ABSTRACT
Since 1978 China has transitioned from a nation mired in poverty, economic stagnation and political chaos to being recognised as the most rapidly developing area on the planet. Such a shift has been facilitated by post-Mao economic reforms (termed gaige kaifang, ‘reform and opening up’) which have not only increased standards of living but also intensified connectivity with countries outside. Contemporary China has, accordingly, come to be viewed by Western observers through a lens of head-spinning transformation. A language of transformation has also been applied to Chinese youth with accounts of xinxinrenlei (‘new, new youth’, the term literally denoting a new species) and ‘millennial youth’ who purportedly ‘reflect Western kinds of modernity and individualism’ (Moore 2005: 358) demolishing previous pictures of youth. As Croll has observed:
Perhaps there has been no more potent image of change in China’s post-revolutionary years than the image of current generations of youth as they participate in new forms of recreation and entertainment, consume in the new world of goods and enter the global ranks of the ‘young, hip and cosmopolitan.’
