For the first lesson, aside from some admin issues, we also viewed some HSBC advertisements which emphasized the importance of cultural intelligence as it showcased two conflicting cultures doing business. This allowed me to understand how cultural intelligence affect our behaviour in front of other people and how other people perceive it to be. Besides this, we also embarked on our first chapter, China's Me Generation. As there were numerous readings on this topic provided in the wiki, I read up before coming for the lesson and this little background knowledge allowed me to grasp the gist of the lesson fairly easily.
The "Me Generation" is a term used to specifically refer to the group of youths in China below the age of 30 who are politically apathetic. These comes as a result of China's one-child policy which started in 1970, creating a generation of youths who are more materialistic and self-centered as they are pampered by their family since young. They highly-value their self-interests and rarely care about the welfare of other people. Hence, they deplore the idea of politics as they are more obsessed with achieving wealth for themselves, rather than revising and improving the incumbent system to raise the living standard of the majority.
As I continued to explore in the world of these "Me Generation" youths, a few questions subconsciously popped into my psyche which made me pondered about the sequels of China youths being so politically apathetic. Firstly, what are the detrimental effects on China both internally (socially) and externally (economy)? Furthermore, will the stability of the country be affected as the gap between the rich and poor continues to widen? How is the Chinese government going to tackle this problem?
In nutshell, the first lesson was very interesting as it touched onto a topic closely related to our youths' hearts. I really learnt a lot of knowledge about the new generation of China youths and their behaviour and the underlying reasons for such behaviour. I hope to engage in more of such topics in the future.
Hi Cheng Tat, after reading your post, i can't help but agree with some of your points. China's Me Generation is one of the topics that we covered, and this is the topic which the world is looking at right now. I agree to the fact that this generation have been created by the CCP's one child policy, causing children in China to be self centred and selfish, at the same time, fighting for their own rights and needs. I feel that this topic is not only related to us because we are the same generation as them, but rather, they affect our future. With China rising as a superpower, our future will be revolving around the Chinese youths now, instead of the westerners. We have to understand how this Me Generation thinks and acts, so as to be able to work with them in the near future. Hence understanding and analysing China's Me Generation is beneficial to us, making CDE lessons far more important than ever.
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