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Parasite kids feed off parents in raging consumer society
By Wang Yong |
November 26, 2011, Saturday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
A CURMUDGEONLY acquaintance of mine could not have afforded a private car had he not wrung donations from his doting septuagenarian parents.
He really doesn't need a car. He lives near where he works and where his child studies - both within a 20-minutes' walking distance.
But he wants a car, a core symbol of status in today's global village, where no other "ism" has been so globalized than "consumerism."
Make no mistake. His parents are just rank-and-file retirees living off meager pensions.
All their life they've never had a car. And now, with nearly half of their lifetime savings feeding into their unthankful son's dedication to personal indulgence, the fragile couple's dim hope of revamping their dilapidated home has been dashed.
Not all Chinese children "bite the old folks" (ken lao zu), a common expression describing parasitic children who feed off their parents. But those who do behave like parasites have increasingly morphed into a pillar of our economy.
The Workers' Daily reported this month that more than 60 percent of Chinese children act like parasites, siphoning off the "blood" of their parents. Sina.com, China's leading news portal, reported at the same time that parasitic children have come to buttress China's housing bubbles.
Talk to a child or parent in any prosperous city in China, and chances are that the father and the son hardly agree on anything except that the father "owes" the son a wedding apartment.
Since when has China changed from a society where, for hundreds of years, children were taught to bow to parental authority, to one in which children are encouraged to "borrow" blindly from parental savings?
Cool analysis
William Bonner, a constant contrarian, suggests an answer in his 2011 book "Dice Have No Memory: Big Bets and Bad Economics from Paris to the Pampas."
He makes no particular reference to Chinese "parasites," but his cool analysis of hot consumerism throughout the world helps anchor China's problem in a broader context of the globalized race toward the bottom of materialistic pleasures.
"The American consumer not only keeps pace with the absurdity, he races ahead, as if he wanted to be first in line at bankruptcy court," Bonner jeers. "It was obvious to us and anyone who bothered to think about it for two seconds that you can't get rich by spending money."
The American consumer has been racing ahead that way for many decades, long before China opened its door in the 1980s to embrace the idea of borrowing and spending into a better life.
Before China opened its door, an old Chinese woman would be praised for having saved more than she spent at the end of her life. After the door was opened to Western ideas of spending, however, the typical American woman who borrows her way into a big house became an ideal.
For sure, few American children borrow from their parents to race ahead in materialistic pleasures, but the consequences are similar, be it in America or in China: when you consume yourself to death, you go bankrupt.
But in the case of China, it's more likely to be the parents who go bankrupt because of their parasite children.
Acknowledging the gravity of the parasite problem, Jiangsu Province passed a regulation on March 1, allowing parents to reject the demands for financial help from a financially independent child.
But this law won't bite if parents continue to dote on their biting children. In a society where everyone is flaunting their plumage, what parent would want to see their only child travel by foot or live in a modest home?
He really doesn't need a car. He lives near where he works and where his child studies - both within a 20-minutes' walking distance.
But he wants a car, a core symbol of status in today's global village, where no other "ism" has been so globalized than "consumerism."
Make no mistake. His parents are just rank-and-file retirees living off meager pensions.
All their life they've never had a car. And now, with nearly half of their lifetime savings feeding into their unthankful son's dedication to personal indulgence, the fragile couple's dim hope of revamping their dilapidated home has been dashed.
Not all Chinese children "bite the old folks" (ken lao zu), a common expression describing parasitic children who feed off their parents. But those who do behave like parasites have increasingly morphed into a pillar of our economy.
The Workers' Daily reported this month that more than 60 percent of Chinese children act like parasites, siphoning off the "blood" of their parents. Sina.com, China's leading news portal, reported at the same time that parasitic children have come to buttress China's housing bubbles.
Talk to a child or parent in any prosperous city in China, and chances are that the father and the son hardly agree on anything except that the father "owes" the son a wedding apartment.
Since when has China changed from a society where, for hundreds of years, children were taught to bow to parental authority, to one in which children are encouraged to "borrow" blindly from parental savings?
Cool analysis
William Bonner, a constant contrarian, suggests an answer in his 2011 book "Dice Have No Memory: Big Bets and Bad Economics from Paris to the Pampas."
He makes no particular reference to Chinese "parasites," but his cool analysis of hot consumerism throughout the world helps anchor China's problem in a broader context of the globalized race toward the bottom of materialistic pleasures.
"The American consumer not only keeps pace with the absurdity, he races ahead, as if he wanted to be first in line at bankruptcy court," Bonner jeers. "It was obvious to us and anyone who bothered to think about it for two seconds that you can't get rich by spending money."
The American consumer has been racing ahead that way for many decades, long before China opened its door in the 1980s to embrace the idea of borrowing and spending into a better life.
Before China opened its door, an old Chinese woman would be praised for having saved more than she spent at the end of her life. After the door was opened to Western ideas of spending, however, the typical American woman who borrows her way into a big house became an ideal.
For sure, few American children borrow from their parents to race ahead in materialistic pleasures, but the consequences are similar, be it in America or in China: when you consume yourself to death, you go bankrupt.
But in the case of China, it's more likely to be the parents who go bankrupt because of their parasite children.
Acknowledging the gravity of the parasite problem, Jiangsu Province passed a regulation on March 1, allowing parents to reject the demands for financial help from a financially independent child.
But this law won't bite if parents continue to dote on their biting children. In a society where everyone is flaunting their plumage, what parent would want to see their only child travel by foot or live in a modest home?
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