Thank you very much Professor Robyn McNeal for the invitation and thanks to
everyone here for coming and giving me this opportunity to share my recent
research with you and today's topic is a hardly new, hardly original. Basically
I'm telling you, trying to tell you that family is important, that family life is
important, intergenerational relationship in China
has been improved so on and so forth . Nothing new, nothing remarkable unless you
know I'm sure some of you know the family institution used to be condemned
as a bad thing. As I said some of the most radical intellectuals in China used
to call it the square one of all evil things so in other words the family
institution unlike its counterpart in the US has been very much in the center
of the political ideological struggles and it also was one of the strategies
that China pursued modernization which is also something doesn't sound so
extraordinary to us because here always feel this very personally even
modernization in the u.s. coming slowly and many of us who were born into
modernization - I cannot imagine anybody here born before modernization but
people in China like, even in my generation, those people witnessed
the arrival of a modernity, a modernization in a rather very fast radical
way and yet that pursuit for modernization in China has ever since
the turn of the 19th century has been almost like a Holy Grail that the entire
nation was trying so hard to get and even at whatever price it would take
right so if the price was to overthrow the imperial system and build a republic
they wanted to do it and they did it. If the price was it to have a new
constitution they tried and then they did it. And then the price was to figure to
get rid of the family and they tried to do it as well so that's why the first
point I want to talk - quickly go over - is the fall and the rise of the family and
this may not be a very rewarding part because as some of you know this part
of history very well, others may not know well so I'm trying to pitch in
somewhere in the middle but for those who know well it is too simple for the
for those who don't know at all it's just too difficult so bear with me
with this part and then I will go down to two case studies which out of my own
research, one is about urban youth in China, how their divorce was arranged by
their parents. That one sounds interesting right and the second case
study moved to the countryside in rural families I described how
intergenerational gap has been diminishing and intergenerational
relationship even intimacy I began to appear and so as a second study but then
toward the last section I will try to argue all this seemingly good
news may not indicate all good things and that there's a potential downside or
even dark side - a dark side of a familism or the resurgence of the new
familism in China. Okay.
Familism as I use it as a term here is defined as a mode of a social organization in
which the family works as a cooperate group. If you imagine how a company
operates a family operates like that way, meaning they rely on a
hierarchical arrangement of gender, sexual and intergenerational
relationship, and also in the case of China there is hierarchy based on age as
well and therefore the second defining point of familism is the interest
that the family took over and overshadowed the interests of the individual and a
loyalty to family overshadowed loyalty toward any kind of social organisations.
Therefore if they're in a society there is a strong familism chances are
there would be low social trust and a weak civic culture because the
familism turns the people inwards, they trust only their own family members and
not interested in public affairs, civic affairs and not even engaging in
much into civic activities. Hence the notion of amoral familism founded
in 1958 by the Harvard political scientist Edward Banford and the
exactly - oh I jump over a little bit but now in the West
ever since 1990s the term of familism seems to be changed at least and getting
rid of some of these previous negative connotations as we are
increasingly emphasizing family values and there is a turn - a return back to
families and family Values in contemporary Western societies yet I
want to point out that when study the return of family Values in contemporary
Western society one thing we needed to pay attention to that is the family - a
means to an end or the family is end in and of itself and the bottom line is
if whether the individual - the happiness of the individual - is at a center.
Why we want a family? In our contemporary Western society probably
family is a necessary means if you believe in family values to reach your
individual happiness. You does not want to family - to have a family for the sake
of having a family but that is not a familism. Familism by definition
means your individual interests, your individual happiness would be secondary
to that of the family. Therefore you must have a family. Okay, because of that
compulsory and even oppressive nature of the family institution back to the turn
of the 19th century many Chinese elites both in the intellectual and the
political circles began to blame the family institution as one of the root
causes of China falling behind, become so a backward and so weak. Therefore
they were calling for a complete family revolution to change the institution for
the purpose of liberating the individual out of the family institution. Therefore
individuals could become independent and strong and therefore could make up a
strong independent nation and therefore China could be modernised. So the
logic is quite simple and therefore for those who know this history well
and you recognize some names. Chen Duxiu, the first one, was
also the First Party Secretary - General Secretary of the Chinese
Communist Party and he was one of among the first to call for a family
revolution. Hu Shih - got his PhD in Columbia, from Columbia University - was
considered to be the representative of liberalism in China and he used to
work as the ambassador to the United States for the KMT government and is on
the other end of the political spectrum. He too was
among those will call for family revolution and Fu Sinian was a typical
typical scholar and he served as the President of Taiwan National
University and he was the person who first called the family as the origin of
our evils. So that was the trend and yet despite all these intellects' efforts to
get rid of the family and push for family revolutions until 1950s
nothing actually changed down there out there at the lower levels of
the society or in social practices. Family revolution by and large remained as
an ideological cultural movement and why? The simple reason was the familial mode
of a social organization was not changed at all. Go to the very basic thing.
Production, economic activities, were more or less still organized through
family. All of this began to change after the Chinese Communist Party took
national power in 1949 and to start the socialist transformations and
the first one - one of those important landmarks - the first one is 1950
marriage law, purely in terms of the law the legal code, was probably not as ready
not not more not to be more radical than the 1930 marriage law, or the 1932
marriage law but the difference, the major difference was the CCP, the Chinese
Communist Party, was able to implement the 1950 marriage law which was very
liberal, banning parental arrangement of marriage, banning concubinage, marriage
by purchase and legally required marriage based on love and
have instituted a marriage register system so on and so forth and legalized
divorce and leading to the first wave - divorce wave in China - which was
mostly initiated among women. So all of this happened in the early 1950s
then collectivization in the countryside and also the nationalization
of industry in the cities. Basically for those who are not familiar with this
history, this part of history basically meaning gradually a sort of a
state ownership of a property being established, not really public ownership
which may give us a misunderstanding. A state ownership of a property was
established therefore the family was for the first time pushed out of the picture
as a mode of economic activities and social organizations. Ever since the
1950s there has been also continuing ideological political
campaigns and in Chinese discourse aimed at the feudalism and attacking patriarchal
cultures and also quite a number of family values based on that
patriarchal culture and a patrilineal kinship system as well, reaching to the
peak during the Cultural Revolution, you know, between 1966 to 1976 in the early
years of Cultural Revolution, say from 66 to 69, and some of you might heard of
those cases that the family members are reporting each other because they wanted
to be loyal to Chairman Mao instead of being loyal to their parents. If they
spot anything politically suspicious out of their parents they would report it to
the party and the parents would do the same toward their children so
that would be consider to be the the highest point of this anti-family
revolution, state-sponsored elite-led anti-family revolution in
China but that was only in the political -ideological domain. In my own
research I did it mostly research focusing on everyday life so by the
1990s that family revolution has indeed produced some positive results as
well leading to what I'd call a double transformation by the early 1990s that
is the family. Having been completely out of the public life and has become
increasingly a private haven for individual life for individuals to
pursue their family life and it was certain extent individual happiness as
well. Therefore love, intimacy, conjugal intimacy and other notions like
privacy even began to emerge in family life which lead to what I call the
privatization of the family, the family gradually being moved out of the public
sphere, and also just the other side of this double transformation is the rise
of the individual. By early 1990s for the first time probably in history an
individual would hesitate for a second wait a minute am I doing this for
myself if I am doing this for myself is that justifiable how important it is to
pursue my individual happiness. So those began to emerge - I'm not saying
completely changed-but I see this as very important indicators of a radical
change so that's by the early 1990s. When my book was published in 2003
so it's always almost ten years behind and then after a while,
afterwards continuing research and also my reading of secondary literature
gradually caught my attention to new trends of a change and behind that
there is one important factor that is where it's a so-called second
democratic turn, demographic turn meaning there is along with the
increase of life expectancy, the decline of a fatality, a whole number of the new
fertility cultural values began to emerge. Children become valued as a
treasure instead of being regarded as laborers.
That's a very important thing and it started with those who were born in the
1980s in China who happened to be in the same time when the Chinese government
imposed, implemented a single child policy, mostly us in the urban areas but
also have huge impact in the countryside not necessarily leading to singleton child
still have certain impact and then continue on to those who were born in
the 1990s. In these two decades children being born in China in
urban China mostly having no siblings so there are singletons. If you think
about the family think about the kinship system that simple fact alone has a huge
implication and they are also as I just mentioned the treasure, as the most
valuable treasureable thing in family life. So we even simply based on these
very very simple straightforward facts. We see there is a certain change in
intergenerational relationship. One is because a child becomes so valuable and
therefore the parents has been showering their single mostly singleton
child with material, comfortable material life, and parental protection carrying
love, all of those good things and but it's not, it doesn't go without a price.
There is another side, there is a parental expectation. While showering all
these goods things on a singleton child parents also have, I expect, high
expectations of their child. They all wanted their child to be somebody
and I can tell you in my generation - I was born in the 1950s, long time before many of you guys
and in my generation I think a parent, most parents would hope that their
child would survive, that's it. If we survive then grow up, that's very good.
And then at the age of fourteen I become a full-time laborer, helping my family,
that's it. So and therefore more children better happier family life
because more children, more laborers. This is the difference. More children, you
cannot afford therefore you concentrate on the
singleton child and then has a huge parental pressure to expect the child
will thrive will success will be successful, it's been, this has been
shared by the entire population in China, doesn't matter where they are, it could
be on the top of the society in Beijing Shanghai could be all the way to
the bottom of the rural China but still share the same version which is very
very important but sometimes even very scary.
Just imagine 1.3 billion people share the same version of what a good life
should be. And another important thing I was just talking with Professor McNeil
before this is the like or the absence of ideological conflict
across generational lines. If you look at the parents of the eighti-ners ninety-ners
who were born in these two decades there's not much a difference.
They watch the same media plus their things and TV programs and then later on
quickly absorbed into the new social media and also they all immersed into
global consumerism. They were all interested in materialism. The only
difference is the parents are more focusing or interested in material in
terms of wealth accumulation. They work very hard. They want to buy one property
after that a second after that a third and all of these is shared
again by the entire nation and then the children's generation probably are more
interested in how to use the wealth to live a good life but from my point of
view one way or the other is materialism and because they share these materialism
tendency therefore talking about power balance crosses intergenerational lines.
It depends on who have the resources. Whoever have the resources will be in
the upper hand position so the previous arrangement of familism
that is hierarchy based on age, sex and generation were not that relevant today.
Instead it is resources accumulation and control. The last bullet point is a
question mark. I wonder whether similar things also happening, are also happening
here in the US. There is an inter-generational gap that is disappearing
and we tend to have less conflicts with our parents. At least we don't have that
much radical conflicts, meaning we totally have different world views
with our parents. My observation is probably yes and there are also reports on
how many American youths after college live with their parents.
Economics is one of the reasons - they cannot afford the rent but if your
parents have a totally different world view you simply cannot stand then I
don't think those young people would be able to go back and live with their parents
for real. My guess is this - it's a very radical guess - ever since the end of
the Cold War, we were basically living happily or unhappily under global
capitalism there has not been a radical ideological difference which could push
the younger generation totally away from their parents' generation
even in opposing direction. Think about the war in the 60s, 70s
even up to the 80s there were still those factors that could divide the two
generations, but those things are done, this is just beside the line comments.
Okay now again still a very general observation the rise of a neo-familism
in public life in Chinese society and two one is the family becomes very
important and in the sense one new thing is when nowadays when talking about the
family people begin to include their parents from both sides when talking
about young people married a couple so once again the extended family becomes
increasingly important but the difference is that in this wave of the
rise of extended family it's not necessarily only the male side it
could be the other side, the wife's side, parents-in-law from a man's point of
view living with the young couple or could it
be from both sides so I will come back to this later and then there are
many social surveys about trust and result is
along with market economy and the social trust actually didn't go up instead it
has come down and yet parents are the family are always labeled as the most
trustworthy social resources. It comes from my own research as well. Another
very general indicator is during the recent decade of the Chinese
government's anti-corruption campaign there's a new phenomenon or new term
popping up. It is called familial corruption, meaning if you take a closer look at any
case of official corruption behind that that person there's the entire family
involved and even the young our normal definition with the family because the
chances are that corrupt official has at least one mistress and that mistress was
very likely the original push for official to embezzle public funding or
or doing something else and then the children.
Many corrupt officials later once they fell they confessed and said
the motivation for me was to do something for my son or my daughter. I
only have this child so as long as my child can live a good life, I'm okay. So
many officials would be able, were, driven by this therefore familiar mode
of a corruption has been recognized by the Chinese government all the way
up to Xi Jinping and they wanted to correct this.
Whether they can do that or not it's not beyond my scope of investigation but I
just use this as another factor to show how important family has become
especially for those who know some and knowing the history of the first three
decades of China, neo-China PRC - 1950s 60s, 70s - there were
corrupt officials, there were cases of official corruptions but if you look at
the reason family was not there at all. Instead those officials were very clean.
They do things, even the first thing is that to push their family aside. They don't
want to do anything for the interests of their family. Okay.
Another general marker is the pursuit for meaning of life, especially in the
last 10 years also and many Chinese families have accumulated enough wealth
to the point that they began to feel their life have become meaningless
and they wanted to add something on top of the pursuit of wealth and looking for
the meaning of life yet given the political-social
conditions in China in the last decade or so the civic spirit or public sphere
have not been developed much in the last decade when people tried to find the
meaning of life hardly they can find anything meaningful or worthy of
pursuing outside a family circle so they turn inwards and then the family once
again becomes a very important thing for that reason. Okay so those who were
looking from the society's angle to look at the rising importance of the family
but now if we switch to individual's angle, my angle, your angle, say from very
early time the family, or parents, become very important. For the younger
generations in 1980s - eighti-ners nineti-ners, ever since the time
they are going to kindergarten their parents would get involved to choose the
best kindergarten the best primary school the best high school so
that their singleton child can go to the best university and the most radical one
I saw last year, early this year, was in a case this is an elite
kindergarten. They only recruited ten children every year and they only
recruit ten children born in January every year so parents in order to make
sure their child being recruited into this elitist, very elite kindergarten,
they wanted to plan their pregnancy, making sure their child being born in
January, being interviewed - one mother said literally in Chinese, let me say it in
Chinese first, 我们必须要赢在射精线.
so they wanted to win before the departure point, the starting line,
therefore where is the starting line is what is the term? Impregnation? Yes okay
so you have a plan when you eject in order to make sure your child
being born in that month. So this is theoretical but it says something about this
early education and the involvement of the parents right. And then they make choices
so before college graduation parents are pushing their children singletons to
concentrate on study but right after the commencement children turn apparently
turn to another target. Have you had a girlfriend yet a boyfriend yet? I said
I've been studying, how can I have a boyfriend. Now it's the time to have one.
so switch it to the second task I'm pushing for marriage
therefore parental involvement in both negative form - the veto power- or
positive form - trying to do matchmaking thing, because it's very
important and I don't know but those who follow Chinese media you must know this
Jin Xing show and this is called the Chinese dating right and it's very hot.
Why? Because Jin Xing who is a transgender artist, she was able to
catch this parental involvement as a new, very significant
social change therefore she has this show, inviting parents coming to
choose the spouse for their children, a child, so it's basically parents making
decisions. I strongly recommend you go to watch this show.
That's the girl being selected or being chosen by a whole number of parents.
There's one of the parents sitting together with their son. Their son was in
a separate room, had no power to say anything,
just watching how their parents, his parents, choose the date for him. This
is a photo of a very old practice-some of you might visit this place as well-
People's Park in Shanghai actually everywhere in every big city small city
in China now you have this as a matchmaking corner in the part and where
they display the information of their child
singleton mostly singleton child in order to find a mate. I want to remind
the audience not a long ago in 1950s it was the opposite. Young Chinese-
Chinese youth-fought very hard against the parental arrangement as a part of their
liberation. This is a movie based on a Ping Ju - a Ping play of northern China and
this is a very famous actress, a very famous heroine - the figure Liu Qiao Er -
and this caption says, after thinking again and again now I have made my final
decision, that is to cancel the previous engagement
made by her parents and pursue her own love so the thing is that
this is 1950s. Nearly 70 years later we have parents finding the
spouse for their children and then I could really go over this I think I'm
running out of time. Marriage - the excessive cost of a
marriage in contemporary China - for this I'm always been doing research on
this single phenomenon - how much does it cost to get married in China
and especially in the form of a bride wealth just keep going up and without
those necessary items especially a young man can simply simply cannot get
married and therefore all parents are anxious to prepare for this. I have a
friend, young friend in Shanghai at Fudan University. 30
years old he just got his son born early this year and in
order to prepare this - he's a young faculty - he spent a 2.5 million Chinese
currency to buy a nice small apartment - not nice - actually I want to see it the other way -
old small apartment next to Fudan Campus - it's a school district and
then after the birth of the new baby he realized this is a son so his son needs
a girl therefore he has been bidding for the
second car license in Shanghai. You have to, you know, get into this
lottery in order to bid for a license - a license plate - he already had his so
just two weeks ago he recharged it to us saying I happily got my second car
license plate. That's for twenty years later I was telling him maybe 20 years
later Shanghai Government changes the policy and then he's now he's
talking about getting another big house for his son so all of this
marriage becomes increasingly costly and putting pressure on parents and then
post-marital residence and child-rearing - all of this - whole family
're involved. You cannot do any of this without your parents or her or his
parents involved. Even about divorce you cannot divorce alone you have to be your
know your parents and chances are the divorce was pushed by his parents. That's
my case study: parents-driven divorce.
The intriguing point is the younger generation of Chinese are -appear-
to be more independent in some part of their life. They receive the most updated
information, living the most updated consumerist
lifestyle and they could many of them did dye their hair into blue
or green and so on so forth but comes to important decisions
interesting thing is that they still go back, look for their parents' support and
here are some basic figures. Basically among the worst cases forty percent of
the divorce were cases involving the eightiners, meaning the eightiners' generation
probably is having higher divorce rate and the more interesting thing is
that a high percentage of those divorcing young couples would have their
parents involved and nearly more than half of them would have their parents
representing them in the court and there are cases their parents were fighting.
Parents on both sides were fighting very hard against each other while
the young couple sitting out there among the audience play with their
cell phone. It's almost like it is not their case because actually by the time they go
to court the young couple already reconcile. It's too late - both parents
decided to push for divorce and then they went forward. So much so now
the Chinese media began to say there is a day of Fumu Sanbao - this is the further
development from Fumu Baoban - it's the parental arranged marriage. Now it's a
parental arranged divorce in three very important aspects, that is, whether
a couple should get divorced or how to divide a common property after
divorce and then who is going to raise the child, the young child in
the third generation okay? I need to go very quickly - tell you the factors from
my point of view - just reading the main title probably. One is excessive
parental interference and the supervision of their singleton's life,
everyday life and parents are doing this. They mean, they mean well.
They want to take care of their children for instance in one extreme case. The
mother after her son gets married the mother is still worried because her son
tend to throw his comforter onto the ground during sleep so every night
mother will come into their bedroom to make sure his son didn't do that.
Now he's married right so much so that the young daughter-in-law
eventually cannot bear them anymore say: "Mother, why don't you just move to sleep
in this room together with us". Surprising to her next night her mother,
his mother, moved in so the next day the next move would be
to demand a divorce right and this is the one thing. This leads to the second that
is parents because of their previous investment for caring love and financial
resources into their singleton child so much, so much that they cannot think
otherwise. That is after getting married, a conjugal
interest would be different from a single child's interest because a
conjugal unit. It has its own interest. That interest needs two parties
- husband and wife - to make some compromises yet the parents cannot
recognize that so they insist on protecting their singleton's
personal interest in the child's marriage. That is another reason - whenever there's
a push they only push for personal interest which is in the opposite
direction to the conjugal interest. Of course if parents are doing this and
that the young generations are resisting - they don't need to as strongly
resisting as the 1950s, 60s' generation. If they do something it couldn't be
going that far but yet the younger generations entirely rely on their
parents even when they have quarrels with their own spouse.
They would go back to talk to their parents and then you can imagine when a daughter
or a son talking to his or her or his mother complaining about the spouse,
what would the parents say? Probably no good words and therefore there's
another reason but behind all this is the younger generation only trust their
parents. I ask the young a question again and again hypothetically
before your spouse and your parents who would it be more trustworthy. Of course
my parents. My parents love entirely wholeheartedly love me. My
spouse may be somewhere so that's the important thing
to watch. The last one is economics. Parents involved too much into the
economic base of the new conjugal unit. Therefore anything goes wrong, parents
cannot bear with it. So these are the four major reasons of my first case
study and I think the second one I should go even faster. It's just about
the rural case so I'm ok? All right so these are the four points of this entire
case study published in two articles. One is over the last two decades.
The departure point is again the improvement of inter-generational
relationship because in the 1990s scholars had talked about the crisis of
the filial piety and some scholars even observed old people - parents
committing suicide because they couldn't bear with the miserable life in
their old age anymore and me too. I wrote about the decline of a failure
culture and I today I don't think I was wrong like two decades ago and it's just that
things have changed and now it seems that crisis has gone
instead inter-generational relationship has been improved a lot and meanwhile
the new thing is what I call the inter-generational intimacy. Adults
- married children in the countryside - shared a lot of laughters, conversations with
their aged parents. They took their parents to tourism going to visit other
places the entire family. Those things were unheard of at least in the rural
area I work and so then I just wanted to find out why. One reason is basically
the two generations work together, redefining what filial piety should be.
Filial piety in traditional Chinese culture is based on three things - one is
the continuity of the descent line. You need to do well in human reproduction.
Not only not any kind, only one kind - to produce sons. If you don't you fail.
Your life. You are now the failure. This is the number one thing. Number two thing is
ritual sacrifices, worship all this and and then along with is
the very important other aspect that is absolute respect and obedience of
parents by extension any senior kin so that's a very important thing.
It's unconditional obedience and respect. Parents are always right. Even they are
wrong you have to say basically you're right and then you cannot carry through
in action but you cannot disrespect your parents, like argue or talk back to
them. Of course care and support in
parents' old age is another important effect. So 20 years later the third
factor is no longer that critical anymore because of the
improvement for living standards in general. So hardly you'll find at least
in the area I'm familiar with old parents cannot survive economically.
In the cities it is even better - parents have actually more resources than their
adult married children. What has changed is the second point - the absolute
respect and obedience to parents. Over the last two decades it gradually shifts.
The older generation began to give up that expectation and the younger
generation began to redefine this as as long as I make my parents not worried
about my life, make them happy because I'm having a happy life
that's called filial piety. So let me repeat this again. If being respected,
being obeyed is considered to be part of individual happiness in traditional
filial patrilineal culture so that center, that one was centered on the
parents' generation or even further back onto ancestors. You work hard to glorify
your ancestors. You don't get any reward in the instant and the real sense but
you get a reward in a delayed sense meaning when you become a parent, become
an ancestor you will be worshipped you will be respected so it's almost like a
good Christian working hard for the glory of God not for the present life
but over the last two decades this began to change. Simply along with early
change another one I mentioned that is after the single child policy children
become much more treasured and the parental love, caring showering towards
the children so instead of treating them as labors. Therefore children's
happiness has indeed become parents' happiness
and I asked both sides because in the first place I thought of this as just
the rhetorics of the young adult because that they wanted to enjoy
a good life then they go back to ask their parents and their parents say: "Yeah,
what is the purpose of us working so hard? They are happy therefore we're
happy". So it's almost like a redefinition of filial piety plus the ritual
sacrifices are no longer that important and then economic shortage, or poverty,
has become less relevant so putting all this together and if then the two
generations can easily find a common ground and more than that
these child-centered culture, a new family culture, continue to develop and
be switched to the third generation. Once 80ers - the 90ers began -
have their own child, or some, in cases, children, that third generation become
the new focal point. Both the senior generation meaning the grandparents and
the parents put all resources onto the third generation. It becomes a new
centripetal power center, absorbs our love, caring and effort. Speaking of efforts I
always have a sort of weird observation, that is, a Chinese family has to be a
unit of fighting, they must have something to do. If entirely
as a unit that enjoys life, Chinese family will fall apart and if I
have something to fight for, to work for, the family would unite, work very hard.
now you have a wife and a new grandchild I'm not joking if you look at when is the
best time for Chinese couple to divorce. First it is a funny assumption.
Chances are when their children grow up they go to the best college, everything
goes so well now the couple sit down and say, let's talk about divorce. I tolerated you
for 20-plus years and she says me too. Why? Because they have done all. Their
lives passed. They finish all those things that must be completed. Now they can take care
of themselves. Now with these new focals in the third generation finally
struggle continued on as more meaningful right and so this last one we
talk later but basically this is the three major points I talked in those
two articles. I go into details and ethnographic details. I think I don't want to
bore you guys with those details. I can quickly move on. Now with all
those things I just reported I still call it a neo-familism instead of a
new familism. The reason is unlike the new familism in contemporary Western society
in which individual happiness is at the center, is the end. Family, how
important it is, regardless of how important it is, is a means to an end. That end is
your happiness, my happiness and but in the Chinese case just as in the case I
talked about - the three generations working together for the grandchildren
to grow - it's not the family is not a means to an end. The family remains to be
an end in and of itself so there is a rising aspect of the individual but
the individual still is being subsumed under a collectivity over the family group
therefore I call it a neo-familism but there are of course these
tensions unlike in old days and family absolutely took the primacy
and supremacy over individuals but now you have these individuals rising
including the increasing importance of intimacy,
emotions, affections in Chinese family life. This is another new thing I'm
working on. Okay,
three things are very important for us to understand what I just reported in
a larger society. One is from the nation-state point of view. The new
leadership has been reassessing the family as a possible strategy to realize
Xin Jinping's Chinese dream. Again if you go back to the very early point I
made, the family as a strategy of pursuing modernization by the
nation-state in China. Now you see it's coming back and Xi Jinping has given
a lot of speeches and this is the website from the Chinese, from the Chinese Communist Party,
the Central Disciplinary Committee and I think this is mostly
aimed at familial corruption, that's the phenomenon, but you know in other contexts
Xi Jinping 's also emphasizing on the importance of the family,
family rules, family issues - all those things and so much so it become part of the Xin
Jinping's code. I think eventually there will probably be a book on Xi Jinping's
code and that there's a family code and the family will be
there and the second is side by side with the State's re-focus on the family.
There is this from bottom-up at societal level a resurgence, or revitalization, of a
traditional Chinese culture, Confucian ethics in some cases exactly the same
kind of Confucian ethics that the May Fourth generation in the turn of 19th
century were fighting against, they're coming back, such as filial piety,
such as absolute obedience of women to men - all those are coming back
and that as another interesting factor we should pay attention to.
This photo is a opening ceremony at an elite
primary school in Hangzhou and where children were being dressed up in this
traditional way and they have this ritual. 2014 ever
since Xi Jinping began to promote traditional Chinese culture
there has been a nationwide campaign of all sorts pushing for this.
This is in Qufu - the Confucius hometown - and they have these training
camps for learning Confucianism. These would remind for those who went to
China in the 70s, 80s maybe, those old practice, communist practice of Xuexi Ban -
study groups and you've been totally indoctrinated into this and in this
particular one is the notion of a filial piety. Okay this is the second factor. The
third factor is the arrival of a risk- society - China - and something like what
I studied it once about food safety issues and there are some other things,
similar things, China become just a like a contemporary modern West, is also in
today's stage become a society filled with unknown unknown unknown risks,
uncertainties and therefore this factor 's also affecting people's pursuit of a
meaning of life, pushing them toward the family as a coping strategy. Okay, this is
the last slide. Going back to my first slide. With all of this, thinking about
civic life, public sphere if familism is by definition not going
to be aligned with public - a healthy booming public sphere - and
active civic life. Now what would happen in China? As neo-familism
is being pushed is there a potential
uncivil side of the kind of familism emerging in China?
Particularly if we take into consideration from what I observed there's a big
shift from ancestor-center to grand child-center. In the past, in
traditional Chinese culture the lineage - based Chinese kinship system actually
has an aspect of public life because you've had ancestors who were long dead
being the focal point and the descendants who could unite at least within
the boundaries, the boundaries of the in-group people, within that kingroup they
unite, surrounding the ancestors. Here professor Sangreen is the absolute
authority on that tradition of Chinese cultural aspect but now it's a grand
child centered. Each extended family has only one, maximum two - it doesn't go to
somebody else 's grandchild. So that public aspect cannot be established or
can hardly be established through this, right. If you connect this with another one,
the next bullet point, China at the same time is marching very fast along
the market economy track, becomes increasingly a society open mobile of
society. That factors into familism. Neo- familism need not
necessarily mean all good things. Thank you very much for your patience.