The latest issue of The New Yorker comments on the phenomenon that the sociological term “involuted” has become a buzzword among Chinese youth. (China’s “Involuted” Generation, by Yi-Ling Liu, May 14,2021). The author’s argument naturally led me to connect this cultural phenomenon to the recent highly controversial census results in China, as the forced involvement of young people in vicious competition for survival and jobs is the most direct cause of China’s declining birth rate.
The declining birth rate is a common phenomenon in modern societies, especially in developed countries, and the excessive competitive pressure on young people is not a social problem unique to China, as many contemporary American college graduates know all too well. But what is indisputable is that the vicious competition between young people and even middle-aged people in China, especially those who are ready for higher education, has been intensifying and has become a huge social and cultural disaster.
This social and cultural catastrophe is also the backdrop against which Xi Jinping is launching his “Chinese Cultural Revolution” for the 21st century. Xi Jinping, who has his own personal experience of “youths from the countryside” “showing their abilities” to return to the city, is now taking advantage of the “internalization” of Chinese society to introduce more and more political factors into the employment and job market of young people. He is now using the “internalization” of Chinese society to introduce more and more political factors into the employment and workplace competition of young people. My hunch is that Xi’s version of the Cultural Revolution will have a much greater impact on China and the world than Mao’s because it will politicize economic competition among young people in a way that will bring the scale and intensity of vicious competition to unimaginable levels. The scale and intensity of vicious competition would reach unimaginable levels.
One of the most significant consequences that can be imagined is the acceleration of China’s population decline. Since China released the results of the 2020 census, I believe that many people have had no trouble drawing the conclusion from professional analysis that the total population of China in 2020 will be less than 1.4 billion. More importantly, the size of China’s population is irreversibly degenerating into a continuous process of shrinkage.
The reason why Xi Jinping’s Cultural Revolution will greatly accelerate this process is that the involution of Chinese society will not only further depress the birth rate, but will also keep pressing the life expectancy of the Chinese population, as it is not difficult to imagine that the overall political, economic and social climate will be very unfavorable to health care for all age groups. Thus, while demographic aging will continue to rise due to declining birth rates, it will also be accompanied by a stagnation or even a decline in life expectancy. In other words, the sharp decline in China’s population will come from both a falling birth rate and a rising death rate. If Xi Jinping starts a war, then there is the possibility of a precipitous decline in China’s population. Thus, the pessimistic prediction that China’s population will be decimated by the end of the century is not entirely out of the question.
Historically, the “involution” of China’s agrarian civilization has led to several instances of chaos and a dramatic reduction in the size of China’s population. Although China has completed its industrialization and urbanization and is unlikely to let the tragedy of history repeat itself in the same way, the involution of industrialized and urbanized Chinese society is posing a new threat, namely, the internationalization and globalization of the suicide mechanism of Chinese civilization. This threat was impossible in the era of agrarian civilization, which is why Xi Jinping’s love of singing the high tune of “community of human destiny” always makes those who know the inner workings of China uneasy. The more Western civilization, led by the United States, knows about the logic and inner workings of China’s “internalization”, the more determined it will be to disassociate itself from China. But I am afraid that it is too late to plan to “encircle” China, and if China’s “involutional generation” does not awaken, humanity will not escape a global catastrophe.
The most important reason is that contemporary China’s “inner volume generation” is not only a large number of people, and mastered modern technology. Chinese virus expert Shi Zhengli is an iconic figure representing this danger, and without evil motives, they could bring about the end of human civilization.
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