Explaining youth discontent
Updated: 2014-07-18 05:21
By Jony Lam(HK Edition)
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Michael DeGolyer recently wrote about youth discontent in the China Daily Hong Kong Edition. He believes young Hong Kong-born people perceive their mainland-born counterparts as competitors in both universities and in the workplace.
"This is why a majority under the age of 40, and particularly under 30, are dissatisfied with life in Hong Kong," DeGolyer wrote. "In contrast, only a third over the age of 40 are dissatisfied. Some 90 percent of students are dissatisfied with the performance of the Hong Kong government."
Samuel Chan at the South China Morning Post (SCMP) also reported on a Chinese University index on youth life-satisfaction, which showed a marked decrease in ratings given to the city's governance, the rule of law and opportunities for development.
Mike Rowse, also writing for the SCMP, asked, "Who can build a bridge to Hong Kong's discontented youth?" I thought the question was rhetorical, but he went on to suggest literally a person - none other than Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Raymond Tam Chi-yuen.
It seems that the city is now preoccupied with its youth. Apparently, "Occupy Central" is a "largely student-fueled movement", and the young people and students want to occupy Central because they are "dissatisfied."
The curious thing about these comments on young people is they are all written by older folks. In the rare occasion that a young writer is featured, he also writes as if he is a "mature person". He believes his readers prefer sophistication to authenticity, which is understandable. After all, the newspaper is for an older generation, and no "respectable" local youngster would be seen reading one today.
We can talk about social mobility and all that, which is no doubt crucial to a harmonious society. However I, for one, as a person in his late 20s, perceive my discontent through my actual experiences of everyday life rather than abstract social structures. This nuanced concreteness is often missing in the macro perspective.
Life in Hong Kong is full of contradictions. We are often told Western-style democracy is undesirable - and when we choose, we choose wrongly. This may be due to the fact that Hongkongers are not yet "ready", as we are often told. Robert Dahl, an esteemed expert on democracy, believes that "If democracy is to work, it would seem to require a certain level of political competence on the part of its citizens."
If Dahl considers the problem a matter of skills, sociologist Joseph Schumpeter saw fundamental flaws in the logic of democracy. "The reduced sense of responsibility and the absence of effective volition in turn explain the ordinary citizen's ignorance and lack of judgment in matters of domestic and foreign policy which are if anything more shocking in the case of educated people and of people who are successfully active in non-political walks of life than it is with uneducated people in humble stations," Schumpeter observed. "Thus the typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. He becomes a primitive again. His thinking becomes associative and affective."
Just as I began to appreciate Schumpeter's argument and was ready to accept the fact that public nomination is not only illegal but also unnecessary, as I really have no idea who I should be nominating, I received my Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF) statement and was reminded that the government requires me to do constant decision-making in areas for which I am equally unprepared and in which I have little competence.
I contribute 5 percent of my salary so that when I reach retirement I can live securely. It turns out that this is not guaranteed. I have to choose to invest in North America, Asia, Hong Kong, Japan, etc., as if I know the difference, and I have to make the right choice.
All of a sudden, it seems as if picking a Chief Executive for a five-year term is not really that much of a challenge.
The author is a current affairs commentator.
(HK Edition 07/18/2014 page9)