TY - CHAP
T1 - Deng’s Children
T2 - Chinese ‘Youth’ and the 1989 Movement
AU - Lanza, Fabio
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015, Fabio Lanza.
PY - 2015
Y1 - 2015
N2 - In 2011, while writing on the category of ‘youth’ in twentieth-century China, I found a measure of inspiration in media representations of the Arab Spring.1 Western media presented the ousting of Mubarak and similar dictators as the work of technologically inclined young kids (they tweet! they are on Facebook!) rather than as the result of a complicated mixture of Islamist organizations, economic inequality, and political dispossession. Understood in such terms these events appeared much less threatening to Western ears. After all, if these were democratic, secular and West-friendly young people -analysts and editorialists seemed to imply — then they could and should be supported without ambiguity. ‘Americans need feel no ambiguity’ was precisely what the New York Times editorial board had told its readers on 6 May 1989 apropos of the student demonstrations that had shaken Beijing since mid-April. These young students, ‘China’s future’ — the editorial argued — were protesting for things that were as vaguely defined as they were immediately understandable to US readers: economic prosperity and democratic reforms.2 Unlike their elders, these young people were ‘like us’.
AB - In 2011, while writing on the category of ‘youth’ in twentieth-century China, I found a measure of inspiration in media representations of the Arab Spring.1 Western media presented the ousting of Mubarak and similar dictators as the work of technologically inclined young kids (they tweet! they are on Facebook!) rather than as the result of a complicated mixture of Islamist organizations, economic inequality, and political dispossession. Understood in such terms these events appeared much less threatening to Western ears. After all, if these were democratic, secular and West-friendly young people -analysts and editorialists seemed to imply — then they could and should be supported without ambiguity. ‘Americans need feel no ambiguity’ was precisely what the New York Times editorial board had told its readers on 6 May 1989 apropos of the student demonstrations that had shaken Beijing since mid-April. These young students, ‘China’s future’ — the editorial argued — were protesting for things that were as vaguely defined as they were immediately understandable to US readers: economic prosperity and democratic reforms.2 Unlike their elders, these young people were ‘like us’.
KW - Chinese Communist Party
KW - Cultural Revolution
KW - Newspaper Advertisement
KW - Student Movement
KW - York Time
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85145000614&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85145000614&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1057/9781137469908_12
DO - 10.1057/9781137469908_12
M3 - Chapter
AN - SCOPUS:85145000614
T3 - Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series
SP - 260
EP - 282
BT - Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series
PB - Palgrave Macmillan
ER -