Spare a thought for China’s adolescents. In the Middle Kingdom, run as it is by a coterie of communists, post-pubescent “acting out” will no longer be considered a step in young people’s journeys towards finding themselves. Their acts of rebellion — often manifested in “bad behaviour” — are to be seen as a failure on the part of parents, who will be punished for the misdemeanours of their offspring, according to the draft Family Education Promotion law. In essence, the state is telling young people that their individuality and agency is a myth.
There is a charitable explanation for this paternalism. China, after all, is still ostensibly communist and Karl Marx did say “social being determines consciousness”. Perhaps, in a conservative, authoritarian society, punishing parents for their children’s misdeeds is the only way for an all-powerful state to force its way into the familial dialectic. It is more likely, though, that a task as important as raising future acolytes for the party-state is too important to be left to parents. It may take a village to raise a child, but in Xi’s China, it takes the state to make a citizen.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on October 20, 2021 under the title ‘It takes a party-state’.
