The Vicissitude of China’s “Baby Boomers”

From the most unfortunate generation to China’s Silver Foxes

In West Europe and North America, baby boomers born roughly between 1944 and 1964 are widely perceived as a privileged generation, particularly those white middle-class ones. Most of them grew up enjoying the profuse benefits from the golden age or Post-WWII Economic Boom, such as full-employment, abundant food, clothing, and solid retirement programs.

Their counterparts in China, conversely, are not so luck-struck at all. While there’s no specific term to define these Chinese of the age cohort parallel with western boomers (especially those born in the first half of the spectrum), they are a distinctive generation in the history of the People’s Republic of China, although due to the very opposite reason why western boomers attract attention — the extreme hardship they have endured in the course of most of their lives, for which we can justly call them the unfortunate generation in China.

Here are the main woes and agonies most of them have gone through:

- The Great Leap Forward: an economic and social campaign by the Communist Party of China from 1958 to 1962, aimed to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a socialist society through rapid industrialization and…