'Western values' not to blame for a generation's failings

• Source: Global Times
• [22:57 January 25 2010]
• Comments

By James Palmer

Pick up a Chinese newspaper, and the opinion pages will be full of articles blaming the young for their bad habits.

From incessant text messaging to underage sex, from schoolgirl beatings to snorting drugs, the new generation can't do anything right.

Blaming the young is nothing new. One Assyrian stone tablet, dated to around 2,800 BC, reads "Our Earth is degenerate in these later days; there are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents; every man wants to write a book and the end of the world is evidently approaching." The Roman writer Cicero cried "O tempera, o mores!" (Oh, our times! Oh, our customs!)

Along with this comes an inevitable idealization of the past. Conservative British writers deploying hooded thugs and pregnant 14-year olds like to evoke Victorian values, glossing over staving Irish children or crippled factory workers.

The Chinese equivalent is the evocation of a nebulous set of "traditional values," usually held up in opposition to the individualistic ethos of the West.

But it's especially strange to see the loss of traditional culture, the breakdown of manners, and a rise in violence being blamed on the Westernization and materialism of the reform and opening-up period. Reform and opening-up, after all, came directly after the Cultural Revolution (1966-76).

During the "years of chaos," many were killed in mass violence. Those who stuck to traditional culture were humiliated, and numerous artifacts and sites were destroyed. In Beijing alone, three-quarters of the important historical sites were destroyed. Teachers, the ultimate transmitters of traditional values, were tortured by their students. It makes today's kids seem positively holy.

The root of any loss of tradition today lies here, not in the fondness of teenagers for McDonalds and video games. Growing up in a society reeling from ideological shock, with the old civil institutions destroyed and without the culture of the past, is it any wonder that younger Chinese looked elsewhere for their values?

But the belief that traditional values guaranteed a harmonious, well-mannered, and peaceful society is a fundamentally misguided one, whatever period you look at.