Loving the Little Emperor
Yide has an entertainment collection rivaling that of any American teenager, including copies of “Matrix Reloaded” and Madonna’s “American Life” CD. He loves “The Simpsons” and has opinions on a surprising range of topics, from restaurant ambience to love.
A fan of Hollywood trivia, an avid reader of the “Harry Potter” series and Taiwanese comic books and an aficionado of Italian food, Yide is a marketer’s dream. And he’s just 8 years old.
Yide -- who shares a spacious Beijing penthouse with his parents, Li Guijun and Chang Qing, both 39 -- belongs to a special group of consumers, the “little emperors and empresses” who are the legacy of the one family, one child population-control program launched by China in 1979.
Although these children range in age from infants to young adults, they share one characteristic: They are usually the sole focus of two doting parents and four grandparents, the so-called “one mouth, six pockets” family. That has given them buying clout that extends far beyond what might be expected in a country where the per-capita gross domestic product hovers at $900.
Raised during a period of dramatic economic growth, these only children are knowledgeable consumers of Hollywood movies and enjoy Taiwanese pop tunes and the latest Hong Kong fashions. Even the children of factory workers and domestic helpers are being sent to after-school classes and study-abroad programs, reflecting Chinese society’s emphasis on education.
Buoyed by their families’ support, these youths are parlaying university degrees into well-paying jobs as engineers, entrepreneurs and attorneys. Yao Ming, the 7-foot-4-inch Houston Rockets star, is one of China’s best-known single children.
But being the center of the familial universe carries a price. Sociologists worry that this generation is overprotected and spoiled. They fear that China’s embrace of capitalism has materially enriched the lives of young people but left a moral void that could contribute to social problems such as drug abuse and drinking.
In an article on the single-child phenomenon, Wu Ruijun, a staff member of the Population Study Institute at East China Normal University, laments that “parents are focusing on the intellectual investment and ignoring the education of morality, which would cause unbalanced development of the child.”
But China’s one-child policy is credited with putting the brakes on a population that at 1.3 billion ranks as the world’s largest. The biggest impact has been in the cities, because exceptions to the restriction were granted to rural families who needed an extra pair of hands to till the land.
Over the last decade, the average family size in China has dropped from 3.96 in 1990 to 3.44, according to the government. Twenty-two percent of families in the country and 62% of families in Beijing have just one child, according to 1997 figures from China’s National Statistics Bureau, the latest data available. Some wealthier couples are choosing to have more than one child and pay the penalty, which varies depending on the locality. It can range from a few hundred dollars to several times the family’s annual income.
A Singular Investment
Chinese parents and grandparents, most of whom came of age during the impoverished days of Mao Tse-tung’s Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, boast one of the highest savings rates in the world. But the heavens are the limit when it comes to spending on their children.
“The mind-set here is: I’m investing in the next generation,” explained Christopher Mumford, chief operating officer of Yaolan.com, China’s largest parenting-themed Web site. He said Yaolan’s 550,000 members spend an average of $250 a month on child-related purchases, including nutritional products, educational toys and child-rearing literature sold by his firm’s Babycare company. Often, families spend more than half of their monthly earnings on their children, according to the government media.
“Every child is a first-time child here, so there is a tremendous amount of anxiety” related to child rearing, Mumford explained, pointing out that 22 million babies are born in China annually. That’s like adding a country the size of Australia to the world each year.
Whether they are pitching premium ice cream or cars, companies eagerly court single-child families as they work their way from the cradle to the condominium. This market is particularly attractive to foreign firms, which generally sell higher-priced goods.
California almond growers are trying to persuade bakers to use more nuts when decorating the elaborate cakes they create for birthday parties. The U.S. Dairy Export Council is promoting dairy-based infant formula and gourmet ice cream. Kentucky Fried Chicken urges parents to reward their good students with a meal of fried chicken and fries.
“Even with salmon, we’re emphasizing that it’s good for brain development,” said Tom Minoque, whose Beijing marketing firm represents the Norwegian Seafood Export Council and the Almond Board of California. “Parents have only one child, and they will do everything they can to make them better and smarter.”
That “everything” often requires a huge sacrifice, as can be seen upon entering the cramped apartment of 10-year-old Gao Mingyue and her parents and grandmother. Their neatly kept home is in a run-down housing complex that was once part of a nearby factory. When the apartments were put up for sale, Jiang Junming, Gao’s mother, borrowed money from her parents to purchase their modest, two-room walk-up.
In one corner of the bedroom shared by the couple and their daughter sits a polished piano. Jiang, 40, paid the equivalent of a year’s salary for the instrument. Before her smiling, pigtailed daughter sits down to perform a popular children’s song, the doting mother proudly pulls out the half-dozen certificates Gao has earned for piano proficiency.
For several years, Gao took weekly piano lessons along with math and English instruction on weekends. The piano lessons were particularly costly, and the family spent more than half of its monthly income on the girl’s classes, books and related materials. But Jiang says that those supplemental courses are her daughter’s best hope for a life beyond the factory.
A year ago, Gao told her mother that she wanted to quit because the lessons were too hard. Though her decision has eased the family’s financial burden, Jiang is disappointed.
“Among the children around this area, she takes comparatively few courses,” said her mother, a second-generation factory worker. “If she is not taking these classes, she won’t be competitive.”
A Vast Market
Real estate companies, auto makers, even health clubs are harvesting the fruits of parental sacrifices. Backed by their families’ combined resources, single children entering young adulthood are boosting sales of expensive electronic gadgets, condominiums and cars.
It is difficult to separate out the spending of this group, but overall retail sales increased more than 8% last year in China at a time when most of the world faced stagnant or recessionary economies.
Like young people elsewhere in Asia, China’s young are fashion conscious and technology crazed, which is why this country is already the world’s largest market for cellular phones and one of the largest for personal computers.
In an upscale suburb of Beijing, Show My Life, a real estate development firm, is building a huge housing complex aimed at China’s “yappies,” the young Asian professionals who are the leading edge of the country’s single-child population. The first phase won’t be completed until next summer, but more than 2,000 buyers, most in their 20s and 30s, have already signed contracts.
On a recent Saturday afternoon, the Show My Life showroom was filled with gaggles of young men and women carrying cellphones and shopping bags, a few trailed by anxious parents. Hip young salespeople in T-shirts and jeans distributed colorful brochures filled with floor plans for apartment-style condos as small as 376 square feet.
Home purchases made possible by pooled family savings are one reason China’s housing market is going through the roof, according to real estate executives. Sun Zheng, a sales manager at Show My Life, estimates that at least a fifth of his buyers relied on their families to pay the 20% down payment. Prices for the furnished apartments start at about $24,000.
Guo Xiaojuan, a 25-year-old trading company employee, persuaded her parents to chip in the down payment so she could buy a unit. An only child, Guo said several friends also bought into the complex, all with assistance from their families. Without her parents’ support, Guo couldn’t have attended university and couldn’t live on her own, she said.
But being the center of her family’s universe carries its own burden. “There’s a lot of pressure and so much love, you feel you must do everything perfectly,” she said.
Filial Piety
As these only children begin accruing wealth of their own, some are starting to repay their parents’ dedication, according to Tomer Rothschild, a Beijing-based executive for Bally Total Fitness, which has opened five clubs in China during the last 16 months. He said he has seen a considerable increase in young members purchasing fitness memberships for their aging parents.
“Given the history of filial piety in Chinese society, it is no surprise that many young Chinese urban professionals are choosing to honor and care for their parents by making sure their parents stay in shape,” he said.
Indeed, the tradition of filial piety seems to have survived in modern China, even as many young people have moved to the city and left their parents behind in the countryside. Young Chinese who work in Beijing say that they send money home and expect their parents to join them when they can no longer live independently.
The issue of elder care will become increasingly critical in the coming years because the growing legions of the aged will have to be supported by far fewer younger people. China’s government has yet to develop a modern retirement system to replace the “iron rice bowl” of communism, in which workers were cared for from cradle to grave.
Li Guijun -- the father of Yide, the young movie aficionado -- feels the pull of familial obligation. He grew up in poverty, the son of a coal miner who struggled to support his wife and five children. He said he left home infused with a strong sense of responsibility to others, which he has tried to pass on to his son.
A successful artist whose paintings sell for $10,000 to $15,000 apiece, Li has been able to provide his family a luxurious life that few in China can afford. They live on the top floor of Beijing’s upscale SOHO New Town housing complex, in a spacious apartment decorated with Chinese antiques.
Li said his parents don’t want to move to the city, but he sends money home and takes Yide to visit them regularly. The boy is also very close to his mother’s parents, who live nearby.
“When I was younger, I began to build these things,” Yide explained proudly, pointing to an elaborate battle toy on his desk. “In the past, my grandfather did that for me.”
One of Yide’s favorite pastimes is reading, a habit that grew out of an obsession with dinosaur books. He has since graduated to more mature fare, including the movie magazines in his bookcase. That fascination with Hollywood has given the precocious youngster a worldliness that occasionally startles even his parents.
During a conversation involving one of his father’s friends, Yide broke in to offer this definition of love: “To Westerners, if one person says they love you, that is love. For Chinese, if one person loves you for their whole life, that is love.”
“I couldn’t believe he said that,” admitted his father.
A teacher at the Beijing Central Art Academy, Li sees the products of China’s one-child policy as they move through his classroom. He admires their confidence but worries that they might have cast aside some of the good values of the old China in their race to embrace modern life.
“My teachers had a strong sense of responsibility to others and society,” he said. “My students pay more attention to themselves. This generation is much stronger. But sometimes they are ego-centered. That makes me a little worried.”
