You have to be both Chinese and not exactly Chinese to notice this phenomenon: a family in the US and the UK is becoming different, more “Asian”.
But a Hong Kong resident and columnist for South China’s largest local newspaper, the Morning Post, Alex Lo had every opportunity to hang between two worlds: he studied in England at a time when Hong Kong was still a British colony. After that, he became a great patriot of Asia – and China in particular – but he also kept a keen eye on what was happening in western civilisation.
It is based on a random letter from a reader saying that in Hong Kong today parents have to support their grown children for a very long time, although classic Confucian tradition suggests that it should be the other way around. And then instead of writing about last year’s youth revolts, which were largely due to the unclear prospects for graduates, especially ideological radicals, the author raises fresh statistics – American and British. And he succeeds: if after World War II a typical family in these countries became smaller, two people plus a small child (children), today it is back to the pre-war situation – at least three generations under one roof.
Alex reminds me: one of the key differences between East and West has long been that people in Asia live with large families, if not clans. Including in the same house. And “westerners” ideally leave their parents as early as possible and make their own careers.
We will go back to what this “classic” meant for Western and Eastern societies, and in the meantime, to the numbers that the author cites. British data: 3.5 million adult children (under 29) still live with their parents, but that is not the main thing. What is more important is that the number of such children has increased by a third in the last decade. In the United States, the same is true, but look at the pace: in February, 47 per cent of young people were still under parental care, but in July they were 52 per cent. There is a lot of data on how parents in both countries are forced to help their offspring, even those living separately, at all costs.
Why is this important for us: for two reasons. The first is that it’s useful to know what’s going on within the western group of countries in terms of economy. I remember talking about this topic at its peak during the British referendum on secession from the European Union and the election of Donald Trump as president – both in 2016. At that time, there was a lot of data about the defeat and impoverishment of both the middle class and the poor when the already rich were enriched. The fact that it is difficult for children to break away from their parents – there are no more money and opportunities for that – is part of the picture.
And the second reason for our curiosity is even more interesting: what is in people’s heads, with or without desire, in one big “Asian” family? And here everything is very, very complicated.
The clannish of Asian societies rhymes with their conservatism. In a large family, values change with generations, of course, but they do so more smoothly and without conflict, while maintaining family ties, which a typical westerner calls nepotism and corruption. But the ideal of a small western family looks contradictory.
On the one hand, we all see that the blunt instrument of the globalist revolution currently taking place in the West (and not only there) is the young generation, full of desire to destroy a society where even a family cannot leave. And what conservative values are there: on the contrary, “black lives matter”, your country – shame and shame, men and women do not exist, but men are worse, and so on. On the other hand, it used to be a classic of conservatism: a teenager with a hatred of backward parents leaves home, makes his or her own way through life, then returns to the family and tells them how right she was in terms of the same basic values. Everybody is happy.
There are many answers to this mystery. For example, the situation in the West is similar to the cultural revolution in China, when children were attacked by their parents, i.e. the class struggle took place at home as well. But, in fact, the image of a “snowflake” created by conservatives, a typical unsuitable young man, eager to live on welfare and afraid of life, sex, injury to his feelings and other things – all this happens in communes like student dormitories, not at home. But the real phenomenon of the growth of youth conservatism … isn’t it related to the fact that these people are closer to previous generations and are better perceived by them? It is a mystery. Maybe it’s different young people, diverging values further and further.
But there is no mystery to the fact that strengthening the family is one of the key areas of the campaign that is now underway across the United States: the campaign is aimed at creating an unprecedentedly powerful conservative flank of society with the desired remake of the Republican Party, which has not shown its fighting skills in the shameful story of the stolen elections.
There are many examples of this. For example, calls to take away hands from the two main family groups that unite all generations at the same holiday table – Thanksgiving (recently passed) and Christmas. Democrat governors are told: when you call on families not to gather at the table this year, or even forbid them to do so, do you fight with the virus in this way or deliberately destroy the family? Have you read the book by Klaus Schwab (Steering Wheel of the Davos Conference) “COVID-19: The Great Reset”, which explicitly says that the pandemic is useful because it has shown “how quickly we can make lifestyle changes”? Did you read Schwab’s call on politicians not to relax restrictions, not to remove lockdowns, whatever mass resistance they may have, because society needs to be dolomized? So, do not touch our families and holidays.
Or an episode of a conference held by one of the many right-wing media outlets, The American Conservative. The conference opens with a speech by evangelical preacher Heinrich Arnold, who says all the necessary words: that a family is a union of a man and a woman, that it provides the basis for real education, that it is necessary to talk about a large family (from several generations), that it is necessary to resist the ongoing dismantling of the family … And in confirmation of his words, quotes, imagine, Confucius! To save the world, you have to save the state; to save the state, you have to clean up your family, and to do this, you have to clean up your own heart.
Alex Lo has probably never heard of this – but how happy he would be.
Dmitry Kosyrev