In terms of family structure and family background in China, it seems that citizens of urban areas adhere to the “one child policy” instituted in 1979 to control the rising population. All of the interviewees are only children and grew up in various cities within China. Jane’s family consists of herself, her father, and her mother. Although “the one child policy has been fully effective only when draconian measures have been used to enforce it” and “alienate[s] a population already highly dissatisfied with its government” Jane credits the one child policy as a governmental success in controlling the problem of overpopulation. The other interviewees, Jonathan, Jen, and Joe all agreed that the one child policy is a “necessary evil” . Also of interest were Jen and Jonathan’s coinciding remarks about the abysmal performance their parents had in raising them. “Parents [of their generation] don’t know how to teach children” remarked Jonathan and Jen remarked that she “didn’t have a guide” and that twenty years ago parents didn’t care about their children in terms of developing their interests.

Jane’s father works in the Shanghai Light Industry as a department manager. The Shanghai Light Industry is a state-owned and operated industry that provides power to the city of Shanghai. Even with the developing free market economy in China, “the government is still the most important player in the Chinese economy, with about sixty thousand state-owned industrial enterprises employing a workforce approaching thirty million.” It is not surprising to find that Jane’s father continues to work in the state-sector as it still employs a large amount of people, especially those in the cities. However, the parents of the other interviewees reflected increases in employment by the private sector as two of the interviewees Jen and Jonathan had parents that worked in their own privately owned restaurants and stores.

For all those interviewed, education was a primary concern as all of them were somewhere along in their education process. In direct contrast to the Cultural Revolution and the inability to give sufficient education to its citizens due to heavy politicization of the curriculum, objective schooling has been integral to China’s recent success. Education is allowing China to enter the 21st century as the country with the greatest potential to become the next “superpower”. However, because China’s population is so large and limited funding provided on the national and local levels, public education presents an interesting problem for the Chinese government. In order to accommodate such a large amount of students seeking education with a very limited budget, China has instituted an examination based system to determine which students are sent to which schools. The examination system has become increasingly competitive and it is not unlikely to find students who attend school and do homework for 14 hours a day. Although the examination system helps to show which students hold the most potential and skill there is also plenty of criticism of the system. Jane imagines that the result of the examination based education system is that “people under this kind of education system become machines without their own thoughts, without energy, and they just keep doing the exercises for hours and hours.” Even worse these students “don’t do a lot of physical exercise, they don’t do a lot for fun, their life is kind of boring.” Even after all of the rigors of rote-memorization and recitation, students often find that at the schools they tested into, the “classes are large, the curriculum is unimaginative, and the level of instruction is often disappointingly low.” Joe agrees with Jane, stating that the examination based system creates “test taking machines”. In the end, the Chinese education system creates “students with excellent memory skills but weak creative and analytical skills.” One commonality between all of the students were their wishes to continue their studies abroad as Jonathan and Jen were to continue their graduate study abroad in the United States. Jane was happy to convey that she would be continuing her higher education at a prestigious undergraduate college in the United States.

Simultaneous increases in openness since the end of the Cultural Revolution and the Communist party’s acceptance for criticism has led to a sense of political apathy for some young Chinese. On the other hand, it has caused some young Chinese to become more politically active. In the apathetic group are Joe, Jonathan, and Jane, who believe that the current generation has no interest in politics whatsoever. Neither Joe, Jonathan nor Jane was part of the Communist youth league. In Jane’s high school in Shanghai, there was a “type of democratically elected student government” of which only three students in her class (out of 200 people in her total graduating class) were a part of. Jen was an actual member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and is ardently in support of the Party even though there is “some bad phenomenon in it”. She believes that these bad phenomenon “can be corrected” and pointed to the current laissez-faire economic policy of the CCP as a sign that life is improving in China. Jane, however politically apathetic she may be in real life, spoke readily about the policies of the Communist party. She stated that “the people that I know don’t like the communism and the government. Private property cannot be protected under this system, private property is very critical and essential to the people, which is the main drawback [of a Communist government]. The government cannot provide good welfare, most people are unhappy with their lives and poor.” The Tiananmen Square incident seems not to have affected the four interviewees at all. In response to being asked about the incident John summed up all of the other interviews by saying “Tiananmen is the symbol of China. That is all.” The opening of China after the Cultural Revolution has not only led to governmental reforms but it has also led to the opportunity for young Chinese people to reacquaint themselves with Western culture.