Change

The only real constant in China is change.
In major locals, change and modernization are visible on a daily basis.

The major factors:
Sprawling Metroplexes
The Agrarian to Urban Shift
The New Wealth
The One Child Policy
Television
Computers, Internet & Mobil Phones

All of these interact in an atmosphere of
Pollution, Endemic Corruption, severe Genertion Gaps &
Self Serving, Short Sighted, Unchecked Local Administrators

If you plan to enter Asia and seek to unravel the inscrutable enigmas you perceive, you are wise to relegate all of the myths to the waste bins of your brain. Instead, realize their agrarian cultures are being transformed quickly into blotted metropolises and the traditional social interaction systems are being totally revamped.

In country towns, the change is slow and sometimes in reverse. Why?
Urbanization! The young go to the big cities for work and the old stay behind.
The small towns lose youth, vitality, commerce and money.
Two thirds of the people still live in the countryside. The percentage changes daily.

Society is changing. The young live in big city apartment buildings away from the eyes and ears of parents, grandparents and neighbors. In cities,
no one cares what time you come home and who comes with you.
The moral standards of any society are based on history, culture and tradition.
In the 1970’s Mao did a hatchet job on all of these.
His Culture Revolution outlawed universities, religion, intellectual thinking, filial respect
and logic. Old temples and antiques and heirlooms were destroyed. Children were
encouraged to spy on parents and teachers.

Now, the One Child Policy “4-2-1” generation is coming of age. Spoiled by their four grandparents and two parents, these children without siblings are use to getting their own way and care less about others.

Urbanization, the new wealth and the Little Emperor generation are merging together in crowded, polluted cities. What is the future? Who knows?
I do know it will be different from the past.

Urban migration and television are perhaps the most significant forces influencing Asian social and cultural change. Simple television Soap Operas have a much greater impact than governments realize. Countryside youth watch television soap operas and envy the life of they percieve to be typical in the big cities. They dream of fancy cars, movie star boyfriends or girlfriends. They look around and see none of this in their home towns. The bus stations in the small towns are the drain pipes for country youth to being drained of youth, ages 18 to 30.

Mobile Phones, Internet chat rooms and large allowances have given the Latch Key urban teens new freedom to mix and meet. While this is not different from the West, the speed of change is.