Imagining the Future in Today’s China : University Students’ Images of the Future

Abstract

In recent years, worry about youth’s hopelessness about the future has been on the rise. In China, the youth were affected, for instance, by the Covid-19 pandemic and related policies, followed by a record high youth unemployment rate. Simultaneously, the Chinese youth have been expected to carry out the ‘Chinese Dream’. In this thesis, I investigated what Chinese university students think and feel about the future, and most of all, what their probable and preferred images of the future were like. The study was conducted through an online survey. On average, the respondents perceived future of the world as slightly more uncertain than their own future, and they were slightly more optimistic about their own future than the future of the world. Additionally, half of the participants indicated a rather weak sense of agency. Concerning sources of views and opinions about the future, the respondents encountered them most often in social media. Trough thematic analysis and Causal Layered Analysis (CLA), I found that images of probable and preferred futures an individual held were often similar. From the data, I identified a total of three (3) different images. The most common was an image of a high-tech society. In this image, progress and development had occurred in most areas of life and the society, and as the title suggests, advanced technology played a significant role in the society and daily life. The second most common image was of a harmonious world – a sustainable and peaceful globalised world where people led meaningful lives. The least common image was titled times of change due to respondents describing societal issues, unrest, disconnection, and chaos. Overall, China was depicted as both a powerful country with high potential for innovativeness and achieving its aims, while also navigating challenges brought by systemic issues and domestic tensions. The results imply a complex societal landscape, where optimism about progress, harmonious relations, sustainable lifestyles, and technological advancements coexists with awareness of inequality, environmental issues, as well as potential crises and instability. Due to a small sample size (N: 34), the results are not generalisable, but the study provides a snapshot – a localised and time-bound depiction of values, experiences, and perceptions among the participants. The research holds significance through informing about the appropriateness of the research design in the context of China, and the results could be used as a basis of further studies in larger samples.