"Wherever the kids have a better life, Chinese parents will send them."

[...] In the West, low-class parents often drag their children down by telling them they are clever and beautiful, and that they can achieve anything in life if only they believe in themselves. In China, however, 99% of the child’s success is believed to be design of the parents. In America, mothers don’t part with their young kids easily; in China, mothers gratefully accept any opportunity that will leave their kids with more affluent friends or relatives abroad. Penniless mothers sell their toddlers to monasteries or the circus; much less for the money than for the conviction that the child will be better off, and learn some skills.

Everything is better than staying with poor parents, is it not? All the same, it’s the parents that make all the life-changing decision for their young –right into young adulthood, if necessary.

Even if those “70m reasons” were realized, it wouldn’t change the universal (Confucian) philosophy toward child-rearing: filial piety, learned helplessness, and being a jerk. On the contrary, if they all had money in the world, the Chinese would still leave their children behind, or hire nannies, and private tutors, or send their children abroad to relatives, affluent friends, or intl schools. They don’t know what else to do with kids, personally. Before recently, they didn’t even have toys, fairy tales, or play dates, let alone religion and clean air. In China: pity ALL the children.

Thor Tukoll is a pen name of Thorsten J. Pattberg, a German writer and cultural critic. He is the author of The East-West Dichotomy,  Shengren, and Inside Peking University.

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