Deal with it
- 2016-02-09
The Chinese are definitely headed toward metrosexuality, where the Japanese and the Koreans already are. Seems to me that young guys here can't stand for themselves, can't talk to women and are overly emotional.
analyst
- 2016-02-08
It would not have been difficult for them to have found a few former Chinese university FT's in the states and to have interviewed them. As for young Chinese men being timid and weak, effeminate, some are, some are not. One thing they need to do is stop being weak in regard to Chinese women. Stop buying them gifts, meals, refuse to buy houses and cars for them. I mean later on obviously. The men need to be more assertive and have the balls to stand up to these spoiled Chinese princesses. Having said that, there are still also dumb foreigners in China buying houses for women. Their stupidity is hard to understand. I wish they would stop doing this, it just perpetuates a type of entitlement mentality and causes greed.
Curious
- 2016-02-07
Thanks for the eye-opening comments, Martin. Critical mind at its best! Intellectual freedom!
martin hainan
- 2016-02-07
As a lifetime reader of the NYTimes, I have always admired its journalistic standards. Unfortunately, these standards do not transcend the barriers that prevent the NYT from doing quality investigative and professional reporting in China.
The NYTimes is aware of this and presents much of its 'reporting', including this excerpt, in the form of blogs in "Sinosphere".
Try to imagine an article about any European country where the NY Times made enormous generalizations about complex social issues in education and social engineering without citations from multiple credentialed academic researchers and several officials in the departments of education and health of the country.
Now, it's not the fault of the NYTImes that they do not have access to these people in China. But they still choose to feed the U.S. public's new found interest in China with material that, I know for a fact from NYT employees, violates their own journalistic standards.
I've been teaching young men in higher education in China for 10 years, but I'm would not venture to provide anecdotal evidence to deny or support the claims that this article's writer has made (Linkedin identifies him as a Harvard college grad with only one job at the NYTImes). I simply do not know how the 'Chinese government' feels or how 'young Chinese men' of this generation are statistically different from generations past.
The NYTimes doesn't know either.
Worried that a shortage of male teachers has produced a generation of timid, self-centered and effeminate boys, Chinese educators are working to reinforce traditional gender roles and values in the classroom.
Education officials across China are aggressively recruiting male teachers, as the Chinese news media warns of a need to “salvage masculinity in schools.” The call for more male-oriented education has prompted a broader debate about gender equality and social identity at a time when the country’s leaders are seeking to make the labor market more meritocratic.
It also reflects a general anxiety about boys in Chinese society. While boys outnumber girls as a result of the longstanding one-child policy and a cultural preference for sons, they consistently lag in academic performance. Some parents worry about their sons’ prospects in an uncertain economy, so they are putting their hopes in male role models who they believe impart lessons on assertiveness, courage and sacrifice.
A major obstacle to luring more men into teaching are the modest wages paid to educators in China (as elsewhere in the world).