Latest news with #PrivateRevolutions:ComingofAgeinaNewChina
Hindustan Times
21-06-2025
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
Year of the... dragon?: Yuan Yang's new book explores the flip side of China's boom
What is it like being part of the 'China story', one of 1.4 billion in an economy that has grown 3,000% since the 1980s? Street art in Chongqing. 'There is growing uncertainty, particularly among the urban middle-class,' says journalist, author and UK MP Yang. 'An idea that, even with greater effort, the returns will be lower.' (Getty Images) What do survival and success look like? How does young China cope with the added weight of a regime that treats resistance as treason? What lessons could their experience hold for the rest of us? British-Chinese writer Yuan Yang, 35, investigates these questions in her book, Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in a New China (2024). A former Financial Times (FT) journalist, Yang was born in China and lived there, with her grandparents, until she was four. In 1994, she joined her parents in the UK. She only returned to the country of her birth about two decades later, in 2016. Living there as a journalist, over the next six years, she reported on the economic revolution, of course. But she also noticed 'private revolutions' unfolding, she says. There wasn't always space for these stories in FT, so she eventually picked four of them for her book. The women she profiles — June, Leiya, Sam and Siyue (names and certain personal details have been altered, to protect them from reprisals) — were picked, she says, to represent different backgrounds and economic classes. Siyue was raised amid immense pressure to excel academically. She has built a life as an English tutor but feels like a disappointment to her parents, and worries about her future. June, raised in abject poverty, brought great pride to her parents, as the first girl in her extended family to go to university. She built a life in Beijing as a tutor, but amid new government rules against rote learning, had to reinvent herself. She now runs her own start-up. Leiya dropped out of school in 2001 and found work as a factory worker. The harsh conditions pushed her to become a labour activist. She worries that her work is doomed to fail, and could see her end up in detention. Sam is a labour activist at the other end of the class spectrum. She is wealthy and driven by idealism. She heads a labour-activism blog and worries about the repercussions she and her family could face. (Inigo Blake) As China's juggernaut of an economy slows and changes shape, 'there is greater uncertainty,' says Yang, who, incidentally, was elected to UK's Parliament last year. Excerpts from an interview. You've said that a text from a friend kicked off this book… In 2019, amid a crackdown against student activists in China that had lasted months, with several of the students going missing and others appearing in 'confession' videos, a friend messaged me saying she couldn't meet up anymore. She was going quiet for a long time. In that moment, I really felt that these stories, which the world had not heard, needed to be expressed. We've watched the boom play out. What can you tell us about the flip side, as you saw it? What's interesting about the last decade of China's development is that while there has been an unprecedented explosion in wealth and incomes, especially for the university-educated, the urban middle-class appear to feel very burdened by the increasing competition for status. This is expressed, I think, in the intense competition for school admissions, the struggle to afford housing in the cities, and the pressure to advance in one's career by 35, which is widely considered a cut-off for success. All this leads to what, in recent years, is being called an involution: the idea that even with far greater effort, the returns will either be the same or lower. You say the problem, and growing disparity, reminded you of some of the crises of the Global North… The situation in Beijing, where a generation of young professionals can't afford housing, felt very similar to the situation of my friends in London. There is similar competition at the high end of the university education spectrum as well. China, like so many countries, in the Global North and South, has grown in uneven and unequal ways. How has this arc played out differently for women? That gets at something really important. Leiya, for example, describes how in a lot of women moved to the cities in the '80s, where a lot of new factories were opening, because they felt there was little for them in the countryside. Rural China is much more patriarchal. In a way, those with ambition were forced to do something new because of the lack of opportunities for them at home, and the fact that daughters get no inheritances in a traditional Chinese family. In some ways, this was greatly challenging; in others, it was also freeing. What about civil liberties, censorship… it is often hard to see clearly into China. What did you observe, in your time there? Individuals in China do face much harsher penalties for their speech and political action than I do, for instance, in the UK. Within those constraints, people are creative. But the constraints are very real. People in China still speak in different voices to different groups of people: trusted family vs friends vs colleagues vs officials. Meanwhile there is also the anxiety of losing one's footing, in this newly hypercompetitive world… If you're at or near the top of the ladder in China, you have quite a long way to fall. That does create the fear that one's children may not make it to the same rung as you. Parents fear that an 'average' child might not be able to compete to get the social status and support they may need from a state organisation or government body, or even get the respect they would like from, say, the police. What kinds of difficulties did you face, as a foreign journalist in China? It's difficult to say what kind of surveillance one is under in China, but I certainly always assumed that I was under online surveillance there. Sometimes there was physical surveillance as well. When visiting villages as a foreign journalist, I was viewed with a great deal of political suspicion. People were wary. Officials are really worried you might see something that goes against their narrative that, for instance, they have won the war on poverty and poverty has been 'eradicated'. Of course, it hasn't been, unfortunately. That is a long and a difficult fight to 'win', in any country.
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Business Standard
20-06-2025
- Business
- Business Standard
Best of BS Opinion: Why policy must shelter everyone without favour
It's that season again, when the rains surprise you. You step out without an umbrella, only to see someone near you pull one out, wide and sturdy but only for themselves. Or worse, they tilt it just enough to keep their shoulder dry while yours soaks. That's what bad policy often looks like. Advice or governance that shelters a few, but leaves the rest exposed. Advisory should be like a good umbrella; broad, responsive, and meant for all. Let's dive in. Pan Gongsheng, China's central bank chief, wants to widen the global monetary umbrella, away from dollar dominance. With six foreign banks joining China's SWIFT alternative and ECB's Christine Lagarde echoing concerns, there's a visible push. But, as our first editorial notes, China's capital controls and credibility gaps mean the renminbi (Chinese Yuan) isn't a ready replacement. Instead, we may end up with a fragmented financial drizzle with more transaction costs and less shelter for all. Closer home, Uttar Pradesh is building something more inclusive. The state is planning 15 MSME zones across 11 districts, using over 700 acres to energise small businesses. Programmes like One District One Product are reshaping exports, but the umbrella is still lopsided, argues our second editorial. Only one in three MSMEs are run by women, and agro-processing remains underscaled. For MSMEs to truly flourish, policies must unfurl beyond land to credit access, rural skilling, and logistical ease. Air safety, argues K P Krishnan, urgently needs its own umbrella. India's DGCA is shackled, lacking autonomy, money, and modern recruitment. Global regulators like the FAA and CAA operate with real independence. India needs an Aviation Safety Authority through a full Act of Parliament, with financial muscle and legal teeth. After all, umbrellas shouldn't only open after the thunderclap. And Vinayak Chatterjee writes of a nuclear pivot. From Small Modular Reactors to private sector entry, India's ambitious 100 GW goal by 2047 demands updated laws and new investors. But unless vendor liability rules, fuel security, and financing reforms come through, the umbrella will remain stuck at half-open. Finally, in Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in a New China, as reviewed by Gunjan Singh, Yuan Yang reminds us that in China too, the umbrella of reform has left many standing at the edge. Her portrait of four women reveals how revolutions may roar from the state but the everyday act of staying dry is personal, persistent, and quietly radical. Stay tuned and remember, advisory shouldn't be weather-dependent or selective. Open it wide or what's the point?
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Business Standard
19-06-2025
- Politics
- Business Standard
Women see reversal of China's one-child policy as more state pressure
Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in a New China Published by Bloomsbury 320 pages ₹599 For anyone trying to understand China behind the headlines and the propaganda, Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in a New China is an important read. It provides a people's perspective of how Chinese society has evolved since economic reform and the manner in which the policies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have impacted Chinese women in particular. The book is an attempt to present the story and idea of China beyond the CCP and through the lens of the Chinese people. The word revolution is also aptly used in the title underscoring how the word can mean different things to different sections of society and the Party. According to the author, 'This book is about revolutions in two senses. It is about China's economic revolution from the 1980s and 1990s onwards, after the Reform and Opening Up era…. It is also about the personal revolutions undertaken by four young women born in those decades as they came of age amid the inconsistent rise — and now stumble — of social mobility in China's capitalist era'. Women pay the highest price in any revolution and China is no different. Though Mao Zedong did famously proclaim, 'Women hold up half the sky', Chinese society does not reflect this outlook in any meaningful way. China is inherently patriarchal; for proof, one need look no further than the gender composition of the Chinese Politburo Standing Committee. Even initiatives such as the 'One-Child Policy' have been aimed at directing and controlling women's agency over their bodies. This coupled with the preference for a male child has consistently aggravated the intensity of inequality within Chinese society. The modification of the one-child policy to a two-child policy in 2016 and to a three-child policy in 2021 directly impacts the lives of Chinese women. These changes were driven primarily because of decreasing birth rates. She describes how Chinese women responded: 'Rather than being seen as a permission to have more children, everyone saw it as a sign of looming government pressure on women to rescue the country's plummeting birth rate'. There is no denying that Chinese society has seen enormous changes since economic reform. Large swathes of the population were lifted out of poverty, compulsory primary education ensured a high degree of literacy, urbanisation has been swift, and the country is an economic and military powerhouse. What gets lost in this big upbeat picture is the people. How have their lives been impacted? Can data be the only measure of success? For instance, the author shrewdly offers a take on how Chinese women approach the issue of using make-up. She highlights how using makeup is linked to the notions of being feudal and the 'fact that the party had later denounced wearing makeup as a bourgeois fashion'. But equally, a decision to apply makeup can also be considered revolutionary. The book skilfully juxtaposes the lives of four 'ordinary' women since their birth to their adult lives. It also paints a picture of how the policies adopted and implemented by the Party impacts each one of them differently and yet similarly, and underscores why the major challenges that the Chinese society faces today cannot be addressed by top-down policy changes. These policies primarily represent what the Party needs at any given point of time to survive and gain legitimacy. But these policies have also failed to address the real challenges. What China needs is a major revisit of the hukou system, the healthcare system, the insurance system, and child care and education system. The book details that, 'by the mid-2010s, government figures suggested that there were 13 million people without any kind of hukou, of whom 8 million had been children outside their parents' birth quotas'. It also highlights the challenges migrant workers face today, the same workers who have played a crucial role in China's economic revolution. This is not just a book about four lives; it is about how these women adapt to the changes around them. How they try to understand the lives of their parents and their children while understanding themselves. How they all define a purpose for themselves while making the most of the limitations and challenges. The book also shows how feudal, Marxist and capitalist structures coexist in China today. It provides a nuanced and novel context for what is a revolution in today's China. And that can be a small decision, something as simple as expressing your own opinions and deciding what kind of life you want to live. The reviewer is associate professor, O P Jindal Global University
BBC News
27-03-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Neneh Cherry among shortlisted women for non-fiction prize
An MP, a palliative care doctor, and musician Neneh Cherry are among the authors shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction in Buffalo Stance singer wrote A Thousand Threads, a personal memoir which Kavita Puri, the chair of judges, called "exceptional and effortless".Yuan Yang, the MP for Woodley and Earley, wrote Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in a New China, while Oxford-based Dr Rachel Clarke wrote The Story of a Puri said the non-fiction works were "united by an unforgettable voice, rigour, and unique insight". The shortlist is rounded out by Chloe Dalton's Raising Hare, Clare Mulley's Agent Zo: The Untold Stories of Courageous WW2 Resistance Fighter Elzbieta Zawacka, and Helen Scales' What the Wild Sea Can Be: The Future of the World's Ocean. Ms Puri said: "It was such a joy to embrace such an eclectic mix of narratives by such insightful women writers - we are thrilled and immensely proud of our final shortlist."She said Cherry's memoir was a story of a "remarkable life and the many threads that made it". "This is a book about belonging, family, how we find our place in society and, of course, music," she said."It's a complex portrayal full of warmth, honesty and integrity, and how Neneh came to be who she is today." Ms Yang, a former journalist and economist, is the first ever Chinese-born MP in the UK. Her book is described by organisers as a "portrait of modern China told through the lives of four ordinary women, each striving for a better future in an unequal society".Ms Puri called it "eye-opening, beautifully written and carefully researched".Dr Clarke's book, which recounts the story of a heart transplant, was described by panel judge and academic Dr Elizabeth-Jane Burnett as "meticulously researched" and moving "effortlessly between disciplines". Chloe Dalton's book is a "beautiful meditation on the interactions between the human and the natural world", according to novelist and critic Elizabeth Dalton, who is also a political adviser and foreign policy specialist, wrote of rescuing a leveret during Clare Mulley's biography is about an unsung World War Two resistance fighter from Poland. Writer and broadcaster Dr Leah Broad said it was "masterfully written", "phenomenally well researched" and a "window into World War Two stories that aren't often told".Helen Scales, a marine biologist, wrote a "heartfelt exploration of the deep sea", according to fellow author Emma Gannon. The Women's Prize for Fiction was launched in 1996, with the Non-Fiction Prize launched last winner will be announced on 12 June and receive a cheque for £30,000. You can follow BBC Oxfordshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
