China Has Won the Race. But What Is the Race For?
It was not surprising when I learned that my niece was prioritising American universities as her first choice, considering that she is studying in a private high school in the US. Like many affluent Chinese families , her parents encouraged her to pursue her studies in the US, believing that the US offers better education than China and possibly a higher quality of life, with more opportunities to progress in professional life after graduation.
What is striking is not a Chinese family wants its child to study in America. It is that this choice is being made after China has achieved so much that previous generations believed would constitute success. China has become an economic, technological and geopolitical power. It has world-class infrastructure, technology, manufacturing and globally competitive companies.
As Mao had envisaged in the 1950s, China would need to modernise and catch up with the advanced industrial countries. The pursuit of rapid development became an all-encompassing national project, although its most extreme manifestation in the Great Leap Forward and later the Cultural Revolution brought enormous impacts to several generations and the economy alike.
The generation born after the Cultural Revolution grew up with a remarkable belief: work hard today, enter a good university, secure a good job, and you can live a better life. The hard life of study, education, long working hours and intense competition was part of the package for becoming successful. For a generation that has now tasted some of that success, however, a new question is emerging: is this the life we want for our children?
There is a deeper historical parallel. During the Cultural Revolution, individual aspirations were subordinated to a political and collective project. Education, careers, family life and personal development could all be interrupted in the name of a larger national or ideological purpose. For many educated urban youth sent to the countryside, some of their most formative years were effectively taken away from them. A whole generation was made to accept that individual sacrifice was necessary for a larger collective purpose. Their lives were expected to serve the national project.
Today’s China is fundamentally different. It is more affluent, educated and internationally connected. The younger generation has grown up with greater individual expectations, and affluent Chinese have something their parents and grandparents often did not: the resources and mobility to say no. Sending a child to an American university can therefore be more than an educational choice. It can be a choice for personal freedom, opportunity and a higher quality of life.
This is why the choice of some of China’s most successful and internationally mobile citizens matters. If China’s economic growth has delivered the prosperity it promised, why are some of its most successful beneficiaries still looking elsewhere for the next generation?
China has become exceptionally good at measuring progress through achievements: faster, bigger, better, ahead. Success has become defined through continuous comparison and competition and there is no natural stopping point. Individuals compete for better scores, more talents, higher incomes and bigger houses. Companies compete for technological advantage and market share. Local governments compete for investment and growth. National institutions compete for strategic and technological leadership. But has the country become good at producing security, opportunity, consumption and a sense of personal progress?
The result can be a society that is exceptionally productive but increasingly excessive and exhausted. There is no clear definition of “enough”. There is also a growing question about what all this production and construction is ultimately for, when the individual is not always at the centre of it. China can build the infrastructure and technologies of the future without necessarily producing the life of the future that people want.
There is intense competition at school; a gap of one or two scores in the university entrance examination can determine thousands of students’ fate. Yet after years of intense investment in education, young people face an increasingly uncertain transition into employment. The path of social mobility is no longer as transparent as the old social bargain promised. For some, “lying flat” (tangping) becomes a rational response to a system in which the costs of competing keep rising while the rewards appear less certain. The faith that personal sacrifice will automatically produce personal progress is weakening.
This is also where China’s development narrative begins to lose direction. The country has clear answers to how it should become stronger: build more, produce more, innovate more, export more, compete more. But it has a less clear answer to what kind of society this strength is supposed to create.
For a brief period, China’s rising middle class could enjoy both economic growth and some of the lifestyle benefits associated with a more open world. But as growth slows and economic insecurity increases, there is more uncertainty about whether rising prosperity will also bring greater choice and freedom.
This helps explain why America can remain attractive. The American way of life remains a symbol of opportunity, choice and a life in which prosperity can actually be enjoyed. It is not necessarily America as a political model, but America as an imagined better life.
China has won much of the race it set for itself: GDP, technology, manufacturing, infrastructure and national power. But once the catch-up has been achieved, the question changes. What is the race for? And whether this is a society worth choosing for their children to live in.
This article is written by Lei Xie, a Senior Specialist working at E3G, focusing on engagement with China and Asia. Lei offers a seasoned perspective on how environmental science meets public policy. She specialises in policy-driven advocacy for sustainable development, drawing on her deep roots in academia, industry and government. She has authored books including China’s International Transboundary Rivers: Politics, Security and Diplomacy of Shared Water Resources (Routledge, 2018) and a monograph, Environmental Activism in China (Routledge, 2009). Lei holds a Ph.D in Environmental Science from Wageningen University, an M.Phil from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and a B.A. from Peking University.
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