心里一直的困惑：为什么我们90后似乎不谈论政治

选自[https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/chinas-youth-do-they-dare-to-care-about-politics]
There are four reasons behind this apparent failure to care about politics past and present that merit a mention, before we ask whether seeming apathy can co-exist with real terms of engagement.

First: Politics is boring. The media, predictably, report the results of politics but not the process. The leaders are so indistinguishable that, after ten years of Hu Jintao’s poker face, the slightest smile from Xi Jinping has foreign correspondents waxing lyrical. And every schoolchild takes many hours a month of compulsory “thought and politics class” (sixiangzhenzhike). Module names include “Mao Zedong Thought” and “Jiang Zemin Economic Theory,” material so mind-numbingly dull as to put them off politics for a lifetime. Which, perhaps, is the point.

Second: Politics is dangerous. In a system where a single power can decide what is acceptable and what is punishable, you develop an inbuilt barometer about what you can say and do, and what you can’t. Of course, things are better now—no struggle sessions, no forced ideology, no children denouncing their parents. But the mothers and fathers of this generation did go through all those things, and so try to instill in their only children the lesson that politics is best left alone.

Third: Politics isn’t a priority. The old saw that material concerns trump political privileges still has teeth. There is too much competition—for school places, for jobs, for spouses. There is too much financial pressure—to buy an apartment, a car, to provide for your aging parents. And there are too many distractions—casual sex, recreational drugs, or World of Warcraft for those who get neither of the first two. Anything else tends to run a distant fourth.

And finally: Politics is hopeless. Why try to change something if you know you can’t? If that petition, pamphlet, or organization is going to get you in big trouble but won’t make the slightest ripple on the ocean, most would agree the sacrifice is admirable but foolhardy. It’s not that you don’t care, it’s not that you don’t dare—you’re simply being realistic, as you would advise a friend to be.

Even youth membership of the Communist Party is no indication of political proclivity. Most apply in university because it can help them get a better job.