中国的年轻人得不到什么好评。在最常见的说法中，他们是"小皇帝"、"自我的一代"――出身独生子女家庭，娇生惯养，不关心政治，只对跑车、视频游戏和出自设计师之手的商品感兴趣。在路易威登(Louis Vuitton)上海旗舰店，每到周末，等待进店的顾客排成长龙，年轻女性耐心等候在绳子圈起来的队伍里，仿佛她们要进的是最红火的、新开张的夜店LA Club。
然而，"自我的一代"开始要抗争了。对房价不断上涨的不满正在升温，加上近期汽车制造厂及其它工厂发生的罢工，均折射出中国年轻人的期望越来越高、却又不时落空。他们想要从生活中得到的东西，比父辈所梦想的还要多。这个现象可能给中国的未来造成各种各样的后果。
关于近两个月发生的罢工，人们有许多不错的解释，包括工人工资过低，以及人口结构变化导致加入劳动大军的年轻人减少。但是，世代的变化也在产生影响。中国人常常说起他们"吃苦"的能力。这有助于解释他们为何能够挺过上世纪混乱而贫穷的境况。然而，上世纪八、九十年代出生的这代人，是在较为普遍的繁荣中成长起来的，即使是在贫穷的农村地区。
20年前，对于在城里工厂打工的许多农民工来说，往乡下境况困难的家里寄钱就是他们的主要目标。如今他们把工厂看作个人事业的一部分，是迈向城市生活的第一步。上网让他们增长了见识；2008年《劳动法》的出台，增强了他们的个人权利意识。
经济学家谢国忠(Andy Xie)在《财新》杂志上撰文，描述了十年前他在中国大型工厂里见到的那些温顺听话的工人：他们大部分是18岁的女工，厂方看中的是她们"灵活的手指"。他们没有多少如厕和休息的时间，在休息时也得坐在指定的长椅上。相比之下，近期发生的罢工似乎表明，当代工人"吃苦"的意愿大大减弱了。"当代年轻人和他们的父辈就像是两个不同世纪的人，"谢国忠表示。"他们想在大城市定居，而且与其它国家的同龄人一样，期待获得有趣、高薪的工作。"
对高房价不满的背后，也存在同样的世代变化因素。面对这种不满，北京被迫冒着经济放缓的风险，遏制房地产市场。高房价迄今没有引发大规模示威游行，但紧张是确实存在的。中国央行的一位顾问近期形容，当前中国房地产市场的问题，比美国市场在危机前的问题更加严重，原因就在于其中不但包含泡沫的元素，还存在上述政治压力。
对于中国数千万年轻的大学毕业生来说，买房是他们过上现代中产生活梦想的核心环节。年轻的中国男性社会压力最大。第一次有人跟我说买不起房他就结不了婚时，我还以为他在开玩笑，可这是人们时常听到的话。中国的准丈母娘们似乎是不饶人的一群。
房价一路上涨，首当其冲的就是年轻人。假如他们的父母是城里人，那么他们很可能在上世纪90年代末的住房改革中分到了房子，这让他们在住宅市场里有了立足之地。但现在中国很多年轻人觉得房价太高了。在北京等城市的郊区，生活着成千上万被中国媒体称为"蚁族"的大学毕业生，他们在为寻找人生第一份工作而奔波之时，居无定所。
中国近期最火爆的电视剧之一是肥皂剧《蜗居》――蜗牛的房子。该剧对房地产市场背后的政治作了尖锐的批评。剧中年轻的女主角最后成了一位政府官员的情妇，以便为她姐姐还房贷。在许多观众看来，这部剧抓住了某种城市梦幻灭的感觉。
这一切并非预示着，一场革命即将爆发，年轻人将发起大规模抗议，要求实行政治改革。过去20年里，中国共产党粉碎了不止一个声称其即将灭亡的预言。中国年轻专业人士的政治观点，往往着眼于现状，他们对本国精英的看法，并未因亲历文革或1989年学生抗议遭镇压事件而受到影响。
近期，中国的年轻人在表达强烈的政治观点时，民族主义成了他们的主调。2008年西藏骚乱、奥运火炬在欧洲传递时发生抗议期间，中国许多年轻人对西方某些政客和媒体的态度深感愤怒。如果说他们对北京有所批评的话，那就是嫌政府对西方不够强硬。
不过，对年轻人来说，更爱国，与要求更多、更加个人主义，二者之间并不矛盾。现代化释放出了巨大的力量：中国的年轻人既对本国取得的成就感到骄傲与自信，也对自己的生活抱着很高的期望。中国年轻人群体的不安分迹象，使中国未来政治走向更加难以预测。
译者/杨远
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001033482
China's youth can get a bad press. In most accounts, they are the "Little Emperors" or the "Me Generation", the spoilt and apolitical offspring of one-child families who are interested in fast cars, video games and designer goods but little else. At the main Shanghai store of Louis Vuitton there is a queue to get in at weekends � young women wait patiently in the rope line, as if they were trying to get into the hottest new LA club.
Yet the Me Generation is beginning to show its teeth. Simmering discontent about soaring house prices and the recent wave of strikes at car plants and other factories both speak of the rising and sometimes frustrated expectations of younger Chinese, who want more from their lives than their parents could dream of. It is a phenomenon that could have all sorts of consequences for China's future.
There are lots of good explanations for the strikes of the past two months, including low pay and a demographic shift that is reducing the number of young people entering the workforce. But there is also a generational shift at play. Chinese often talk about their capacity to chi ku, or "eat bitterness", which helps explain their resilience amid the chaos and privations of the past century. But the generation born in the 1980s and 1990s has grown up among much wider prosperity, even in poor parts of the countryside.
Twenty years ago, the main goal of many migrant workers in city factories was to send money home to struggling village families. Now they see the factory as part of a personal project, a first step towards an urban life. Internet access has made them more worldly and since a labour law passed in 2008 they have a stronger sense of their rights.
Writing in Caixin magazine, the economist Andy Xie described the compliant labour force he saw at large Chinese factories a decade ago. The workers were mostly 18-year-old girls prized by their bosses for their "nimble fingers". They had few toilet breaks and had to remain at their benches during breaks. In contrast, the recent strikes suggest a workforce much less willing to "eat bitterness". "Today's young adults and their parents may as well be from different centuries," says Mr Xie. "They want to settle down in big cities and have interesting, well-paying jobs � just like their counterparts in other countries."
The same generational forces have been behind the discontent over the cost of housing, which has forced Beijing to deflate the market and risk an economic slowdown. There have been no mass demonstrations about property prices but the tensions are real enough � one adviser to the central bank recently described China's housing problem as being even worse than pre-crisis US, precisely because it combined elements of a bubble with these political pressures.
For the tens of millions of young Chinese graduates, buying a flat is a central part of their plan to live a modern, middle-class life. Young Chinese men feel the social pressure the most. The first time someone told me his chances of getting married would be ruined if he could not buy an apartment, I thought he was joking, yet it is a refrain one hears constantly. Chinese mothers-in-law to-be, it seems, can be an unforgiving bunch.
It is the young who are hit most by rising prices. If their parents come from the city, it is probable that they were awarded their government flat in the housing reforms of the late 1990s, giving them a foothold in the property market. But many young Chinese now feel priced out. Beijing and other cities have thousands of what Chinese media call the "ant tribe", young graduates who live in precarious housing on the outskirts as they try to land their first job.
One of China's biggest recent television hits was a soap opera called Woju, or Snail House. A biting social commentary on the politics of property, it featured one young character who ends up becoming the mistress of a government official to pay off her sister's mortgage. For many viewers, the programme captured a certain kind of urban disillusionment.
None of this is a prediction about imminent revolution or youthful mass protests for political reform. Over the past two decades, the Chinese Communist party has confounded predictions of imminent demise. The political views of professional young Chinese often tend towards the status quo, their ideas about China's elite untainted by direct experience of the Cultural Revolution or the massacre of protesting students in 1989.
On the recent occasions when young Chinese have expressed strong political opinions, nationalism has been the dominant tone. In 2008, during the riots and demonstrations in Tibet and European protests around the Olympic torch relay, many young Chinese were irate at the attitude of some western politicians and the western media. If they were critical of Beijing, it was for not being tougher with the west.
Yet it is not a contradiction for young people to be more patriotic, but also more demanding and individualistic. Modernisation has unleashed powerful forces � pride and confidence in China's achievements but also high expectations about the life that can be lived. The signs of restlessness among young Chinese make for a less predictable political future.
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