China's Millennials: The Want Generation, Paperback

In 1989, students marched on Tiananmen Square demanding democratic reform. The Communist Party responded with a massacre, but it was jolted into restructuring the economy and overhauling the education of its young citizens. A generation later, Chinese youth are a world apart from those who converged at Tiananmen. Brought up with lofty expectations, they ve been accustomed to unprecedented opportunities on the back of China s economic boom. But today, China s growth is slowing and its demographics rapidly shifting, with the boom years giving way to a painful hangover. Immersed in this transition, Eric Fish, a millennial himself, profiles youth from around the country and how they are navigating the education system, the workplace, divisive social issues, and a resurgence in activism. Based on interviews with scholars, journalists, and hundreds of young Chinese, his engrossing book challenges the idea that today s youth have been pacified by material comforts and nationalism. Following rural Henan students struggling to get into college, a computer prodigy who sparked a nationwide patriotic uproar, and young social activists grappling with authorities, Fish deftly captures youthful struggle, disillusionment, and rebellion in a system that is scrambling to keep them in line and, increasingly, scrambling to adapt when its youth refuse to conform."

Eric Fish is a freelance writer who lived in China from 2007 to 2014 as a teacher, student, and journalist. After earning his master's degree from Tsinghua University, he worked as a reporter for the Economic Observer in Beijing and founded the blog Sinostand.com. He currently writes for the Asia Society in New York City.