When the "Affluent Generation" Chinese Youth Encounters the Asset Society

Why a tech exec's endorsement of toxic work culture face backlash from Chinese youth? How to understand the social mentality behind this?

Hi everyone! After covering an overwhelming amount of international relations news, I've decided to refocus on Chinese youth studies. Recently, Baidu's PR team has gained attention on Weibo, albeit in a negative way. Qu Jing, the former head of Baidu PR, created her own short video account on the Chinese TikTok equivalent, Douyin, and posted several videos about her career and harsh, sometimes toxic management style. In one video, she claimed, "Why should I consider my employees' families? I’m not her mother." This statement quickly sparked outrage among Chinese internet users, particularly young workers in the internet industry.

Some observers believe this phenomenon reflects a new trend among Chinese youth, especially those belonging to Generation Z, like myself. They are beginning to reject the traditional concept of "hard work" and are embracing a more "Buddhist-style" approach to life. The strong reaction against Qu Jing's statements exemplifies this trend. While on the other hand, they also embrace materialism and yearn for financial freedom.

Similar contradictions can be observed in other aspects of their lives. They are a generation with an open mindset, embracing diversity, and willing to accept controversial ideas, behaviors, and groups. Yet, they are also a generation that cannot tolerate the slightest imperfection, frequently resorting to doxing to express their disapproval.

How can we understand this self-contradictory phenomenon among Chinese youth? That’s why I introduce this article titled "When the Affluent Generation Meets the Asset Society: Interpreting the Social Mentality of Contemporary Youth" 《当丰裕一代遭遇资产社会——解读当代青年的社会心态》, published on "Wenhua Zongheng" (文化纵横). The authors of this article are Fu Yu and Gui Yong; they come from the Department of Sociology at Fudan University, which has one of the best sociology studies in China.

Gui Yong, Professor of the Department of Sociology at Fudan University, Deputy Head of the Department

The article introduced a new framework to explain the mentality of Chinese youth; the authors believe that the core to understanding the social mentality of the younger generation is related to the background of the times: the younger generation grew up during China's high-speed economic growth period and can be called the "affluent generation"; when they grew up, they encountered an "asset society" where the importance of asset abundance gradually increased relative to the performance of the labor market. The affluent generation shaped the individualization characteristics and spiritual pursuits based on the material foundation of the young generation, while the asset society shaped this generation's sense of powerlessness and underlying feelings. The combined effect of these core concepts has led to a series of social mentality characteristics, including using "lying flat" to resist power, yearning for "financial freedom at 35," calling for a new economic order, integrating into a strong country, and presenting the unique "circle-based survival" state of contemporary youth groups.

The affluent generation not only generally possesses more abundant and sufficient material conditions but also witnessed China's rapid economic growth in the new millennium during their growth stage. The "prosperity" and "growth" narratives represented by high-quality urbanization, the popularization of higher education, and the universalization of the Internet, together with the collective memory represented by major historical events such as the successful hosting of the Beijing Olympics, China's economic aggregate jumping to the second place in the world, and the fight against the COVID-19 epidemic, constitute the two logical mainlines that shape the affluent generation.

Economic growth has led to two aspects of results at the conceptual level of contemporary youth groups, namely individualization and spiritual pursuits based on the material foundation.

Individualization is manifested in the pursuit of personal value realization, oriented by personal interests, values, and ideas. The spiritual pursuit on a material basis represents a yearning for a comfortable, free, and fulfilling state of life and life experience, and at the same time, takes relatively superior material conditions as a premise.

At the same time, with the modernization of society, the proportion of national wealth assets is getting larger and larger, and the wealth gap between groups with different initial asset holdings is rapidly widening, showing the phenomenon of "asset stratification." Those groups that have obtained assets in a non-marketized form or purchased assets at a lower price in the early stage of financialization have become the "new noble class" and have continuously leveraged larger-scale assets at a lower cost in the process of financialization.

The full rise of the asset society driven by financialization has also shaped core concepts in two dimensions.

First is the powerlessness of latecomers in the asset society. Asset price and appreciation speed have replaced elite education and occupational access as the basis for maintaining social closure.

Second, the bottom-layer feeling of latecomers in the asset society. The stratification system with the financial market as the hub and the amount of assets as the social closure mechanism makes assets the key factor determining life opportunities, which means that the career advancement and income growth obtained by the young generation through hard work in the labor market can only point to the improvement of quality of life and psychological state when converted into financial assets.

Here I attach the full translation of the article;

Source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/rSWCRRySzOcWOL11C6JRkw

The Post-90s generation is gradually becoming the backbone of our society, and their social attitudes also largely indicate the evolution and changes of the times. In the process of long-term tracking and researching the social attitudes of this group, we have observed a series of potential or emerging conflicts, including dissatisfaction with the established pattern of economic interest distribution (such as "lying flat-ism"), resistance to capital and work (such as "996.ICU"), disagreement with the mainstream family order and lifestyle (such as "Parents are all disasters", "No love, no marriage, no children"), as well as conflicts originating from subculture communities and pan-ideologies (such as fan circles, feminism, LGBTQ, etc.). Completely different from the traditional forms of conflict that arise under specific social structures and institutional backgrounds, with the core demands of real economic interest distribution, and with interest disputes, rights protection, and struggles as the main manifestations, behind these new conflicts are the unique ideas and cognitive models of young people. Therefore, the widespread controversies in public opinion are not irrelevant "emotional disputes". On the contrary, they may become a source of another form of social conflict and even become a driving force mechanism that influences the direction of social consensus. We need to understand the characteristics and consequences of the social attitudes of contemporary youth groups from the perspective of macro-economic and social development.

Specifically at the level of social attitudes, the contemporary youth group presents many intriguing paradoxes: they are a generation with an open mind and inclusive of diversity, willing to accept controversial ideas, behaviors and groups, but they are also a generation that cannot tolerate a speck of sand in their eyes, with frequent occurrences of "one-click reporting" and doxing. They highly identify with and are full of confidence in the country's and nation's development path, but they are also confused, anxious and at a loss about their personal destiny and future. They embrace materialism and yearn for financial freedom, but they also despise the wealthy elite and ridicule them to the utmost. On the one hand, they long for love and marriage, and wish to live an ideal and beautiful life of "one day two people three meals four seasons", but on the other hand, they are too lazy to fall in love and get married, and just want to raise a cat to accompany themselves through a "lying flat" weekend. They are "social phobics" in real life, but they party all night in the online world. These paradoxes seem to be in opposition, but they all point to the same era background. It is the core concepts shaped by the latter that determine the characteristics of the social attitudes and social action orientations of the youth group, and partly become potential problems that China's economic and social development may encounter.

Based on this, we attempt to propose an analytical framework. This article believes that the core key to understanding the social attitudes of the younger generation is related to the general background of the times: the younger generation grew up during China's period of rapid economic growth and can be called the "affluent generation"; after they grew up, they also encountered the "asset society" where the importance of asset quantity gradually increased relative to the performance in the labor market. The affluent generation shaped the individualization characteristics and spiritual pursuits based on the material foundation of the young generation, while the asset society shaped the powerlessness and bottom-layer feeling of this generation. The joint action of these core concepts has led to a series of social attitude characteristics, including using "lying flat" to resist power, yearning for "financial freedom at the age of 35", calling for a new economic order, and integrating into a powerful country, and the contemporary youth group presents a unique state of "circle-based survival".

The Affluent Generation Growing Up under High-Speed Economic Growth

The affluent generation not only generally possesses more abundant and sufficient material conditions but also witnessed China's rapid economic growth in the new millennium during their growth stage. The "prosperity" and "growth" narratives represented by high-quality urbanization, the popularization of higher education, and the universalization of the Internet, together with the collective memory represented by major historical events such as the successful hosting of the Beijing Olympics, China's economic aggregate jumping to the second place in the world, and the fight against the COVID-19 epidemic, constitute the two logical mainlines that shape the affluent generation.

"Affluence" is reflected not only in terms of material conditions but also in terms of social mobility such as education, employment, and settlement. More importantly, in the first 15 years of the new century, China's gross domestic product maintained a high growth rate of over 7% every year, forming a resonance between the times and the generation between the upward personal life course of the "post-90s" and the vigorous development of the country's future. If the collective memory of the "post-50s" and "post-60s" generations who shared the same breath with the country was established on the experience of "scarcity" of starting from scratch, then the generational experience of the "post-90s" sharing the same destiny with the nation is contained in the "affluent" yearning for young China and a promising future.

Economic growth has led to two aspects of results at the conceptual level of contemporary youth groups, namely individualization and spiritual pursuits based on the material foundation.

Individualization is manifested in the pursuit of personal value realization, oriented by personal interests, values, and ideas. In the era of the market economy, the state no longer assumes the moral responsibility of ensuring equal life opportunities for all, but is the coordinator of the market economic order, and individuals, as the main body of the market economy, are pushed to the stage of the times. When economic individualism becomes a zeitgeist, the younger generation increasingly takes personal interests and values as the starting point for thinking about economic actions. At the same time, the affluent material foundation has created conditions for the "post-90s" to pursue self and individuality beyond subsistence. "I" and "individuality", as the spiritual coordinate origin of this generation, have been unprecedentedly magnified and extended. Today's young generation is not only a generation that "lives for themselves" but also a generation that understands and perceives the world from individual experiences.

The spiritual pursuit on the material basis represents a yearning for a comfortable, free, and fulfilling state of life and life experience, and at the same time takes relatively superior material conditions as a premise. At the conceptual level, it is manifested as both valuing material and despising material. The narrative with prosperity and growth as the main theme has shaped the optimistic myth of the young generation about material life and has shaped two orientations that harbor contradictions and conflicts at the conceptual level: on the one hand, they have the confidence to yearn for an ideal lifestyle that transcends material wealth and agree that "wealth is just a byproduct of pursuing dreams and self-realization"; on the other hand, once this optimistic imagination encounters the ruthless blow of reality, it will in turn fundamentally shake their confidence and expectations for personal development.

The Asset Society and the "Downward Mobility" of Latecomers

With the deepening of the monetization of the economy, the status of finance in the economic system has been continuously increasing. The financialization process of the world economic system has not only greatly changed the national governance model and economic organization structure but has also profoundly changed the logic of wealth distribution and social differentiation.

Assets play an increasingly important role in the financialized economic system. Those elements and resources that were previously unable (or considered not supposed to be) to be marketized and monetized (such as housing, entrepreneurial activities, public infrastructure) have been swept up by the wave of financialization and have become various calculable and tradable forms of financial assets, incorporated into the process of capital turnover and circulation. The logic of capital self-multiplication and compound interest growth thus dominates, and asset prices show an upward trend that far exceeds the speed of economic growth along with the continuous deepening of the degree of financialization.

Globally, the proportion of assets in national wealth is getting larger and larger, and the wealth gap between groups with different initial asset holdings is rapidly widening, showing the phenomenon of "asset stratification". Those groups that have obtained assets in a non-marketized form or purchased assets at a lower price in the early stage of financialization have become the "new noble class" and have continuously leveraged larger-scale assets at a lower cost in the process of financialization. As a result, a stratification system with the financial market as the hub and the amount of assets as the mechanism is superimposed on the existing stratification system with the labor market as the hub and education, occupation, and income as the mechanism, constituting the basic logic for us to understand the asset society and its conceptual consequences.

The full rise of the asset society driven by financialization has also shaped core concepts in two dimensions.

First, the powerlessness of latecomers in the asset society. Financialization has exacerbated the scissors gap between labor and asset returns, and the compound interest growth and self-multiplication of assets have further widened the scissors gap; while the asset transfer dominated by prior endowment factors has continuously amplified the intergenerational cumulative disadvantage, and the intergenerational reproduction of strata is achieved in a stable manner without legitimate challenges. The asset price and appreciation speed have replaced elite education and occupational access as the basis for maintaining social closure. The "small-town exam takers" who hoped to "jump into the dragon's gate" have been defeated in front of the insurmountable asset gulf, and "big money depends on fate, small money depends on earning" has become the most real portrayal of this powerlessness.

Second, the bottom-layer feeling of latecomers in the asset society. The stratification system with the financial market as the hub and the amount of assets as the social closure mechanism makes assets the key factor determining life opportunities, which means that the career advancement and income growth obtained by the young generation through hard work in the labor market can only point to the improvement of quality of life and psychological state when converted into financial assets. However, due to the existence of the scissors gap, income growth often "cannot keep up with the speed of housing price increases", and eventually becomes "working for the landlord", which leads to the emergence of the bottom-layer feeling. This bottom-layer feeling largely explains the popularity of online buzzwords such as "working people" and "involution", and also explains why even highly educated and high-income groups show a low subjective socio-economic status (such as self-mockery as "financial migrant workers" and "code farmers").

When the Affluent Generation Encounters the Asset Society: Social Attitude Characteristics of Youth Groups

The superposition of the affluent generation and the asset society has led to a series of social attitude characteristics, specifically manifested as using "lying flat" to resist power, yearning for "financial freedom at the age of 35", calling for a new economic order, and integrating into a powerful country.

(1) Using "Lying Flat" to Resist Power

Why do young people "lie flat"? Putting aside value judgments and returning to the background of the times that shape the social attitudes of youth groups and their core concepts, the author believes that the following two issues must be noted:

First, the individualized affluent generation yearns to be free from the bondage of external responsibilities on individuals. This bondage may come from the ethical order of the traditional family (such as "there are three kinds of unfilial piety, and having no posterity is the greatest"), from the work ethics of the collectivist era (such as "working hard" and "sacrificing the small family for the big family"), from the corporate culture of the workplace (such as "996 is a great blessing"), and also from the stereotypes of public opinion (such as "leftover women"). In the eyes of the young generation, since only "I am responsible for my own life", other social roles will not bear the consequences of one's life choices at the moral or practical interest level, then only "I" have the right to decide one's lifestyle, and only "I"'s interests, values, and ideas need to be considered.

As a result, those social behaviors that used to appeal to values are stripped of their rational calculations at the individual welfare level. Once proven to be unhelpful for individual welfare improvement, young people will naturally choose to resist this external responsibility and role expectation. In our research, "feeling troublesome" and "worrying about a decline in quality of life" have become the main reasons for many young people to choose to "lie flat" on the issue of love and marriage; even among young people who are already married, they will choose to delay childbearing or even "DINK" due to "childbearing affecting career development" and "raising children being too expensive".

Second, young people who are powerless to realize their material condition expectations are trying to jump out of the structural dilemma of the asset society. When young people who expect to "earn an annual salary of one million ten years after graduation" encounter the "poisonous beating" of reality (unable to afford a house, unable to afford to get married, unable to afford to have children), the strong gap gives rise to confusion and anxiety about their personal destiny and future. Those young people who cannot obtain assets through intergenerational transfer either strive for excess salary through overtime work in the labor market to obtain the possibility of acquiring assets, or can only silently endure the scissors gap between labor and capital returns in the face of rapidly rising asset prices. Although the actors seem to be making "free choices", no matter how they choose, it is difficult to break free from the structural bondage of power and become people "trapped in the system".

Faced with the structural dilemma that individuals are powerless to overcome, "lying flat" has become an effective strategy to bridge the psychological gap and break free from the current predicament - "Once you decide to 'lie flat', what else is there to 'involution'? Slacking off at work and getting off work on time". From this perspective, "lying flat" also has a meaning of resisting power.

When we understand the background of the times and the driving mechanism behind the phenomenon of "lying flat", it is not difficult to infer that simply criticizing the negative impact of "lying flat" on the whole society may be counterproductive, making young people who yearn to break free from bondage and predicament more resistant. Only by reshaping the consensus of social values and breaking the predicament of the asset society can young generations be freed from "lying flat" and return to the expectations of mainstream values.

(2) Yearning for "Financial Freedom at the Age of 35"

When personal interests and self-worth take precedence over the material needs of survival, the young generation shows a post-materialist tendency and has the courage and confidence to no longer take material conditions as a life goal, but instead pursue the "poetry and distance" that transcends the material level. However, everything is premised on the material foundation. As a means to achieve "poetry and distance", whether to work or what kind of work to engage in is essentially a choice based on the rate of return on investment. Therefore, contrary to the post-materialism when talking about the meaning of life, the young generation shows a obvious materialistic tendency when choosing work. Our survey data shows that even in the face of a severe employment situation, more than half of college students still refuse to compromise on "salary and benefits", which is much higher than aspects such as industry, position, work location, and nature of the enterprise. However, the characteristics of the asset society determine the scissors gap between labor and capital rates of return. Facing the asset gulf that is powerless to cross, work/struggle is no longer a means of self-realization, but instead becomes an obstacle.

Following this logic, it is not difficult for us to understand: why the traditional work ethic of hard work is gradually fading among the young generation who believe that "choice is more important than effort"; why more and more young people frequently job-hop or even "resign naked", and are unwilling to "grow together with the company". When the young generation has more diversified "money-making" opportunities and higher material condition expectations than the previous generation, working diligently and delaying gratification become a choice with a low rate of return.

The "crisis at the age of 35" draws a clear time node for the anxious young generation: if "financial freedom" is not achieved before the age of 35 and assets as a material foundation are not possessed, then the spiritual pursuit (freedom, comfort, sense of accomplishment) is also in jeopardy. When the rapid rise in asset prices shakes or even shatters the material foundation expected by the young generation, "fighting to turn a bicycle into a motorcycle" is no longer a joke, but instead becomes a "asset allocation method".

Among them, the most prominent example is the hype of cryptocurrencies represented by Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. Young people who are addicted to "coin speculation" are not lacking in financial common sense, nor are they unaware of the risks involved, but the conventional way of wealth accumulation can no longer meet their desire to cross the asset gulf. Similarly, according to data released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, more than 60% of telecom fraud victims are "post-90s", breaking the traditional stereotype that "only the elderly will be deceived". The reason is that the material foundation on which the affluent generation relies to support their spiritual pursuit and the powerlessness shaped by the asset society jointly determine the young generation's yearning for "financial freedom at the age of 35", and the latter allows the "post-90s" to seek rapid accumulation of material wealth through unconventional means while "lying flat".

(3) Calling for a New Economic Order

The narrative with prosperity and growth as the main theme has shaped the optimistic myth of the affluent generation about material life. However, once this optimistic imagination encounters the ruthless blow of the asset society, it will in turn fundamentally shake the confidence and expectations of personal development. Whether it is the "heart-piercing questions" on "Zhihu" that easily break millions of views (such as "How desperate are contemporary young people due to housing prices"), or the more than 100,000 "Douban" users who self-mockingly call themselves "985 waste", they are all the doubts and confusion after the bankruptcy of this optimistic myth. Therefore, both the praise for the young generation (such as "a generation of optimistic, confident, and aspiring people") and the criticism (such as "unable to withstand setbacks and always like to complain") are just the two sides ofthe same coin of the social mentality consequences caused by the core concept of "spiritual pursuit based on material foundation" of the affluent generation.

When assets become the key factor determining life opportunities, and it is difficult for the young generation to achieve a sense of accomplishment through the labor market despite their hard work, they will inevitably attribute their personal life situation to structures and systems beyond the individual level. This attribution mechanism echoes with their daily life experiences and ultimately points to abstract or even false social oppositions, such as intergenerational ("housing prices are the exploitation of young people by the middle-aged"), or capital ("capital uses us to create a better world, but we are expelled"), or the more abstract market ("the free market is the freedom to speculate on housing prices"), and it is not ruled out that in extreme cases, it may point to the state.

According to our tracking research on multiple social media platforms, the attitude of the young generation towards capital (including the embodied operating strategies such as "996 work system", "big and small weeks", "inverted salary of fresh graduates and old employees", "options instead of wages", and the ultra-rich groups that obtain excess returns through the capital market) has undergone a subversive change in the past two or three years, from previously idolizing the ultra-rich and recognizing overtime work in exchange for excess salary, to questioning and resisting capital and its operating strategies - the bottom-layer feeling of the asset society, accompanied by news events such as "35-year-old unemployment" and "'post-90s' employee sudden death", has become more real and intense, until the term "working people" became popular on the Internet in 2020. To the extent that the "post-90s" who have never truly experienced the planned economy era have begun to reminisce about the 1980s of "job assignment and unit housing allocation". "Getting on shore as a civil servant" (i.e. passing the civil service exam) has once again become a popular career choice. The young generation is calling for a new economic order that allows them to break free from the bottom-layer feeling and achieve their spiritual pursuits.

Under the catalysis of specific public opinion hotspots, the general dissatisfaction of youth groups with capital may be transformed into collective resistance actions. In March 2019, a project called "996.ICU" (i.e. "work 996, sick in ICU") was born on the open source code hosting platform GitHub, aiming to expose companies that implement the "996 work system". In just two weeks, more than 200,000 people responded to the project and released the "Anti-996 License", prohibiting companies on the "996 Company List" from using the open source code they contributed. Afterwards, the initiator also created the "955.WLB" project, scoring more than 1,300 companies and encouraging "voting with feet" to refuse to join companies on the "996 Company List".

It should be pointed out that the "996 work system" is just one of the many manifestations of deep-seated contradictions, and the root still lies in the conflict between the material foundation on which the affluent generation relies to realize their spiritual pursuits and the bottom-layer feeling of latecomers in the asset society. After Internet companies no longer implement the "996 work system", those young people who have lost their excess income have not obtained the "freedom, comfort, and sense of accomplishment" they have been longing for, and the reflection and questioning of the existing economic order will still be hidden in the hearts of the young generation.

(4) Integrating into a Powerful Country

Many media reports and institutional studies have pointed out that the "post-90s" are a generation with a surge of patriotic sentiment. The source of this emotion is mostly attributed to affluent living conditions, high-level education, and extensive media publicity, ignoring the ideological concepts and social mentality characteristics of this generation. This article believes that the individualization characteristics of the affluent generation determine that the patriotic feelings of the "post-90s" have their unique generation mechanism, and the bottom-layer feeling caused by the asset society makes them have an ardent expectation for a powerful country.

On the one hand, the younger generation sincerely believes that China's achievements in politics and economy prove the superiority of the Chinese path, and this recognition does not come from external propaganda, but from daily life experiences. When this value judgment originating from life experience encounters external questioning, the young generation tends to consciously seek examples from personal life experiences to refute and criticize. Only under this logic can we understand why young people are happy to be called "self-reliant patriots". On the other hand, the affluent generation yearning to break free from bondage no longer takes family or collective as the source of life meaning, and they need to find a more abstract and grand object to obtain a sense of meaning and resist the value poverty and meaning emptiness caused by individualization. The love for the country enables the young generation to integrate their trivial and vulgar daily life practices into a grand community, and there is no need to be subject to additional constraints as a result. Therefore, forwarding, liking, and commenting on content related to patriotism expresses not only personal emotions, but also a sense of collective belonging to the community.

At the same time, the bottom-layer feeling caused by the asset society makes the young generation yearn to find an external force powerful enough to break the logic of assets determining life opportunities. The attribution of the bottom-layer feeling often points to ultra-rich groups, capital, and even the market, while the hope of establishing a new economic order is placed on the state. The young generation yearns to integrate into a powerful country to resist those abstract or even fictional social oppositions.

However, it should be pointed out that whether it is the epistemology originating from personal life experience, the source of meaning to break free from the trivial and vulgar, or the external force expected to transcend the bottom-layer feeling, they all take the strength of the community as a premise. This means that when national economic development faces downside risks, it may trigger a series of belief crises. Similarly, if the state is proven to be unable to tame the "evil" capital, or is considered to be a part of the structural forces of the asset society, the object of questioning and challenge may also point to the state. Therefore, we should calmly and objectively view the current surge of patriotic enthusiasm among the young generation, as well as the expectations for the state in terms of performance and morality conveyed behind this phenomenon.

Circle-based Survival: Youth Subculture and Pan-ideology

For the affluent generation, individualization magnifies and affirms the value and meaning of "I", and subculture communities based on personal interests and values (such as fan circles, gender issues/LGBTQ, horoscopes, animal protection, etc.) play an increasingly important role in the process of youth socialization. These communities rooted in cyberspace provide a possibility for the young generation struggling with the powerlessness of the asset society to interpret reality and transcend the bottom layer, and the spiritual pursuit of self-fulfillment is concretized into the "masters" recognized by specific communities. We call this state "circle-based survival".

Although there are occasional "breaking out of the circle" incidents, in general, circles are mostly "non-ideological", that is, relatively niche, not in conflict with mainstream values, and without clear political demands. However, this does not mean that such communities do not have the ability to construct frameworks and organize mobilization. On the contrary, because they have a self-contained system of theories and logic (such as gender issues/LGBTQ), or have developed a set of specific behavior patterns and value judgment standards in the process of daily practice (such as fan circles), members can reach consensus at the value and behavior level, that is, unity within and exclusion outside, which can both frame specific issues and become a potential channel for mobilization and organization. Therefore, it has the characteristics of "pan-ideology".

Taking gender issues as an example, a few extreme gender issue communities reframe social issues such as the "three-child" policy and the gender ratio of the "seventh census" (such as "opening up three children makes it difficult for women to find jobs"), and lead public discussions to the contradictions and oppositions between different genders and different groups. This kind of public opinion tearing and confrontational emotion not only does not make members reflect on their views and cognitive frameworks, but instead strengthens their psychological identification of internal unity and external exclusion.

Furthermore, when the same social issue or public opinion hotspot is framed and mobilized within different communities, pointing to opposite value propositions or action orientations, the characteristics of pan-ideology are particularly prominent. For example, in the widely influential "227 Incident", the "fan circle" community used the framework of "maintaining public order and good customs" to report relevant works in large numbers, while the "danmei (boys' love)" community used the framework of "creative freedom" and "boycotting inferior artists" to cause many brands to announce the termination of cooperation with the artist. In this case, whether it is the "fan circle" community or the "danmei" community, they have all used mainstream discourse to frame their own value propositions, and have all achieved large-scale organizational mobilization within the community, and strengthened the identification and boundaries of the community in the process of social performance.

From this perspective, whether it is fan circles or gender issue communities, they all have the qualities of new religions to varying degrees. This new religious quality is reflected not only in constructing social reality and shaping psychological identification, but also in organizing and mobilizing collective actions. Against the background of the circle-based survival and the rise of pan-ideological communities of contemporary youth groups, it is not ruled out that specific issues may show a trend of extremization and populism in the process of framing and evolution, and it is also not ruled out that multiple issues may overlap to form the possibility of large-scale organizational mobilization.

Conclusion

This article believes that the affluent generation and the asset society constitute the two era backgrounds for us to understand the core concepts of contemporary youth groups. The former shapes individualization characterized by self-responsibility for life opportunities and self-worth magnification, pursuing freedom, comfort, and a sense of accomplishment beyond subsistence; the latter leads to the powerlessness and bottom-layer feeling of latecomers due to the difference between asset-labor return rates and the fact that the amount of assets determines personal life opportunities to a greater extent than the performance in the labor market.

The above core concepts have led to a series of social mentality consequences: First, using "lying flat" to resist power. The desire to break free from the bondage of external responsibilities and the inability to realize the expected material conditions have led the young generation to resist mainstream expectations in terms of love, marriage, and work. Second, yearning for "financial freedom at the age of 35". The material foundation that supports spiritual pursuits cannot be met through labor/professional income, the work ethic of hard work is gradually fading, and high-risk speculative behaviors are widely accepted. Third, calling for a new economic order. Personal life opportunities are determined by assets and it is difficult to achieve through the labor market, spiritual pursuits have come to nothing, and the young generation yearns to break the existing economic order. Fourth, integrating into a powerful country. The patriotism originating from individual experience allows the individualized young generation to find a possible path to break free from the poverty of meaning and transcend the bottom-layer feeling. Fifth, circle-based survival. Circles based on personal values and interests provide the young generation with spiritual satisfaction and value sources, and at the same time contain the mobilization framework and organizational capabilities to pay for social actions.

The affluent generation and the asset society have shaped the unique social mentality and cognitive model of contemporary youth groups, and may generate new forms of conflict as the young generation enters society. Among them, if some negative factors further ferment under specific circumstances, they may constitute potential risks to China's economic and social development. The author believes that at least the following three aspects are worthy of attention:

First, if certain types of social mentality are further radicalized, it is not ruled out that they may cause questioning of the current order within a certain range, or even trigger ideological risks.

Under the influence of the framing ability of pan-ideology and the organizational mobilization ability of related communities, the discussion of specific public issues may be combined with those abstract, fictitious social oppositions with extensive mobilization capabilities, simplifying the public policy process into a resource struggle between different generations and different groups, inducing populist sentiments, squeezing the decision-making space, and it is not ruled out that there may be tensions with the mainstream ideology in specific periods and on specific issues (especially capital, gender, and marriage and childbirth issues), and the spearhead of controversy may point to the current system.

Second, if certain types of social mentality are too rampant, they may cause a decline in capital dividends and insufficient human capital cultivation, affecting economic development.

The rapid rise in asset prices and the excessive hype of radical investment strategies may exacerbate the situation of low savings rates and high debt rates among the young generation, further generating structural financial risks and bringing hidden dangers to the smooth operation of China's economy. Human capital may face challenges in three dimensions: quantity, quality, and work ethic. In terms of quantity, the desire to "lie flat" suppresses the fertility willingness of the young generation; in terms of quality, the insurmountable asset gulf adds a new footnote to the "uselessness of studying"; in terms of work ethic, hard work not only has to endure the accusation of "involution", but also face the reality of "working poor".

Third, the polarization of specific social mentality may cause value conflicts and consensus tearing, and the development of new concepts of marriage and childbirth and the prevalence of consumerism may cause a series of challenges at the social-cultural level.

The individualized concept has dispelled the traditional values of marriage and childbirth, and has shaped some specific personal choice behaviors into the "right to lie flat" to resist social inequality (such as sexual minorities, anti-marriage), and these concepts are catalyzed and spread by pan-ideological communities, having a wide influence among the young generation. The combination of consumerism and Internet finance provides a possible outlet for material desires that cannot be satisfied by professional income, and speculative behaviors such as "speculating on coins", "speculating on shoes", "speculating on blind boxes", and "speculating on NFTs" are shaped as investment strategies to achieve "financial freedom". Consumerism echoes the wealth anxiety of the young generation at the social psychological level, leading to wider participation.