B-site presents Backwash 2.0 – “I don’t want to be like this”.
This is a speech (narrated by a 15-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy in turns) that was assembled after collecting ideas from 955 middle school students from 26 schools. In front of the camera, two children state their ideas and express their attitudes: “I don’t want to be a person with a saw,” “I don’t want to be a person covered with thorns,” “I don’t want to be a person made on an assembly line “”I don’t want to be a person who is invisible”” “I don’t want to be a person who is not patriotic” ……
This video, in the circle of friends also triggered two very different evaluation – one side believes that this is full of positive energy, with such thinking of the future of young people can be promising; the other side believes that in this “pink” prevalent era, many people are “This is the cruel truth. How should we look at the rise of pinkies? This article is a long article published by the author in 2019, which is re-edited and published here in order to provide a direction and possibility for reflection.
On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the country, a wave of unnamed patriotism has arisen in China and overseas Chinese circles due to various factors. The “various factors” here include the active mobilization of official initiatives, such as the grand military parade held during the National Day, the different versions of the song “I and My Motherland” resounding in the streets, and the arrival of National Day movies such as “I and My Motherland”, “The Chinese Captain” and the restored version of “The Founding Ceremony”.
There was also the external factor of the anti-revisionist fiasco that had lasted for more than four months in Hong Kong, as well as the involvement of external factors to varying degrees in the broader context of the United States, and especially the unexpected episode of the NBA fiasco, which pushed the patriotism within China to a climax.
In this wave of patriotism, the most notable is the rise of the pinkie group. This group has made a strong presence in the boycott of the NBA and the confrontation with violent protesters in Hong Kong. The so-called presence here, often showing the effect of fire and ice, but also some small pink straight “do not understand”, such as relying on the network confrontation with the violent protesters in Hong Kong “rice circle girl” as a small part of the pink, harvesting official praise The “rice circle girl” as part of the network standoff against the violent protesters in Hong Kong has gained official praise and recognition, and even once made it to the primetime news broadcast, but another wave of pinkies with boycott NBA slogans spontaneously went to Shenzhen pre-season protest, but was interviewed by the police and ordered to stop, inspiring patriotic enthusiasm was instantly splashed with cold water. In the face of this situation, Sina microblogging an education “patriotic pink” hot article that criticized, “the so-called patriotic people do not know how to read the newspaper, guessing the wind …… Ministry of Foreign Affairs said when the strict bargaining, it The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Chinese and foreign interactions should be inclusive, so they bought tickets to show the purchasing power of Chinese people.”
If the rise of the small pink as a phenomenon, then in conjunction with at least three questions need to be answered: how did this group rise? Is their rise the inevitable result of social iteration, or is it the result of active official mobilization by the CCP? And what does this iteration mean for China and the world?
How did the “pinkies” rise?
Let’s start with the first question: How did this group emerge? The name “Pinky” was first coined by Jinjiang, a pink color scheme, and around 2008, a group of women representing overseas students and immigrants emerged on the site, often fighting as a group because they were uncomfortable with certain users posting negative news about China. So they were gradually fired as the “Jinjiang Girls Worried about the Country” or “Pinky”. Women’s groups, patriotism, group fighting, a few key words, constitute the initial group characteristics of the “pink”. The sensational “The Ballad of the Desert” is a perfect interpretation of the characteristics of the “Pinkies”. The first was the setting of Han Chinese as the invaders in “The Ballad of the Desert”, which challenged the bottom line of the pinkies who already held nationalistic beliefs, so they launched a collective boycott by netizens, and finally reported to the General Administration of Radio, Film and Television in anger.
It is worth mentioning that several “major events” in the crucial year of 2008 also provided a breeding ground for this group to some extent. For example, the Wenchuan earthquake, the Beijing Olympics, and the freezing rain and snow disaster in southern China, on the one hand, there were natural and man-made disasters, and on the other hand, there were glory and dreams, and the young group’s sense of distress was aroused, which led to a rise in national sentiment, and they began to argue fiercely on the Internet with “publicists” who criticized the current situation in China, in order to defend the red line of national sovereignty and territory in their minds. The people’s website In the article “How did the “pinkies” group rise? In the article “How did the “pinkies” rise?”, it is written: “The ‘pinkies’ are a generation rich in cultural self-confidence, enjoying the dividends of reform and opening up during their growth, witnessing the country’s strength and becoming the second largest economy in the world, and thus not taking the so-called Western paradigm seriously and agreeing more with the national model and development path. They are proud of the country’s achievements over the decades and are happy to spread positive energy online.”
If at the beginning, the “group battle” of the pinkies, which relied on Jinjiang to emerge, was only deep in the same platform and had certain common identity labels, such as women and overseas students, then over time, the logic of the “pinkies” overwhelmed the stereotypical labels. In the end, regardless of gender, whether they are from Jinjiang Literature Network or not, as long as they are nationalists and strongly oppose others’ criticism of China, they can be part of this group. This is why the group has participated in the “My Boy” campaign of Lin Xinru, the campaign against Sun Yang, the boycott of Zhao Wei’s film “No Other Love,” the boycott of Hong Kong artists who support “Occupy China,” the 2016 “Dee Bar March” to take over Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen’s Facebook page, and the recent boycott of the NBA. The main force behind the recent boycott of the NBA and the siege of radical protesters in Hong Kong are all considered to be “pinkies” because of the consistency of their form and logic.
Therefore, the rise of the “pinkies” may be due to both subjective factors and objective reality. The subjective factor is that, as the core of the millennial generation, the post-90s are the main group of pinkies, who indeed have completely different values and national sentiments from their parents, especially with the rapid development of the Internet, it is easy for their voices to accumulate and form an energy that cannot be underestimated. The objective factor is that, as China continues to rise, there are more and more international voices questioning, criticizing and even demonizing China, which used to be able to continue to “bide its time” because its strength was not worth mentioning, but now it can no longer “make a fortune in silence”. So a chain of “stimulus-reaction” is formed – China’s rise “stimulates” the West, the West The West then “reacts”, the West “reacts” and continues to “stimulate” Pinky, Pinky then “reacts”, Pinky “reacts” again. Pinky then “reacts” and Pinky “reacts” to “stimulate” the West again. …… After this cycle, from 2008 to the present, the demonization of the West continues, China continues to rise, and Pinky continues to grow. And to some extent, the continuous rise of China has made Pinky more and more certain and confident in the face of Western demonization.
Why the rise of Pinky is inevitable
After clarifying how the pinkies have risen, let’s look at the second question: Is the rise of the pinkies the inevitable result of social iteration, or the result of active official mobilization? If we look at it from the perspective of Hong Kong, Taiwan and the West, the answer is undeniable, because the rise of this group is only the result of official “indoctrination” and “brainwashing” by the Chinese Communist Party, and it serves the realpolitik, so that when needed, it can be “mobilized”. When the normal order is disturbed, they can be “interviewed for tea” at any time. Because in the context of Hong Kong, Taiwan and the West, the pinky’s patriotism is just a tautology of love for the Communist Party, because from their parents’ generation, they grew up singing or at least listening to the song “No Communist Party, No New China”.
But if we put aside the preconceived stereotypes of the “Communist Party of China” as a political party, it is easy to see that the rise of this group is not simply based on official mobilization, but is the inevitable result of social iteration. Why is that? Because the group of people who are now considered pinkos is completely different from their parents’ generation, who grew up through the years of China’s hardships and the Cultural Revolution. On the one hand, they were born at a time when China was booming, and the patriotic education they received from various sources was real and palpable, such as a “War Wolf”, an “Operation Red Sea”, a “Wandering Earth”, and a “I Love You China” by Liang Bo, the winner of the Voice of China, all easily became their patriotic education lessons, and the effect was more direct and effective than books, plus their own They have had the opportunity to go abroad since they were young, and after seeing all kinds of things in foreign countries, they find that “it’s just like that”, which in turn strengthens their sense of identity with their motherland, which also contrasts with the inferiority complex of their parents’ minds that “the moon in the West is always fuller than in the East” and the look-up attitude. This is also in contrast to the inferiority complex and look-up attitude of their fathers’ minds that “the Western moon is always fuller than the East.
On the other hand, today’s “pinkies” are a generation that has grown up with the Internet. In the Internet era, people no longer gather by blood or race, but by interest, political opinion and the way they look at issues. The effect of the Internet is that previously scattered voices have created a kind of accumulation. In fact, before the Internet boom, there was no shortage of patriotic youth and groups, but limited by the means of communication, the dominance of public opinion and discourse was in the hands of a few opinion leaders and paper commentators, and the latter group tended to focus on the negative aspects of China because of their natural critical nature, such as forced demolition, violent law enforcement, black prisons, etc., creating an atmosphere of “China is full of diseases” in the public opinion arena. Han Han, as the “idol” of the post-80s generation, is very different from Guo Jingming, the “idol” of the post-90s generation, in terms of his criticality of realpolitik. The latter is more willing to enjoy the pleasure of consumption and materialistic desires of this “small era” than the former’s criticism.
Because they are wrapped up in consumerism and materialism since birth, the pink group has become a “beat generation” in the eyes of the previous generation, and they brush Jitterbug, watch “Yanxi Raiders”, chase after celebrities like crazy, and when necessary, they can huddle together in the name of patriotism to make their presence felt. That’s why some traditional Chinese intellectuals are constantly lamenting the picture of “two Chinas”: the current Chinese society, from the top to the bottom, from the outside to the inside, has a fascinating view, with the birds singing and dancing, and the sky in the ascendant, and the landscape is unique; from the bottom to the top, from the inside to the outside, there is destruction and degradation, crisis and chaos, and the mountains are full of wind and rain. To paraphrase the sentiment of Japanese bestselling author Miura Zhan in his book “The Lower Class: The Emergence of a New Social Class”, using Japan as a carrier, is that when a society, the upper class is fleeing, the middle class is going down, and the lower class is falling, can this society give people hope?
Such feelings and worries are not entirely unjustified, but it may be a bit biased to overly magnify such worries and consider the young people represented by the pinkies as the “collapsed generation”. The rise of this group is not a coincidence, but is happening to varying degrees around the world, and in the foreseeable future, this social iteration and change will only get faster and faster.
A decade back, many people would say that the post-80s are the “Beat Generation”, but today the founders of TMD (Today’s Headlines, Meituan and Drip), following BAT (the three giants of Chinese Internet companies, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent respectively), are all from the post-80s generation. Driven by the emerging technology, the post-80s not only did not become the collapsed generation, but also took a place in the tide of entrepreneurship by continuously subverting the tradition. Standing at today’s point in time and pushing forward ten years, today’s generation, which is labeled by many people as pink, may also make the world look at it differently. In addition, the pink group itself is constantly changing as its perception and vision changes. This is like the growth of a person, when they first become adults may be emotional, blind or even impulsive, but as they grow older, gradually tend to rational and discerning. And such rationality and discernment specifically to patriotism, not for the previous patriotic subversion, but is the understanding of China’s endogenous dynamics and cultural heritage for the patriotic solid.
When the pinkies grow up to be the “middle force”
Although there is a lot of “evidence” that can be listed with the post-80s as a reference to show that the pinkies are not so useless, in the eyes of many people who have seen how China has come all the way to today, especially for the groups that still cannot get out of the shadow of history, the rise of the pinkies, especially the patriotic ones, is a kind of blindness. “sudden patriotism”, without understanding the “what”, “why” and “how”, and then The “what”, “why”, and “how” are not understood, and then they start to rush into battle mindlessly.
Based on this concern, a third question arises: What does the rise of the pinkies and their social iteration mean for China and the world? Just as when The Economist featured “Socialism for Millennials” on its cover, the broader question is: What does this mean for the West, which has always believed in capitalism, and for the world in the future?
This is an issue that must be taken seriously,” says Zhang Qianfan, a professor at Peking University School of Law, in a special article. In Zhang Qianfan’s view, patriotism does not necessarily mean irrational emotionalism, and even emotional patriotism is not necessarily bad, but blind patriotism is indeed dangerous. “When we advocate an idea (such-and-such), the advocacy itself must have a clear meaning, not just an ambiguous emotion, otherwise it is indeed easy to go astray and cause unintended consequences, or to justify policy failures that have already had disastrous consequences, leaving the entire nation in a state of ‘patriotic patriotic’ clamor to lose the ability to face up to and reflect on its own shortcomings.”
In the view of the pink community, perhaps the “threshold” of patriotism is not so high, but just a simple expression of emotion, which may be through retweeting an official post of a “flag guard”, or liking a short video of the military parade launched by CCTV in ShakeYin, or It may be a sentence of anger at seeing the national flag being thrown into the river or burned by protesters in Hong Kong …… They do not have the heavy historical baggage of their parents, so they are more able to go lightly and become the greatest source of cohesion in China.
Looking back at history, when Sun Yat-sen looked at the devastated China and said “400,000,000 Chinese are nothing but a scattered sand”, you can imagine how far the people’s heart was dissipated. Today, a century later, in the face of this bottom-up wave of patriotism, even the Western world has begun to acknowledge that China’s patriotic education has worked, although this “acknowledgement” still carries a sour taste, such as bringing the focus to the powerful “brainwashing The “admission” still smacks of sourness, such as bringing the focus to the criticism of powerful “brainwashing”. But in fact, if you think about it, you will find that many things in this world will have a “brainwashing” effect. Brainwashing”, even the hot Internet songs people do not hesitate to give it a “brainwashing” name, but the effect is the effect, whether it is a film, advertising or song, the original intention is not to brainwash others, but to influence others. A truly healthy and advanced society is not to stifle this kind of “brainwashing” that is so rare every day, but rather to build a unified group of thought and give full space for independent thinking.
Mao Zedong said in 1957, in front of Chinese students studying in the Soviet Union, “The world is yours and ours, but in the end it is yours.” In today’s China, Mao’s “you” includes a huge number of small pink groups. Especially with the rapid rise of this group and its continued growth in the foreseeable future, it is a presence that cannot be ignored for China and the world. Today this group is still young and uninitiated, but in a few years, when they become the backbone of Chinese society, the changes will be clearer.
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