Web opens world for young Chinese, but erodes respect

Armed with outside ideas and information, teens are challenging their teachers. And some schools welcome it.

By Peter Ford | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the May 14, 2007 edition

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Beijing - Excited and emboldened by the wealth of information they find on the Internet, Chinese teens are breaking centuries of tradition to challenge their teachers and express their own opinions in class.

Wearing jerseys emblazoned with the names of European soccer stars, downloading weekly episodes of "Prison Break," listening to 50 Cent, and reading Japanese comic books, China's current high school generation is plugging itself directly into international culture.

And it's giving the kids ideas. Ideas that could one day transform the way this country is governed.

"The Internet has given Chinese children wings," says Sun Yun Xiao, vice president of the China Youth and Children Research Center.

Many are using those wings to fly in the face of received wisdom about how and what they should learn, and about how much respect they owe to authority. "Today students ask you, 'Why?' And if you don't have a good answer, they won't necessarily accept what you say," says Zhao Hongxia, a young teacher at a private school in Beijing. "In my day, if the teacher said something he was always right."

The "post-90" generation of Chinese youngsters, named for the year the eldest of them was born, is "very different" from its predecessors, says Tony Hu, a Beijing high school student who has just turned 18. "We have far more ways to get information," he explains. "The generation before us knew nothing about anything except studying."

That judgment may be a little harsh, but Mr. Sun, whose research institute is linked to China's Communist Youth League, agrees with its essence.

"The post-90 kids are more confident and have more experience, and they are definitely braver and readier to challenge" their elders, he says. "The reason is that they have the Internet as a way to learn things, and because a lot more of them travel. They have more ways of acquiring knowledge."

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