more not to be more radical than the 1930 marriage law, or the 1932 100 00:10:51,850 --> 00:10:58,000 marriage law but the difference, the major difference was the CCP, the Chinese 101 00:10:58,000 --> 00:11:05,259 Communist Party, was able to implement the 1950 marriage law which was very 102 00:11:05,259 --> 00:11:12,790 liberal, banning parental arrangement of marriage, banning concubinage, marriage 103 00:11:12,790 --> 00:11:18,440 by purchase and legally required marriage based on love and 104 00:11:18,440 --> 00:11:26,660 have instituted a marriage register system so on and so forth and legalized 105 00:11:26,660 --> 00:11:32,930 divorce and leading to the first wave - divorce wave in China - which was 106 00:11:32,930 --> 00:11:40,460 mostly initiated among women. So all of this happened in the early 1950s 107 00:11:40,460 --> 00:11:47,180 then collectivization in the countryside and also the nationalization 108 00:11:47,180 --> 00:11:55,100 of industry in the cities. Basically for those who are not familiar with this 109 00:11:55,100 --> 00:12:00,770 history, this part of history basically meaning gradually a sort of a 110 00:12:00,770 --> 00:12:06,050 state ownership of a property being established, not really public ownership 111 00:12:06,050 --> 00:12:10,180 which may give us a misunderstanding. A state ownership of a property was 112 00:12:10,180 --> 00:12:15,890 established therefore the family was for the first time pushed out of the picture 113 00:12:15,890 --> 00:12:23,030 as a mode of economic activities and social organizations. Ever since the 114 00:12:23,030 --> 00:12:28,340 1950s there has been also continuing ideological political 115 00:12:28,340 --> 00:12:38,720 campaigns and in Chinese discourse aimed at the feudalism and attacking patriarchal 116 00:12:38,720 --> 00:12:46,550 cultures and also quite a number of family values based on that 117 00:12:46,550 --> 00:12:53,510 patriarchal culture and a patrilineal kinship system as well, reaching to the 118 00:12:53,510 --> 00:13:01,910 peak during the Cultural Revolution, you know, between 1966 to 1976 in the early 119 00:13:01,910 --> 00:13:10,820 years of Cultural Revolution, say from 66 to 69, and some of you might heard of 120 00:13:10,820 --> 00:13:15,440 those cases that the family members are reporting each other because they wanted 121 00:13:15,440 --> 00:13:19,610 to be loyal to Chairman Mao instead of being loyal to their parents. If they 122 00:13:19,610 --> 00:13:24,770 spot anything politically suspicious out of their parents they would report it to 123 00:13:24,770 --> 00:13:29,990 the party and the parents would do the same toward their children so 124 00:13:29,990 --> 00:13:36,560 that would be consider to be the the highest point of this anti-family 125 00:13:36,560 --> 00:13:43,040 revolution, state-sponsored elite-led anti-family revolution in 126 00:13:43,040 --> 00:13:49,760 China but that was only in the political -ideological domain. In my own 127 00:13:49,760 --> 00:13:56,350 research I did it mostly research focusing on everyday life so by the 128 00:13:56,350 --> 00:14:03,140 1990s that family revolution has indeed produced some positive results as 129 00:14:03,140 --> 00:14:09,290 well leading to what I'd call a double transformation by the early 1990s that 130 00:14:09,290 --> 00:14:16,130 is the family. Having been completely out of the public life and has become 131 00:14:16,130 --> 00:14:20,990 increasingly a private haven for individual life for individuals to 132 00:14:20,990 --> 00:14:26,630 pursue their family life and it was certain extent individual happiness as 133 00:14:26,630 --> 00:14:36,170 well. Therefore love, intimacy, conjugal intimacy and other notions like 134 00:14:36,170 --> 00:14:42,550 privacy even began to emerge in family life which lead to what I call the 135 00:14:42,550 --> 00:14:51,079 privatization of the family, the family gradually being moved out of the public 136 00:14:51,079 --> 00:14:56,870 sphere, and also just the other side of this double transformation is the rise 137 00:14:56,870 --> 00:15:04,070 of the individual. By early 1990s for the first time probably in history an 138 00:15:04,070 --> 00:15:11,450 individual would hesitate for a second wait a minute am I doing this for 139 00:15:11,450 --> 00:15:18,440 myself if I am doing this for myself is that justifiable how important it is to 140 00:15:18,440 --> 00:15:25,100 pursue my individual happiness. So those began to emerge - I'm not saying 141 00:15:25,100 --> 00:15:31,399 completely changed-but I see this as very important indicators of a radical 142 00:15:31,399 --> 00:15:40,190 change so that's by the early 1990s. When my book was published in 2003 143 00:15:40,190 --> 00:15:45,740 so it's always almost ten years behind and then after a while, 144 00:15:45,740 --> 00:15:52,390 afterwards continuing research and also my reading of secondary literature 145 00:15:52,390 --> 00:16:00,589 gradually caught my attention to new trends of a change and behind that 146 00:16:00,589 --> 00:16:06,830 there is one important factor that is where it's a so-called second 147 00:16:06,830 --> 00:16:14,680 democratic turn, demographic turn meaning there is along with the 148 00:16:14,680 --> 00:16:21,470 increase of life expectancy, the decline of a fatality, a whole number of the new 149 00:16:21,470 --> 00:16:27,620 fertility cultural values began to emerge. Children become valued as a 150 00:16:27,620 --> 00:16:33,190 treasure instead of being regarded as laborers. 151 00:16:33,190 --> 00:16:39,440 That's a very important thing and it started with those who were born in the 152 00:16:39,440 --> 00:16:44,839 1980s in China who happened to be in the same time when the Chinese government 153 00:16:44,839 --> 00:16:52,070 imposed, implemented a single child policy, mostly us in the urban areas but 154 00:16:52,070 --> 00:16:57,880 also have huge impact in the countryside not necessarily leading to singleton child 155 00:16:57,880 --> 00:17:04,640 still have certain impact and then continue on to those who were born in 156 00:17:04,640 --> 00:17:10,970 the 1990s. In these two decades children being born in China in 157 00:17:10,970 --> 00:17:15,920 urban China mostly having no siblings so there are singletons. If you think 158 00:17:15,920 --> 00:17:20,929 about the family think about the kinship system that simple fact alone has a huge 159 00:17:20,929 --> 00:17:28,339 implication and they are also as I just mentioned the treasure, as the most 160 00:17:28,339 --> 00:17:35,179 valuable treasureable thing in family life. So we even simply based on these 161 00:17:35,179 --> 00:17:40,820 very very simple straightforward facts. We see there is a certain change in 162 00:17:40,820 --> 00:17:48,020 intergenerational relationship. One is because a child becomes so valuable and 163 00:17:48,020 --> 00:17:55,440 therefore the parents has been showering their single mostly singleton 164 00:17:55,440 --> 00:18:03,840 child with material, comfortable material life, and parental protection carrying 165 00:18:03,840 --> 00:18:14,010 love, all of those good things and but it's not, it doesn't go without a price. 166 00:18:14,010 --> 00:18:19,170 There is another side, there is a parental expectation. While showering all 167 00:18:19,170 --> 00:18:25,820 these goods things on a singleton child parents also have, I expect, high 168 00:18:25,820 --> 00:18:32,310 expectations of their child. They all wanted their child to be somebody 169 00:18:32,310 --> 00:18:41,820 and I can tell you in my generation - I was born in the 1950s, long time before many of you guys 170 00:18:41,820 --> 00:18:47,460 and in my generation I think a parent, most parents would hope that their 171 00:18:47,460 --> 00:18:53,790 child would survive, that's it. If we survive then grow up, that's very good. 172 00:18:53,790 --> 00:18:59,760 And then at the age of fourteen I become a full-time laborer, helping my family, 173 00:18:59,760 --> 00:19:08,640 that's it. So and therefore more children better happier family life 174 00:19:08,640 --> 00:19:14,160 because more children, more laborers. This is the difference. More children, you 175 00:19:14,160 --> 00:19:16,710 cannot afford therefore you concentrate on the 176 00:19:16,710 --> 00:19:24,270 singleton child and then has a huge parental pressure to expect the child 177 00:19:24,270 --> 00:19:30,450 will thrive will success will be successful, it's been, this has been 178 00:19:30,450 --> 00:19:34,110 shared by the entire population in China, doesn't matter where they are, it could 179 00:19:34,110 --> 00:19:38,640 be on the top of the society in Beijing Shanghai could be all the way to 180 00:19:38,640 --> 00:19:45,420 the bottom of the rural China but still share the same version which is very 181 00:19:45,420 --> 00:19:50,760 very important but sometimes even very scary. 182 00:19:50,760 --> 00:19:56,040 Just imagine 1.3 billion people share the same version of what a good life 183 00:19:56,040 --> 00:20:03,960 should be. And another important thing I was just talking with Professor McNeil 184 00:20:03,960 --> 00:20:09,090 before this is the like or the absence of ideological conflict 185 00:20:09,090 --> 00:20:15,659 across generational lines. If you look at the parents of the eighti-ners ninety-ners 186 00:20:15,659 --> 00:20:19,230 who were born in these two decades there's not much a difference. 187 00:20:19,230 --> 00:20:26,070 They watch the same media plus their things and TV programs and then later on 188 00:20:26,070 --> 00:20:36,379 quickly absorbed into the new social media and also they all immersed into 189 00:20:36,379 --> 00:20:41,730 global consumerism. They were all interested in materialism. The only 190 00:20:41,730 --> 00:20:47,580 difference is the parents are more focusing or interested in material in 191 00:20:47,580 --> 00:20:53,580 terms of wealth accumulation. They work very hard. They want to buy one property 192 00:20:53,580 --> 00:21:02,279 after that a second after that a third and all of these is shared 193 00:21:02,279 --> 00:21:08,460 again by the entire nation and then the children's generation probably are more 194 00:21:08,460 --> 00:21:12,809 interested in how to use the wealth to live a good life but from my point of 195 00:21:12,809 --> 00:21:22,769 view one way or the other is materialism and because they share these materialism 196 00:21:22,769 --> 00:21:30,080 tendency therefore talking about power balance crosses intergenerational lines. 197 00:21:30,080 --> 00:21:35,639 It depends on who have the resources. Whoever have the resources will be in 198 00:21:35,639 --> 00:21:40,889 the upper hand position so the previous arrangement of familism 199 00:21:40,889 --> 00:21:50,039 that is hierarchy based on age, sex and generation were not that relevant today. 200 00:21:50,039 --> 00:21:59,279 Instead it is resources accumulation and control. The last bullet point is a 201 00:21:59,279 --> 00:22:06,360 question mark. I wonder whether similar things also happening, are also happening 202 00:22:06,360 --> 00:22:12,990 here in the US. There is an inter-generational gap that is disappearing 203 00:22:12,990 --> 00:22:19,919 and we tend to have less conflicts with our parents. At least we don't have that 204 00:22:19,919 --> 00:22:25,440 much radical conflicts, meaning we totally have different world views 205 00:22:25,440 --> 00:22:36,259 with our parents. My observation is probably yes and there are also reports on 206 00:22:36,259 --> 00:22:42,769 how many American youths after college live with their parents. 207 00:22:42,769 --> 00:22:48,269 Economics is one of the reasons - they cannot afford the rent but if your 208 00:22:48,269 --> 00:22:52,980 parents have a totally different world view you simply cannot stand then I 209 00:22:52,980 --> 00:22:57,870 don't think those young people would be able to go back and live with their parents 210 00:22:57,870 --> 00:23:06,629 for real. My guess is this - it's a very radical guess - ever since the end of 211 00:23:06,629 --> 00:23:13,620 the Cold War, we were basically living happily or unhappily under global 212 00:23:13,620 --> 00:23:20,460 capitalism there has not been a radical ideological difference which could push 213 00:23:20,460 --> 00:23:25,980 the younger generation totally away from their parents' generation 214 00:23:25,980 --> 00:23:33,179 even in opposing direction. Think about the war in the 60s, 70s 215 00:23:33,179 --> 00:23:40,679 even up to the 80s there were still those factors that could divide the two 216 00:23:40,679 --> 00:23:47,929 generations, but those things are done, this is just beside the line comments. 217 00:23:47,929 --> 00:23:56,909 Okay now again still a very general observation the rise of a neo-familism 218 00:23:56,909 --> 00:24:07,259 in public life in Chinese society and two one is the family becomes very 219 00:24:07,259 --> 00:24:13,440 important and in the sense one new thing is when nowadays when talking about the 220 00:24:13,440 --> 00:24:19,980 family people begin to include their parents from both sides when talking 221 00:24:19,980 --> 00:24:26,490 about young people married a couple so once again the extended family becomes 222 00:24:26,490 --> 00:24:33,659 increasingly important but the difference is that in this wave of the 223 00:24:33,659 --> 00:24:39,240 rise of extended family it's not necessarily only the male side it 224 00:24:39,240 --> 00:24:45,630 could be the other side, the wife's side, parents-in-law from a man's point of 225 00:24:45,630 --> 00:24:50,070 view living with the young couple or could it 226 00:24:50,070 --> 00:24:56,520 be from both sides so I will come back to this later and then there are 227 00:24:56,520 --> 00:25:05,420 many social surveys about trust and result is 228 00:25:05,420 --> 00:25:11,520 along with market economy and the social trust actually didn't go up instead it 229 00:25:11,520 --> 00:25:17,760 has come down and yet parents are the family are always labeled as the most 230 00:25:17,760 --> 00:25:25,559 trustworthy social resources. It comes from my own research as well. Another 231 00:25:25,559 --> 00:25:30,059 very general indicator is during the recent decade of the Chinese 232 00:25:30,059 --> 00:25:36,050 government's anti-corruption campaign there's a new phenomenon or new term 233 00:25:36,050 --> 00:25:42,990 popping up. It is called familial corruption, meaning if you take a closer look at any 234 00:25:42,990 --> 00:25:48,570 case of official corruption behind that that person there's the entire family 235 00:25:48,570 --> 00:25:54,360 involved and even the young our normal definition with the family because the 236 00:25:54,360 --> 00:26:01,080 chances are that corrupt official has at least one mistress and that mistress was 237 00:26:01,080 --> 00:26:07,110 very likely the original push for official to embezzle public funding or 238 00:26:07,110 --> 00:26:11,340 or doing something else and then the children. 239 00:26:11,340 --> 00:26:19,010 Many corrupt officials later once they fell they confessed and said 240 00:26:19,010 --> 00:26:23,970 the motivation for me was to do something for my son or my daughter. I 241 00:26:23,970 --> 00:26:32,840 only have this child so as long as my child can live a good life, I'm okay. So 242 00:26:32,840 --> 00:26:39,030 many officials would be able, were, driven by this therefore familiar mode 243 00:26:39,030 --> 00:26:44,790 of a corruption has been recognized by the Chinese government all the way 244 00:26:44,790 --> 00:26:48,919 up to Xi Jinping and they wanted to correct this. 245 00:26:48,919 --> 00:26:54,570 Whether they can do that or not it's not beyond my scope of investigation but I 246 00:26:54,570 --> 00:27:00,390 just use this as another factor to show how important family has become 247 00:27:00,390 --> 00:27:06,120 especially for those who know some and knowing the history of the first three 248 00:27:06,120 --> 00:27:13,620 decades of China, neo-China PRC - 1950s 60s, 70s - there were 249 00:27:13,620 --> 00:27:18,000 corrupt officials, there were cases of official corruptions but if you look at 250 00:27:18,000 --> 00:27:24,750 the reason family was not there at all. Instead those officials were very clean. 251 00:27:24,750 --> 00:27:29,820 They do things, even the first thing is that to push their family aside. They don't 252 00:27:29,820 --> 00:27:34,830 want to do anything for the interests of their family. Okay. 253 00:27:34,830 --> 00:27:42,660 Another general marker is the pursuit for meaning of life, especially in the 254 00:27:42,660 --> 00:27:48,000 last 10 years also and many Chinese families have accumulated enough wealth 255 00:27:48,000 --> 00:27:54,929 to the point that they began to feel their life have become meaningless 256 00:27:54,929 --> 00:28:02,309 and they wanted to add something on top of the pursuit of wealth and looking for 257 00:28:02,309 --> 00:28:09,840 the meaning of life yet given the political-social 258 00:28:09,840 --> 00:28:20,630 conditions in China in the last decade or so the civic spirit or public sphere 259 00:28:20,630 --> 00:28:27,060 have not been developed much in the last decade when people tried to find the 260 00:28:27,060 --> 00:28:32,550 meaning of life hardly they can find anything meaningful or worthy of 261 00:28:32,550 --> 00:28:39,450 pursuing outside a family circle so they turn inwards and then the family once 262 00:28:39,450 --> 00:28:46,830 again becomes a very important thing for that reason. Okay so those who were 263 00:28:46,830 --> 00:28:53,520 looking from the society's angle to look at the rising importance of the family 264 00:28:53,520 --> 00:29:01,260 but now if we switch to individual's angle, my angle, your angle, say from very 265 00:29:01,260 --> 00:29:07,290 early time the family, or parents, become very important. For the younger 266 00:29:07,290 --> 00:29:12,600 generations in 1980s - eighti-ners nineti-ners, ever since the time 267 00:29:12,600 --> 00:29:17,370 they are going to kindergarten their parents would get involved to choose the 268 00:29:17,370 --> 00:29:21,870 best kindergarten the best primary school the best high school so 269 00:29:21,870 --> 00:29:28,140 that their singleton child can go to the best university and the most radical one 270 00:29:28,140 --> 00:29:34,950 I saw last year, early this year, was in a case this is an elite 271 00:29:34,950 --> 00:29:42,270 kindergarten. They only recruited ten children every year and they only 272 00:29:42,270 --> 00:29:48,930 recruit ten children born in January every year so parents in order to make 273 00:29:48,930 --> 00:29:56,310 sure their child being recruited into this elitist, very elite kindergarten, 274 00:29:56,310 --> 00:30:02,160 they wanted to plan their pregnancy, making sure their child being born in 275 00:30:02,160 --> 00:30:09,660 January, being interviewed - one mother said literally in Chinese, let me say it in 276 00:30:09,660 --> 00:30:15,630 Chinese first, 我们必须要赢在射精线. 277 00:30:15,630 --> 00:30:20,760 so they wanted to win before the departure point, the starting line, 278 00:30:20,760 --> 00:30:31,890 therefore where is the starting line is what is the term? Impregnation? Yes okay 279 00:30:31,890 --> 00:30:37,410 so you have a plan when you eject in order to make sure your child 280 00:30:37,410 --> 00:30:44,370 being born in that month. So this is theoretical but it says something about this 281 00:30:44,370 --> 00:30:50,510 early education and the involvement of the parents right. And then they make choices 282 00:30:50,510 --> 00:30:57,059 so before college graduation parents are pushing their children singletons to 283 00:30:57,059 --> 00:31:02,340 concentrate on study but right after the commencement children turn apparently 284 00:31:02,340 --> 00:31:08,700 turn to another target. Have you had a girlfriend yet a boyfriend yet? I said 285 00:31:08,700 --> 00:31:12,890 I've been studying, how can I have a boyfriend. Now it's the time to have one. 286 00:31:12,890 --> 00:31:18,299 so switch it to the second task I'm pushing for marriage 287 00:31:18,299 --> 00:31:23,250 therefore parental involvement in both negative form - the veto power- or 288 00:31:23,250 --> 00:31:26,669 positive form - trying to do matchmaking thing, because it's very 289 00:31:26,669 --> 00:31:32,039 important and I don't know but those who follow Chinese media you must know this 290 00:31:32,039 --> 00:31:43,549 Jin Xing show and this is called the Chinese dating right and it's very hot. 291 00:31:43,549 --> 00:31:52,140 Why? Because Jin Xing who is a transgender artist, she was able to 292 00:31:52,140 --> 00:31:57,870 catch this parental involvement as a new, very significant 293 00:31:57,870 --> 00:32:02,700 social change therefore she has this show, inviting parents coming to 294 00:32:02,700 --> 00:32:09,390 choose the spouse for their children, a child, so it's basically parents making 295 00:32:09,390 --> 00:32:15,080 decisions. I strongly recommend you go to watch this show. 296 00:32:15,080 --> 00:32:20,640 That's the girl being selected or being chosen by a whole number of parents. 297 00:32:20,640 --> 00:32:25,799 There's one of the parents sitting together with their son. Their son was in 298 00:32:25,799 --> 00:32:28,850 a separate room, had no power to say anything, 299 00:32:28,850 --> 00:32:36,679 just watching how their parents, his parents, choose the date for him. This 300 00:32:36,679 --> 00:32:41,990 is a photo of a very old practice-some of you might visit this place as well- 301 00:32:41,990 --> 00:32:46,309 People's Park in Shanghai actually everywhere in every big city small city 302 00:32:46,309 --> 00:32:51,679 in China now you have this as a matchmaking corner in the part and where 303 00:32:51,679 --> 00:32:54,649 they display the information of their child 304 00:32:54,649 --> 00:33:00,769 singleton mostly singleton child in order to find a mate. I want to remind 305 00:33:00,769 --> 00:33:08,830 the audience not a long ago in 1950s it was the opposite. Young Chinese- 306 00:33:08,830 --> 00:33:16,039 Chinese youth-fought very hard against the parental arrangement as a part of their 307 00:33:16,039 --> 00:33:24,889 liberation. This is a movie based on a Ping Ju - a Ping play of northern China and 308 00:33:24,889 --> 00:33:29,690 this is a very famous actress, a very famous heroine - the figure Liu Qiao Er - 309 00:33:29,690 --> 00:33:38,539 and this caption says, after thinking again and again now I have made my final 310 00:33:38,539 --> 00:33:44,029 decision, that is to cancel the previous engagement 311 00:33:44,029 --> 00:33:50,269 made by her parents and pursue her own love so the thing is that 312 00:33:50,269 --> 00:33:58,669 this is 1950s. Nearly 70 years later we have parents finding the 313 00:33:58,669 --> 00:34:08,030 spouse for their children and then I could really go over this I think I'm 314 00:34:08,030 --> 00:34:11,750 running out of time. Marriage - the excessive cost of a 315 00:34:11,750 --> 00:34:16,129 marriage in contemporary China - for this I'm always been doing research on 316 00:34:16,129 --> 00:34:19,940 this single phenomenon - how much does it cost to get married in China 317 00:34:19,940 --> 00:34:28,909 and especially in the form of a bride wealth just keep going up and without 318 00:34:28,909 --> 00:34:34,339 those necessary items especially a young man can simply simply cannot get 319 00:34:34,339 --> 00:34:39,260 married and therefore all parents are anxious to prepare for this. I have a 320 00:34:39,260 --> 00:34:42,829 friend, young friend in Shanghai at Fudan University. 30 321 00:34:42,829 --> 00:34:48,440 years old he just got his son born early this year and in 322 00:34:48,440 --> 00:34:54,769 order to prepare this - he's a young faculty - he spent a 2.5 million Chinese 323 00:34:54,769 --> 00:35:00,559 currency to buy a nice small apartment - not nice - actually I want to see it the other way - 324 00:35:00,559 --> 00:35:06,920 old small apartment next to Fudan Campus - it's a school district and 325 00:35:06,920 --> 00:35:15,829 then after the birth of the new baby he realized this is a son so his son needs 326 00:35:15,829 --> 00:35:20,299 a girl therefore he has been bidding for the 327 00:35:20,299 --> 00:35:26,390 second car license in Shanghai. You have to, you know, get into this 328 00:35:26,390 --> 00:35:32,900 lottery in order to bid for a license - a license plate - he already had his so 329 00:35:32,900 --> 00:35:42,579 just two weeks ago he recharged it to us saying I happily got my second car 330 00:35:42,579 --> 00:35:49,279 license plate. That's for twenty years later I was telling him maybe 20 years 331 00:35:49,279 --> 00:35:54,589 later Shanghai Government changes the policy and then he's now he's 332 00:35:54,589 --> 00:35:59,180 talking about getting another big house for his son so all of this 333 00:35:59,180 --> 00:36:05,059 marriage becomes increasingly costly and putting pressure on parents and then 334 00:36:05,059 --> 00:36:11,749 post-marital residence and child-rearing - all of this - whole family 335 00:36:11,749 --> 00:36:17,329 're involved. You cannot do any of this without your parents or her or his 336 00:36:17,329 --> 00:36:24,109 parents involved. Even about divorce you cannot divorce alone you have to be your 337 00:36:24,109 --> 00:36:30,710 know your parents and chances are the divorce was pushed by his parents. That's 338 00:36:30,710 --> 00:36:38,140 my case study: parents-driven divorce. 339 00:36:38,440 --> 00:36:46,190 The intriguing point is the younger generation of Chinese are -appear- 340 00:36:46,190 --> 00:36:51,890 to be more independent in some part of their life. They receive the most updated 341 00:36:51,890 --> 00:36:55,950 information, living the most updated consumerist 342 00:36:55,950 --> 00:37:03,540 lifestyle and they could many of them did dye their hair into blue 343 00:37:03,540 --> 00:37:08,930 or green and so on so forth but comes to important decisions 344 00:37:08,930 --> 00:37:15,230 interesting thing is that they still go back, look for their parents' support and 345 00:37:15,230 --> 00:37:23,070 here are some basic figures. Basically among the worst cases forty percent of 346 00:37:23,070 --> 00:37:29,790 the divorce were cases involving the eightiners, meaning the eightiners' generation 347 00:37:29,790 --> 00:37:38,490 probably is having higher divorce rate and the more interesting thing is 348 00:37:38,490 --> 00:37:44,369 that a high percentage of those divorcing young couples would have their 349 00:37:44,369 --> 00:37:48,810 parents involved and nearly more than half of them would have their parents 350 00:37:48,810 --> 00:37:54,000 representing them in the court and there are cases their parents were fighting. 351 00:37:54,000 --> 00:37:58,859 Parents on both sides were fighting very hard against each other while 352 00:37:58,859 --> 00:38:02,190 the young couple sitting out there among the audience play with their 353 00:38:02,190 --> 00:38:07,350 cell phone. It's almost like it is not their case because actually by the time they go 354 00:38:07,350 --> 00:38:12,810 to court the young couple already reconcile. It's too late - both parents 355 00:38:12,810 --> 00:38:19,260 decided to push for divorce and then they went forward. So much so now 356 00:38:19,260 --> 00:38:24,990 the Chinese media began to say there is a day of Fumu Sanbao - this is the further 357 00:38:24,990 --> 00:38:29,340 development from Fumu Baoban - it's the parental arranged marriage. Now it's a 358 00:38:29,340 --> 00:38:36,150 parental arranged divorce in three very important aspects, that is, whether 359 00:38:36,150 --> 00:38:41,280 a couple should get divorced or how to divide a common property after 360 00:38:41,280 --> 00:38:47,520 divorce and then who is going to raise the child, the young child in 361 00:38:47,520 --> 00:38:52,950 the third generation okay? I need to go very quickly - tell you the factors from 362 00:38:52,950 --> 00:38:57,900 my point of view - just reading the main title probably. One is excessive 363 00:38:57,900 --> 00:39:01,350 parental interference and the supervision of their singleton's life, 364 00:39:01,350 --> 00:39:06,970 everyday life and parents are doing this. They mean, they mean well. 365 00:39:06,970 --> 00:39:11,319 They want to take care of their children for instance in one extreme case. The 366 00:39:11,319 --> 00:39:16,270 mother after her son gets married the mother is still worried because her son 367 00:39:16,270 --> 00:39:22,510 tend to throw his comforter onto the ground during sleep so every night 368 00:39:22,510 --> 00:39:27,690 mother will come into their bedroom to make sure his son didn't do that. 369 00:39:27,690 --> 00:39:34,210 Now he's married right so much so that the young daughter-in-law 370 00:39:34,210 --> 00:39:39,460 eventually cannot bear them anymore say: "Mother, why don't you just move to sleep 371 00:39:39,460 --> 00:39:46,900 in this room together with us". Surprising to her next night her mother, 372 00:39:46,900 --> 00:39:52,480 his mother, moved in so the next day the next move would be 373 00:39:52,480 --> 00:40:00,069 to demand a divorce right and this is the one thing. This leads to the second that 374 00:40:00,069 --> 00:40:06,940 is parents because of their previous investment for caring love and financial 375 00:40:06,940 --> 00:40:13,930 resources into their singleton child so much, so much that they cannot think 376 00:40:13,930 --> 00:40:18,640 otherwise. That is after getting married, a conjugal 377 00:40:18,640 --> 00:40:24,869 interest would be different from a single child's interest because a 378 00:40:24,869 --> 00:40:30,510 conjugal unit. It has its own interest. That interest needs two parties 379 00:40:30,510 --> 00:40:37,960 - husband and wife - to make some compromises yet the parents cannot 380 00:40:37,960 --> 00:40:42,660 recognize that so they insist on protecting their singleton's 381 00:40:42,660 --> 00:40:48,760 personal interest in the child's marriage. That is another reason - whenever there's 382 00:40:48,760 --> 00:40:54,789 a push they only push for personal interest which is in the opposite 383 00:40:54,789 --> 00:41:00,309 direction to the conjugal interest. Of course if parents are doing this and 384 00:41:00,309 --> 00:41:05,710 that the young generations are resisting - they don't need to as strongly 385 00:41:05,710 --> 00:41:12,730 resisting as the 1950s, 60s' generation. If they do something it couldn't be 386 00:41:12,730 --> 00:41:17,950 going that far but yet the younger generations entirely rely on their 387 00:41:17,950 --> 00:41:22,270 parents even when they have quarrels with their own spouse. 388 00:41:22,270 --> 00:41:26,830 They would go back to talk to their parents and then you can imagine when a daughter 389 00:41:26,830 --> 00:41:32,320 or a son talking to his or her or his mother complaining about the spouse, 390 00:41:32,320 --> 00:41:38,560 what would the parents say? Probably no good words and therefore there's 391 00:41:38,560 --> 00:41:44,320 another reason but behind all this is the younger generation only trust their 392 00:41:44,320 --> 00:41:49,810 parents. I ask the young a question again and again hypothetically 393 00:41:49,810 --> 00:41:55,270 before your spouse and your parents who would it be more trustworthy. Of course 394 00:41:55,270 --> 00:42:03,760 my parents. My parents love entirely wholeheartedly love me. My 395 00:42:03,760 --> 00:42:08,610 spouse may be somewhere so that's the important thing 396 00:42:08,610 --> 00:42:16,690 to watch. The last one is economics. Parents involved too much into the 397 00:42:16,690 --> 00:42:22,060 economic base of the new conjugal unit. Therefore anything goes wrong, parents 398 00:42:22,060 --> 00:42:28,840 cannot bear with it. So these are the four major reasons of my first case 399 00:42:28,840 --> 00:42:36,370 study and I think the second one I should go even faster. It's just about 400 00:42:36,370 --> 00:42:43,990 the rural case so I'm ok? All right so these are the four points of this entire 401 00:42:43,990 --> 00:42:51,160 case study published in two articles. One is over the last two decades. 402 00:42:51,160 --> 00:42:56,400 The departure point is again the improvement of inter-generational 403 00:42:56,400 --> 00:43:02,860 relationship because in the 1990s scholars had talked about the crisis of 404 00:43:02,860 --> 00:43:08,860 the filial piety and some scholars even observed old people - parents 405 00:43:08,860 --> 00:43:13,360 committing suicide because they couldn't bear with the miserable life in 406 00:43:13,360 --> 00:43:19,750 their old age anymore and me too. I wrote about the decline of a failure 407 00:43:19,750 --> 00:43:27,220 culture and I today I don't think I was wrong like two decades ago and it's just that 408 00:43:27,220 --> 00:43:32,260 things have changed and now it seems that crisis has gone 409 00:43:32,260 --> 00:43:38,920 instead inter-generational relationship has been improved a lot and meanwhile 410 00:43:38,920 --> 00:43:45,460 the new thing is what I call the inter-generational intimacy. Adults 411 00:43:45,460 --> 00:43:51,280 - married children in the countryside - shared a lot of laughters, conversations with 412 00:43:51,280 --> 00:43:57,880 their aged parents. They took their parents to tourism going to visit other 413 00:43:57,880 --> 00:44:04,869 places the entire family. Those things were unheard of at least in the rural 414 00:44:04,869 --> 00:44:15,970 area I work and so then I just wanted to find out why. One reason is basically 415 00:44:15,970 --> 00:44:21,330 the two generations work together, redefining what filial piety should be. 416 00:44:21,330 --> 00:44:28,330 Filial piety in traditional Chinese culture is based on three things - one is 417 00:44:28,330 --> 00:44:35,730 the continuity of the descent line. You need to do well in human reproduction. 418 00:44:35,730 --> 00:44:43,480 Not only not any kind, only one kind - to produce sons. If you don't you fail. 419 00:44:43,480 --> 00:44:50,850 Your life. You are now the failure. This is the number one thing. Number two thing is 420 00:44:50,850 --> 00:44:58,960 ritual sacrifices, worship all this and and then along with is 421 00:44:58,960 --> 00:45:07,080 the very important other aspect that is absolute respect and obedience of 422 00:45:07,080 --> 00:45:14,160 parents by extension any senior kin so that's a very important thing. 423 00:45:14,160 --> 00:45:19,030 It's unconditional obedience and respect. Parents are always right. Even they are 424 00:45:19,030 --> 00:45:25,869 wrong you have to say basically you're right and then you cannot carry through 425 00:45:25,869 --> 00:45:30,369 in action but you cannot disrespect your parents, like argue or talk back to 426 00:45:30,369 --> 00:45:33,070 them. Of course care and support in 427 00:45:33,070 --> 00:45:41,560 parents' old age is another important effect. So 20 years later the third 428 00:45:41,560 --> 00:45:46,710 factor is no longer that critical anymore because of the 429 00:45:46,710 --> 00:45:53,650 improvement for living standards in general. So hardly you'll find at least 430 00:45:53,650 --> 00:45:58,680 in the area I'm familiar with old parents cannot survive economically. 431 00:45:58,680 --> 00:46:03,700 In the cities it is even better - parents have actually more resources than their 432 00:46:03,700 --> 00:46:09,810 adult married children. What has changed is the second point - the absolute 433 00:46:09,810 --> 00:46:16,180 respect and obedience to parents. Over the last two decades it gradually shifts. 434 00:46:16,180 --> 00:46:22,420 The older generation began to give up that expectation and the younger 435 00:46:22,420 --> 00:46:32,290 generation began to redefine this as as long as I make my parents not worried 436 00:46:32,290 --> 00:46:37,360 about my life, make them happy because I'm having a happy life 437 00:46:37,360 --> 00:46:45,340 that's called filial piety. So let me repeat this again. If being respected, 438 00:46:45,340 --> 00:46:50,230 being obeyed is considered to be part of individual happiness in traditional 439 00:46:50,230 --> 00:46:56,470 filial patrilineal culture so that center, that one was centered on the 440 00:46:56,470 --> 00:47:03,580 parents' generation or even further back onto ancestors. You work hard to glorify 441 00:47:03,580 --> 00:47:10,330 your ancestors. You don't get any reward in the instant and the real sense but 442 00:47:10,330 --> 00:47:15,520 you get a reward in a delayed sense meaning when you become a parent, become 443 00:47:15,520 --> 00:47:23,650 an ancestor you will be worshipped you will be respected so it's almost like a 444 00:47:23,650 --> 00:47:29,490 good Christian working hard for the glory of God not for the present life 445 00:47:29,490 --> 00:47:35,380 but over the last two decades this began to change. Simply along with early 446 00:47:35,380 --> 00:47:39,850 change another one I mentioned that is after the single child policy children 447 00:47:39,850 --> 00:47:44,290 become much more treasured and the parental love, caring showering towards 448 00:47:44,290 --> 00:47:50,500 the children so instead of treating them as labors. Therefore children's 449 00:47:50,500 --> 00:47:55,450 happiness has indeed become parents' happiness 450 00:47:55,450 --> 00:48:00,680 and I asked both sides because in the first place I thought of this as just 451 00:48:00,680 --> 00:48:04,760 the rhetorics of the young adult because that they wanted to enjoy 452 00:48:04,760 --> 00:48:08,540 a good life then they go back to ask their parents and their parents say: "Yeah, 453 00:48:08,540 --> 00:48:14,360 what is the purpose of us working so hard? They are happy therefore we're 454 00:48:14,360 --> 00:48:21,590 happy". So it's almost like a redefinition of filial piety plus the ritual 455 00:48:21,590 --> 00:48:28,130 sacrifices are no longer that important and then economic shortage, or poverty, 456 00:48:28,130 --> 00:48:33,500 has become less relevant so putting all this together and if then the two 457 00:48:33,500 --> 00:48:40,100 generations can easily find a common ground and more than that 458 00:48:40,100 --> 00:48:47,050 these child-centered culture, a new family culture, continue to develop and 459 00:48:47,050 --> 00:48:53,860 be switched to the third generation. Once 80ers - the 90ers began - 460 00:48:53,860 --> 00:49:01,250 have their own child, or some, in cases, children, that third generation become 461 00:49:01,250 --> 00:49:05,750 the new focal point. Both the senior generation meaning the grandparents and 462 00:49:05,750 --> 00:49:14,230 the parents put all resources onto the third generation. It becomes a new 463 00:49:14,230 --> 00:49:23,990 centripetal power center, absorbs our love, caring and effort. Speaking of efforts I 464 00:49:23,990 --> 00:49:30,860 always have a sort of weird observation, that is, a Chinese family has to be a 465 00:49:30,860 --> 00:49:37,040 unit of fighting, they must have something to do. If entirely 466 00:49:37,040 --> 00:49:42,440 as a unit that enjoys life, Chinese family will fall apart and if I 467 00:49:42,440 --> 00:49:47,060 have something to fight for, to work for, the family would unite, work very hard. 468 00:49:47,060 --> 00:49:52,940 now you have a wife and a new grandchild I'm not joking if you look at when is the 469 00:49:52,940 --> 00:49:59,210 best time for Chinese couple to divorce. First it is a funny assumption. 470 00:49:59,210 --> 00:50:03,440 Chances are when their children grow up they go to the best college, everything 471 00:50:03,440 --> 00:50:08,480 goes so well now the couple sit down and say, let's talk about divorce. I tolerated you 472 00:50:08,480 --> 00:50:14,869 for 20-plus years and she says me too. Why? Because they have done all. Their 473 00:50:14,869 --> 00:50:20,660 lives passed. They finish all those things that must be completed. Now they can take care 474 00:50:20,660 --> 00:50:27,050 of themselves. Now with these new focals in the third generation finally 475 00:50:27,050 --> 00:50:35,000 struggle continued on as more meaningful right and so this last one we 476 00:50:35,000 --> 00:50:40,280 talk later but basically this is the three major points I talked in those 477 00:50:40,280 --> 00:50:45,590 two articles. I go into details and ethnographic details. I think I don't want to 478 00:50:45,590 --> 00:50:57,980 bore you guys with those details. I can quickly move on. Now with all 479 00:50:57,980 --> 00:51:03,650 those things I just reported I still call it a neo-familism instead of a 480 00:51:03,650 --> 00:51:10,670 new familism. The reason is unlike the new familism in contemporary Western society 481 00:51:10,670 --> 00:51:17,810 in which individual happiness is at the center, is the end. Family, how 482 00:51:17,810 --> 00:51:22,940 important it is, regardless of how important it is, is a means to an end. That end is 483 00:51:22,940 --> 00:51:30,770 your happiness, my happiness and but in the Chinese case just as in the case I 484 00:51:30,770 --> 00:51:34,280 talked about - the three generations working together for the grandchildren 485 00:51:34,280 --> 00:51:40,820 to grow - it's not the family is not a means to an end. The family remains to be 486 00:51:40,820 --> 00:51:48,619 an end in and of itself so there is a rising aspect of the individual but 487 00:51:48,619 --> 00:51:54,940 the individual still is being subsumed under a collectivity over the family group 488 00:51:54,940 --> 00:51:59,630 therefore I call it a neo-familism but there are of course these 489 00:51:59,630 --> 00:52:05,300 tensions unlike in old days and family absolutely took the primacy 490 00:52:05,300 --> 00:52:11,270 and supremacy over individuals but now you have these individuals rising 491 00:52:11,270 --> 00:52:14,480 including the increasing importance of intimacy, 492 00:52:14,480 --> 00:52:19,190 emotions, affections in Chinese family life. This is another new thing I'm 493 00:52:19,190 --> 00:52:21,790 working on. Okay, 494 00:52:21,790 --> 00:52:27,490 three things are very important for us to understand what I just reported in 495 00:52:27,490 --> 00:52:35,350 a larger society. One is from the nation-state point of view. The new 496 00:52:35,350 --> 00:52:43,980 leadership has been reassessing the family as a possible strategy to realize 497 00:52:43,980 --> 00:52:51,850 Xin Jinping's Chinese dream. Again if you go back to the very early point I 498 00:52:51,850 --> 00:52:57,640 made, the family as a strategy of pursuing modernization by the 499 00:52:57,640 --> 00:53:06,040 nation-state in China. Now you see it's coming back and Xi Jinping has given 500 00:53:06,040 --> 00:53:14,530 a lot of speeches and this is the website from the Chinese, from the Chinese Communist Party, 501 00:53:14,530 --> 00:53:19,300 the Central Disciplinary Committee and I think this is mostly 502 00:53:19,300 --> 00:53:24,490 aimed at familial corruption, that's the phenomenon, but you know in other contexts 503 00:53:24,490 --> 00:53:29,740 Xi Jinping 's also emphasizing on the importance of the family, 504 00:53:29,740 --> 00:53:36,790 family rules, family issues - all those things and so much so it become part of the Xin 505 00:53:36,790 --> 00:53:40,960 Jinping's code. I think eventually there will probably be a book on Xi Jinping's 506 00:53:40,960 --> 00:53:45,010 code and that there's a family code and the family will be 507 00:53:45,010 --> 00:53:57,490 there and the second is side by side with the State's re-focus on the family. 508 00:53:57,490 --> 00:54:03,880 There is this from bottom-up at societal level a resurgence, or revitalization, of a 509 00:54:03,880 --> 00:54:10,360 traditional Chinese culture, Confucian ethics in some cases exactly the same 510 00:54:10,360 --> 00:54:16,210 kind of Confucian ethics that the May Fourth generation in the turn of 19th 511 00:54:16,210 --> 00:54:21,250 century were fighting against, they're coming back, such as filial piety, 512 00:54:21,250 --> 00:54:27,340 such as absolute obedience of women to men - all those are coming back 513 00:54:27,340 --> 00:54:32,920 and that as another interesting factor we should pay attention to. 514 00:54:32,920 --> 00:54:37,839 This photo is a opening ceremony at an elite 515 00:54:37,839 --> 00:54:41,680 primary school in Hangzhou and where children were being dressed up in this 516 00:54:41,680 --> 00:54:49,569 traditional way and they have this ritual. 2014 ever 517 00:54:49,569 --> 00:54:53,980 since Xi Jinping began to promote traditional Chinese culture 518 00:54:53,980 --> 00:54:58,930 there has been a nationwide campaign of all sorts pushing for this. 519 00:54:58,930 --> 00:55:06,700 This is in Qufu - the Confucius hometown - and they have these training 520 00:55:06,700 --> 00:55:14,559 camps for learning Confucianism. These would remind for those who went to 521 00:55:14,559 --> 00:55:21,730 China in the 70s, 80s maybe, those old practice, communist practice of Xuexi Ban - 522 00:55:21,730 --> 00:55:28,119 study groups and you've been totally indoctrinated into this and in this 523 00:55:28,119 --> 00:55:36,940 particular one is the notion of a filial piety. Okay this is the second factor. The 524 00:55:36,940 --> 00:55:44,890 third factor is the arrival of a risk- society - China - and something like what 525 00:55:44,890 --> 00:55:50,230 I studied it once about food safety issues and there are some other things, 526 00:55:50,230 --> 00:55:55,089 similar things, China become just a like a contemporary modern West, is also in 527 00:55:55,089 --> 00:56:02,460 today's stage become a society filled with unknown unknown unknown risks, 528 00:56:02,460 --> 00:56:10,150 uncertainties and therefore this factor 's also affecting people's pursuit of a 529 00:56:10,150 --> 00:56:18,069 meaning of life, pushing them toward the family as a coping strategy. Okay, this is 530 00:56:18,069 --> 00:56:24,269 the last slide. Going back to my first slide. With all of this, thinking about 531 00:56:24,269 --> 00:56:32,049 civic life, public sphere if familism is by definition not going 532 00:56:32,049 --> 00:56:38,200 to be aligned with public - a healthy booming public sphere - and 533 00:56:38,200 --> 00:56:44,319 active civic life. Now what would happen in China? As neo-familism 534 00:56:44,319 --> 00:56:51,260 is being pushed is there a potential 535 00:56:51,260 --> 00:56:54,350 uncivil side of the kind of familism emerging in China? 536 00:56:54,350 --> 00:56:59,240 Particularly if we take into consideration from what I observed there's a big 537 00:56:59,240 --> 00:57:07,610 shift from ancestor-center to grand child-center. In the past, in 538 00:57:07,610 --> 00:57:12,920 traditional Chinese culture the lineage - based Chinese kinship system actually 539 00:57:12,920 --> 00:57:19,120 has an aspect of public life because you've had ancestors who were long dead 540 00:57:19,120 --> 00:57:24,560 being the focal point and the descendants who could unite at least within 541 00:57:24,560 --> 00:57:30,080 the boundaries, the boundaries of the in-group people, within that kingroup they 542 00:57:30,080 --> 00:57:34,910 unite, surrounding the ancestors. Here professor Sangreen is the absolute 543 00:57:34,910 --> 00:57:42,440 authority on that tradition of Chinese cultural aspect but now it's a grand 544 00:57:42,440 --> 00:57:48,710 child centered. Each extended family has only one, maximum two - it doesn't go to 545 00:57:48,710 --> 00:57:54,290 somebody else 's grandchild. So that public aspect cannot be established or 546 00:57:54,290 --> 00:58:01,160 can hardly be established through this, right. If you connect this with another one, 547 00:58:01,160 --> 00:58:06,410 the next bullet point, China at the same time is marching very fast along 548 00:58:06,410 --> 00:58:13,330 the market economy track, becomes increasingly a society open mobile of 549 00:58:13,330 --> 00:58:21,050 society. That factors into familism. Neo- familism need not 550 00:58:21,050 --> 00:58:30,090 necessarily mean all good things. Thank you very much for your patience.