Tiananmen protests hold little interest for China's youth

By Ben Blanchard

BEIJING (Reuters) - Final year Chinese university student Li Teng knows finding a job during the global economic crisis will be tough. Yet he shakes his head at the thought of taking to the streets to protest.

"I think the government is working hard to fix the economy," the fashionably dressed history major said. "Besides, this is not a problem which started in China. I have confidence."

How things change.

Two decades ago, China's youth were at the forefront of a movement to bring democracy to the world's most populous nation in demonstrations bloodily put down around Beijing's central Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.

Today, after years of breakneck economic growth, the young are more pro-government, more suspicious of the West, and genuinely proud of China's achievements, such as the Beijing Olympics, making a repeat of June 4 unlikely.

The China of 20 years ago, where the chaos of the Cultural Revolution was still fresh in many people's minds, is also very different from the China of today, with its shining skyscrapers, bustling malls and expanding middle class.

"One good thing about young people today is that they are luckier than in the past," said Bao Tong, a former senior official purged after the 1989 demonstrations.

"My son and daughter grew up in difficult circumstances, with rationed food ... They didn't have enough nutrition," he told Reuters in a recent interview. "Now, there are no grains coupons, no meat coupons."

That is a sentiment post graduate student Zhang Haiping understands. "In that era, people were very idealistic. But students have changed since then," Zhang said. "China has changed, whether you're talking about reforms or the economy."

The potential for unrest among a disaffected youth has not gone away though thanks to the global economic crisis.

More than six million university students will try to enter China's workforce this year. Up to a quarter could have difficulty finding jobs, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said in December, as the economy slows.

Many are already getting desperate.

The Yangtse Evening Post reported earlier this month that in the relatively affluent eastern province of Jiangsu, 46 university graduates had applied for jobs as public toilet attendants, such was the state of the labor market.

"Better to be a 'toilet master' than unemployed at home," it cited one of the applicants as saying.

"GREATER EXPECTATIONS"