Special Report – Chinese millennials

By
João Paulo Meneses

Macau Business | October 2022 | Special Report | Chinese Millenials

China’s future

“The world is yours as well as ours. But in the last analysis, it is yours. You young people […] are like the sun at eight or nine in the morning […] We put our hopes in you” (Mao Zedong)

Millennials are defined as the generation born between 1980 and 1999 (or sometimes more narrowly, between 1981 and 1996), and they differ from other generations in a variety of ways.

China labels its generations by the decades they were born in, and this special report focuses on the balinghou (those born “after ’80”, who grew up as China reformed and opened to the world under Deng Xiaoping) and the jiulinghou (those born “after ’90”).

These two cohorts in China represent some 400 million people, and for sheer size they’re important; it makes them one of the nation’s largest emerging consumer groups.

For a place like Macau that intends to remain a tourist city, the group is vital – something our MGTO knows all too well.

So, in this special report we try to get to know them a bit better: their tastes and the options available to them, at school and at work, and the difficulties and anxieties they face.

Rejecting characterization based on stereotypes, we always look for a scientific basis, but the truth is that defining 400 million by whatever methodology is not easy. It may even be impossible given the segment’s inherent contradictions: Are they selfish or altruistic? Are they consumerists or ecologically aware?

Above all, as several experts have warned, this group has a unique identity distinct from its counterpart in the west and mustn’t be measured with the same yardstick.

Co-ordinated by João Paulo Meneses [email protected]

No chip off the old block

The under-40s represent an almost total break with their parents’ generation

From divorce…

(still a taboo, at least in Macau, despite the strong influence of western lifestyles and living standards on residents’ daily habits)

Digital natives

First social networks, now the metaverse, are “becoming essential for the sense of being, for the existence, of youth”

Traveling, an essential part of their lifestyle

“Winning the hearts of Chinese millennial tourists is a critical focus of integrated resort businesses,” according to a Macau study

“Everything but gambling”

And when they do gamble, they spend less money or want games very different from the conventional offer

Taobao, their “favourite leisure activity”

Online shopping has become a national pastime among millennials in China

“Involution” (for losers)

“The irrational competition created by university students to strive for high-quality job resources has caused the phenomenon of ‘involution’”

Job + frustration = tangping

Millennials are frustrated with their jobs in big companies, but the big companies, too, have difficult times ahead

Alcohol, the main problem

But depression and student suicide also warrant attention from authorities

“The mental health problem has become much more severe among Chinese youth.”

Chinese millennials “are more able to be individualistic and more likely to uphold their individual rights,” according to Jianhua Xu, Head of the Department of Sociology at the University of Macau.