Revolution? No thanks, I'm busy shopping

Even those who live lives of more conspicuous consumption reject the criticisms of their elders as overblown.

“I think my sense of social responsibility is pretty strong,” said Amy Shen, 25, who gave up dreams of being a teacher for a position as sales manager at a small real estate firm in Chengdu because the “prospects were better.” Shen says older people in China obsess about the materialism of young people because they don’t understand it.

“They didn’t have a chance to pursue material things,” Shen explained. “They had to worry about feeding and clothing themselves. They didn’t even have a foundation for thinking about materialism.”

And to those who might see the post-80s as the repudiation of everything Tiananmen stood for, China-watcher Stanley Rosen points out that is not necessarily the case.

"That’s something that came out of Tiananmen Square very strongly, with [student leader] Wu’er Kaixi and the others saying, 'We want consumer goods like Nike shoes, we want to be able take our girlfriends out to a bar and discuss any topics we want,'" Rosen, a professor of political science at the University of Southern California, told GlobalPost. "One of the reasons China has been so successful is that a lot of what was being protested for — not all, but a lot — has been put into effect."

Rosen is among those who believe criticism of the post-80s has failed to reflect the complexity of their lives compared to previous generations. Liu, the former 1989 participant, agreed.

“We didn’t have the Internet, we didn’t have video games,” Liu said, explaining why his generation tended to think in grander terms. “All we had were books and conversation.”

Liu also pointed out that previous generations enjoyed free education and guaranteed jobs, while the post-80s have had to pay for college and find employment without government help. “They have more to worry about.”

Despite the pressures and distractions, there are signs the post-80s might not be as disengaged as they’ve been made out to be. Students made up the vast majority of volunteers who rushed in Sichuan Province in the wake of last year’s devastating earthquake. They were also highly vocal in criticizing what they saw as a global anti-China bias following the riots in Tibetan areas last March.

The rise of the kind of nationalism seen with the Tibetan riot brouhaha might not strike many in the West as a positive development, particularly after the love affair between Western media and the pro-democracy protesters in 1989. But, as Rosen explained, Chinese youth have always been primarily concerned with making their country strong, whether through following foreign models or by finding their own path.

While the chances of a major movement erupting in the near future may be slim, Rosen said he believed it’s only a matter of time before the idealism of Chinese youth trumps their materialism.

“It’s still a Confucian country,” he said. “People feel uncomfortable with just making money, for the most part, and they’re looking for something beyond that.”

Rosen argues that Chinese youth will reassume their traditional role at the forefront of political reform given the right set of circumstances: a precipitous slowdown in economic growth, for example, or a major foreign policy humiliation.

Liu agrees. “Whether people pay attention to politics depends on whether they perceive there’s a political problem,” he said. “There are problems accumulating now, but there needs to be a fuse to light them off.”

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