Youth Culture in China
From Red Guards to Netizens

Examines youth cultures at three historical points - 1968, 1988 and 2008 - and argues that present-day youth culture in China has international and local roots.

Paul Clark (Author)

9781107602502, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 7 May 2012

304 pages, 23 b/w illus.
22.8 x 15.3 x 1.6 cm, 0.42 kg

'In Youth Culture in China, Paul Clark makes a bold attempt to rethink the Cultural Revolution, by placing it in the wider context of China's emerging youth culture, between the early 1960s and the Olympic year of 2008. The result is an original and provocative book.' Jonathan Spence, author of The Search for Modern China

The lives and aspirations of young Chinese (those between 14 and 26 years old) have been transformed in the past five decades. By examining youth cultures around three historical points - 1968, 1988 and 2008 - this book argues that present-day youth culture in China has both international and local roots. Paul Clark describes how the Red Guards and the sent-down youth of the Cultural Revolution era carved out a space for themselves, asserting their distinctive identities, despite tight political controls. By the late 1980s, Chinese-style rock music, sports and other recreations began to influence the identities of Chinese youth, and in the twenty-first century, the Internet offers a new, broader space for expressing youthful fandom and frustrations. From the 1960s to the present, this book shows how youth culture has been reworked to serve the needs of the young Chinese.

1. Finding youth in China
2. Marking out new spaces: Red Guards, education youth, and opening up
3. Bodies: undressed, fashioned, admired, and moving
4. Rhythms: the soundtracks of connection and assertion
5. Spaces: real, imagined, and virtual arenas
6. Consuming identities.

Subject Areas: Politics & government [JP], Sociology [JHB], Asian history [HBJF], History [HB]