Co d d l e d f ro m i n f a ncy a nd r a ise d t o b e acad e m i cmac h i ne s , C h i na ’s o nly c h i l d re n ex p e c t t he wo r l d . Now t hey’ rebu c k l i ng u nd e r t he p re s su re o f t he i r pa re n t s ’ d e fe r re d d rea ms .

BY TAY LOR CLARK I I L LUST R ATIONS BY BRIAN CRONIN

86 Psychology Today July/August 2008

PLIGHT OF THELITTLE EMPERORS

When China began limiting couples toone child 30 years ago, the policy’s mosto bvious goal was to contain a mushro o m-ing population. For the Chinese people,h oweve r, the policy’s greater purpose wa sto turn out a group of young elites whowould each enjoy the undivided re s o u rc e sof their whole family—the so-called x i a oh u a n g d i, or “little empero r s.” The plan wa sto “produce a generation of high-q u a l i t yc h i l d ren to facilitate China’s intro d u c t i o nas a global powe r,” explains Susan Gre e n-halgh, an expert on the policy. But whilethese we l l -educated, driven achievers arefueling the nation’s economic boom, theirg e n e ration has become too modern too

q u i c k l y, glutted as it is witht e l ev i s i o n s, access to comput-e r s, cash to buy name bra n d s,and the same expectations of middle-class success asWe stern kids.

The shift in tempera m e n thas happened too fast forsociety to handle. China is

still a developing nation with limitedo p p o r t u n i t y, leaving millions of ambitiouslittle emperors out in the cold; the coun-try now churns out more than 4 millionu n i versity graduates ye a r l y, but only 1.6million new college- l evel jobs. Even thest r i vers end up as security guard s. C h i n am ay be the wo r l d ’s next great superpowe r,but it’s facing a looming crisis as millions ofove r p ressurized, hy p e reducated only chil-d ren come of age in a nation that can’t fulfilltheir ex p e c t a t i o n s.

hen dawei liu was grow i ng up inthe coastal city of Ta i ’an during the 1990s,all of his classmates—95 percent of whomwe re only childre n — re c e i ved plenty ofdoting parental support. One st u d e n t ,h oweve r, truly stood out from the re st .Every day, this boy went from class to

class with an entourage of one: his mother, who had given up the income of her dayjob to monitor his studies full-time, sitting beside him constantly in order to ensureperfect attention. “The teacher was OK with it,” Liu shrugs. “He might not focus asmuch on class if his parent wa s n ’t there.”

Ac ross China, stories of parents going to incredible lengths to give their only chil-d ren a competitive edge have become commonplace. Throughout Jing Zhang’s yo u t hin Beijing, her parents took her to weekly résumé-boosting painting classes, wa i t i n goutside the school building for two hours each time, even in winter. Yanming Lin enjoye dperfect silence in her family’s one- room Shanghai apartment throughout her five- p l u s

hours of nightly homework; besides nixing the television, her mother kept perpetualwatch over her to make sure she st ayed on task. “By high school, my parents knew Icould control myself and only do homewo r k ,” Lin say s. “Because I knew the situation.”

The situation for urban young people in today’s China, from preschoolers on up, isthis: Your entire future hinges on one test, the national college entrance exa m —C h i-n a ’s magnified version of the SAT. The Chinese call it gao kao, or “tall test ,” because itlooms so larg e. If students do well, they win spots at China’s top universities and an easyroute to a middle-class lifest y l e. If not, they must confront the kind of tough, blue-c o l-lar lives their parents faced. With such high st a ke s, families dedicate themselves totheir child’s test prep virtually from infancy. “Ma ny people come home to have dinnerand then study until bed,” says Liu. “You have to do it to go to the best university and geta good job. You must do this to live.”

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Yu Wa ng ’s pa rents sc r aped together themo ney to buy a sheep and kept it ou t s i d et he city. Every day, Wa ng ’s father cyc l e d

40 minutes to fetch fre sh milk for his so n .

W

kept it with re l a t i ves outside the city. Eve r yd ay, Wa n g’s father cycled 40 minutes tofetch fresh milk for his son. Out of his par-ents’ meager monthly salary of 45 RMB(about $6), 35 RMB went to Wa n g’s edu-cation—including a packed slate of piano,p a i n t i n g, guitar, and even dancing classes.

The pre s s u re to succeed was all theg reater given that his parents’ own dre a m shad been dashed during China’s Cultura lRevolution, when Mao Zedong closedschools and sent difficult- t o-c o n t rol intel-lectuals to be “reeducated” by working thef i e l d s. Wa n g’s father spent eight ye a r sh e rding goats. His own dreams dest roye d ,he poured all his hopes and ambitions intohis son. “Because of the Cultural Revo l u-tion, my parents literally wa sted 10 ye a r s,”explains Wa n g, 29, who was among thef i r st Chinese only kids born under the one-

this culture of p re s s u re and frust ra-tion has sparked a mental-health crisis foryoung Chinese. Ma ny simmer in depre s-sion or unemployment, unwilling to takejobs they consider beneath them. Millions,a f raid to face the real world, escape intovideo games, which the government con-siders a national epidemic. And a dist u r b-ing number decide to end it all; suicide isn ow China’s leading cause of death forthose aged 20 to 35. “People in China—especially parents and college st u d e n t s —a re suddenly becoming awa re of huged e p ression and anxiety problems in yo u n gp e o p l e,” says Yu Zeng, a 23-ye a r-old fro mSichuan prov i n c e. “The media report onnew campus suicides all the time.”

“In this generation, every child is ra i s e dto be at the top,” says Vanessa Fo n g, a Ha r-va rd education professor and author of

Only Hope: Coming of Age under Ch i n a ’sO n e -Child Po l i c y. “ T h e y’ ve wo r ked hardfor it, and it’s what their parents havefocused their lives on. But the problem isthat the country can’t provide the lifest y l ethey feel they deserve. Only a few will geti t .” China’s accomplished young elites arec e l e b rated on billboards as the va n g u a rdof the nation, yet they’ re quickly becom-ing victims of their own lofty ex p e c t a t i o n s.

br i ng i ng up a h i g h -a c h i eving child in ac rowded and impove r-ished city like Ho h h o t ,p a rents sometimes have

to get cre a t i ve. Since the gove r n m e n tissued minuscule rations of milk, fori n st a n c e, Yu Wa n g’s parents scra p e dtogether the money to buy a sheep and

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ernment on the one-child policy. “ If some-thing happened to that child, it would be ad i s a st e r. So from the parents’ point of view,the spoiling is all necessary to protect them.”

Since the policy’s inception, the Chi-nese have worried that the ex t reme com-bination of discipline and indulgencewould result in maladjusted kids, self-c e n-t e red brats who can’t take criticism andd o n ’t understand sharing. Asked if hewished he’d had siblings, one 22 -ye a r-o l df rom Sichuan province replied, “Does thismean everything I have would have to becut in half or shared? No, I don’t want that.”

Yet despite the st e re o t y p e, the re s e a rc hhas revealed no evidence that only kidsh ave more negative traits than their peerswith siblings—in China or any w h e re else.“The only way only children are re l i a b l yd i f f e rent from others is they score slightlyhigher in academic achieve m e n t ,” ex p l a i n sToni Fa l b o, a Un i versity of Texas psyc h o l-ogy professor who has gathered data onm o re than 4,000 Chinese only kids. Su re,some little emperors are bra t t y, but nom o re than children with siblings.

This isn’t to say Chinese only kids arep i c t u res of mental health—it’s just thattheir psychological issues stem not fro m

a lack of siblings but from theharsh academic competitionand parental prodding thatp e r vade their live s. Su s a nNewman, a New Jersey psy-c h o l o g i st and only-c h i l dexpert, says the notion thatlittle emperors are bossy,s e l f-obsessed little brats issimply part of the gre a t e rmyth of only kids as damagedg o o d s. “Pinning their pro b-lems on having no siblings isreally making them a scape-g o a t ,” she say s. Being an onlychild is not the pro b l e m .

Chinese parents bemoantheir only child’s desire fori n stant gratification, exc e s-s i ve consumption, and a lifef ree of hard s h i p, but suchcomplaints are just proof thatthe policy wo r ked: The chil-d ren are like little Americans.“These kids have the samed reams as all middle-c l a s skids: to go to college, to get

w h i t e-collar jobs, to own their own home,to have Ni kes and name bra n d s,” says Fo n g.“They expect things that are normal ind eveloped countries, but by China’s st a n-d a rd s, are unheard of.”

yu zeng remembershearing of the first suicideat his school in 2005,when he was a junior atSichuan Un i ve r s i t y. By the

n ext ye a r, three more of his classmates hadleapt to their deaths from campus build-i n g s, and Zeng noticed a wave of news st o-ries about suicides—all of them for a sim-i l a r, perplexing reason. “It was after theygot a bad grade on a test ,” Zeng say s. “Theythink to die is better than to have that badm a r k .”

In the pressurized world of Chinesea c a d e m i c s, any setback can seem fatal. LastJa n u a r y, for exa m p l e, one 17-ye a r-old Bei-jing girl tried to kill herself after learningthat a paperwork snafu might prevent herf rom re g i stering for the gao kao. Su i c i d ehas become China’s fifth most commoncause of death ove rall, with young urbanintellectuals at highest risk. A recent st u d yby the Society Su r vey Institute of China

child policy. “I was explicitly told that theyhad lost a lot in their live s, so they wa n t e dme to get it back for them.”

In recent ye a r s, howeve r, Chinese par-ents have sometimes blurred the lineb e t ween sacrifice and slavery in aidingtheir child’s success: Mothers carry theirc h i l d ’s backpack around; couples forg olunch so their kid can have plentiful snacksor new Ni ke s. Vanessa Fong recalls meet-ing one mother who re s i sted hospitaliza-tion for her heart and kidney tro u b l e sbecause she feared it might interfere withher daughter’s gao kaop re p a ration; whenFong gave the mother money for medica-tion, it mostly went to ex p e n s i ve food forher daughter.

Pa rents go to such lengths in partbecause Chinese culture has alway semphasized success, but also for a morep ressing reason: Tra d i t i o n a l l y, childre nsupport their parents in old age. With onlyone child to carry the load, parents’ for-tunes are tied to their child’s, and they push(and pamper) the little ones accord i n g l y.“In China, the term for a one-child familyis a ‘risky family,’ ” says Baochang Gu, ad e m o g ra p hy professor at Beijing’s Re n m i nUn i versity who advises the Chinese gov-

90 Psychology Today July/August 2008

lectuals during the Cultural Revo l u t i o n ,he decimated the nation’s already thin psy-chological establishment. “Back then,every mental problem was seen as anti-s o c i a l i st ,” says Kaiping Pe n g, a Un i ve r s i t yof California Berkeley professor who wa samong the first generation of Chinese psy-c h o l o g i sts to re c e i ve formal clinical tra i n-i n g, in the late 1970s. “If you we red e p ressed, they thought you we re politi-cally impure and sent you to a labor camp.”For decades, Chinese psyc h i a t r i sts dealtexc l u s i vely in pills and electroshock, anduntil re c e n t l y, China had just a handful ofu n i versity psychology pro g ra m s —w h i c his why Peng believes there are only about2,000 qualified thera p i sts at work theret o d ay for a population of 1.3 billion.

But as universities work to churn outqualified psyc h o l o g i sts and as teens andt wentysomethings realize they need morehelp with their unre a l i stic ex p e c t a t i o n sthan with their gra d e s, Peng grows opti-m i stic. “People in China have more know l-edge about mental health today,” he say s.“Now there are books and popular maga-zines about it, and the training infra st r u c-t u re gets better all the time.” Cities are alsoexperimenting with crisis hotlines. Chi-n a ’s inaugural suicide- p revention linedebuted in 2003; it re c e i ved more than22 0,000 calls over its first two ye a r s.

Me a nw h i l e, Chinese officials are tak-ing steps to ease the pre s s u re on young st u-d e n t s. Schools no longer publicly announce

each st u d e n t’s exam scores and class ra n k ,for one, and the government is also askingp a rents to let their precious little emper-ors actually pl a yevery once in a while.

B e s i d e s, all of that studying can onlyt a ke you so far. “On your résumé, you can’tput, ‘1988 to 2001: studied 10 hours eve r yd ay,’ ” laughs Howe, the Chengdu st u d e n t .“You have to actually do st u f f.” PT

TAY LOR CLARK, a writer in Portland, Ore g o n ,

is the author of St a r b u c ke d.

concluded that over 25 percent of unive r-sity students have had suicidal thoughts,c o m p a red to 6 percent in the United St a t e s.

The number of Chinese college gra d-uates per year has nearly tripled in the lasth a l f-d e c a d e—f rom 1.5 million in 2002 to4.1 million in 2007—which means morethan 2 million grads a year end up withex p e n s i ve diplomas, but no job. With sofew top positions available and so manys e e ke r s, urban only children must st u d yc o n stantly just to have a shot. Out of Ya n-ming Lin’s five hours of schoolwork pernight, four hours went to “vo l u n t a r y”h o m e work designed to boost test score s.“That one grade becomes the only st a n-d a rd to justify you as a person,” says Zeng.“ If you have a good personality or may b eyo u ’ re good in math but not Chinese, all ofthat is your downfall, because it’s all aboutyour gra d e.”

The ex t ra homework is not re q u i red bythe teacher, explains Lin. “But all the otherstudents do the ex t ra homework, so if yo udo not do it you will lag behind.” At one topBeijing kindergarten, students must knowpi to 100 digits by age 3.

Ma ny young only children opt forescape from reality through online gam-ing wo r l d s. Every day, the nation’s 113,0 0 0Internet cafés teem with twitchy, solitaryp l ayers—high school and university st u-d e n t s, dro p o u t s, and unemployed gra d u-ates—an alarming number of whomremain in place for days without food ors l e e p. Official estimates putthe number of Chinese Inter-net addicts at over 2 million,and the government consid-ers it such a serious thre a tthat it deploys vo l u n t e e rg roups to prowl the st re e t sand prevent teens fro mentering Internet cafés.

The mostly male youth who turn to vir-tual realms find there a place to re a l i z eambitions that are frust rated in real life,s ays Kimberly Yo u n g, a psyc h o l o g i st andInternet addiction expert who has advisedChinese thera p i st s. “With the click of abutton, they go from a 19-ye a r-old with nosocial life to a great warrior in World ofWa rc ra f t ,” Young say s. “Why bother doingthings in the real world when they can bein this game and be fulfilled?” Bu r n t-o u tand ove r t a xed, even kids who did well on

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the gao kao turn into virtual dro p o u t s,choosing the respite of computer gamesover the university spots they wo r ked soh a rd to win. Without a parent to push them,m a ny stop going to class. “In Chinese uni-ve r s i t i e s, so many just give up,” says Howe,a college student from Chengdu.

Faced with bleak pro s p e c t s, elite onlyc h i l d ren often don’t know how to cope;t h e y’ ve been brought up to do only onething: succeed. Indeed, in a 2007 surve yon st ress in young people by the ChineseInternet portal Sina.com, most re s p o n-d e n t s —56 perc e n t—blamed their miseryon the gap between China’s deve l o p i n g-world reality and their own high ex p e c t a-t i o n s. “They have trouble adjusting to theidea that they’ re going to be wo r k i n g-c l a s s,” says Fo n g.

for the frust r at e d,d e p ressed, and anxiousChinese kids bucklingunder the constant pre s-s u re—the news agency

Xinhua estimates there are 30 million Chi-nese under 17 with significant mental-health pro b l e m s —finding someone to talkto can be tough. Taught to st r i ve anda c h i eve from an early age, they’ ve neve rhad the time for heart- t o-heart chats. “It’snot like American universities where yo uh ave many friends,” says Yu Zeng. “At Chi-nese unive r s i t i e s, you compete for limitedre s o u rces and eve r yone is concerned about

t h e m s e l ve s. And if you wanted to talk toyour pare n t s, they wo u l d n ’t underst a n d .When they we re your age, they we re re a d-ing Ma o ’s little red book.” Plus, the con-versation would be st rained even if you didfind a sympathetic ear. “In the 20t h c e n-t u r y, the term ‘d e p ression’ didn’t even ex i stin China,” Toni Falbo say s. “It couldn’t bet a l ked about because there was no vo c a b-ulary for it ye t .”

Nor is professional help readily ava i l-a b l e. When Mao cra c ked down on intel-

Every day, the na t i o n ’s 113,000 Interne tca fés teem with twitchy, solitary players,

a n ala r m i ngn u mb e ro fwho m re ma i n i np lace for days without food or sl e e p.