Shu Hu

Bio: Shu Hu is an academic researcher from National University of Singapore. The author has contributed to research in topics: Child development & Westernization. The author has an hindex of 6, co-authored 11 publications receiving 138 citations.

Paradox in marriage values and behavior in contemporary China

Abstract: Despite a rapidly growing body of literature on marriage behaviors in China, we know very little about the changes or continuities of marriage values that accompany or underlie these behavioral tra...

Coming of Age in Times of Change The Transition to Adulthood in China

Abstract: This article aims to (1) describe trends for Chinese young adults’ pathways into adulthood for birth cohorts that have experienced distinct historical events over the past half century and (2) examine factors that shape young adults’ transitioning behavior. We draw data from the 2005 to 2008 Chinese General Social Survey. In contrast to the increasingly protracted trend seen in many Western societies, the more recent Chinese cohorts transitioned to marriage and parenthood sooner than those who grew up during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The economic and education reforms since the late 1970s have greatly increased urban-rural disparity in youths’ life trajectories despite their generally positive impact on young adults’ educational attainment and economic well-being. While near-universal marriage and childbearing within marriage prevail and son preference remains strong in modern China, evidence suggests that today’s young Chinese are exploring new pathways to adulthood, including c...

“It’s for Our Education”: Perception of Parental Migration and Resilience Among Left-behind Children in Rural China

Abstract: As a result of China’s rural–urban bifurcation, millions of rural Chinese children grow up in the absence of one or both parents due to work migration. Contrary to the dismal picture of left-behind children that is depicted by the mass media, comparative studies based on large-scale survey data suggest that left-behind children do not fare worse than those who live with both parents. Researchers have suggested that the positive effects of remittance might outweigh the negative effects of parental absence, and this explains why there is little total effect of parental migration on children’s wellbeing. This, however, does not explain why left-behind children are doing equally well as non-left-behind children in nearly all aspects of life, some of which are affected more by parental care than by economic resources. This paper aims to explore what factors contribute to the all-round resilience of rural left-behind adolescents. Mixed methods were used to collect both quantitative and qualitative data from adolescents, caregivers, and school teachers from a migrant-sending community in central China. Data analyses reveal that adolescent interpretation of parental migration is deeply embedded in Chinese values on education and ideals of mutual responsibilities among family members, and that a positive understanding of parental motivation for labor migration and commitment to education are significant contributors to the resilience displayed by left-behind adolescents. The heterogeneities in the reaction of left-behind adolescents to parental migration demonstrate that the positive perception of parental migration is not a stand-alone protective factor.

Some Time is Better Spent than Other Time: Chinese Adolescents’ Time Use and Developmental Outcomes

Abstract: Previous research has indicated that the time adolescents allocate to different activities may help to shape their educational, social, and psychological development. The “education fever” in East Asia raises concerns about the developmental implications of adolescents’ time use. China shares East Asian cultural preferences for academic excellence and has a competitive education system. Using an ecological and sociocultural perspective of human development, this study investigated the developmental implications of adolescent time use in China. We examined a wide range of time use and developmental outcomes employing a national sample of Chinese middle-school adolescents (n = 19,487). We found that time spent on homework assignments was associated with not only enhanced academic performance and educational aspiration but also increased depressive symptoms. Leisure reading was positively correlated with both educational outcomes and socio-psychological wellbeing, whereas private tutoring time and screen time were negatively associated with both. Sports and housework were correlated with higher socio-psychological wellbeing but not education-related outcomes. Girls spent more time studying, reading, and doing housework, and boys spent more time on sports and screens. Boys were more susceptible than girls to the effects of certain time use, such as screen time. These findings demonstrate the importance of examining child development comprehensively. More importantly, it shows that a balanced time allocation is crucial for the all-round development of children.

Marriage and Family in East Asia: Continuity and Change

Abstract: Trends toward later and less marriage and childbearing have been even more pronounced in East Asia than in the West. At the same time, many other features of East Asian families have changed very little. We review recent research on trends in a wide range of family behaviors in China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. We also draw upon a range of theoretical frameworks to argue that trends in marriage and fertility reflect tension between rapid social and economic changes and limited change in family expectations and obligations. We discuss how this tension may be contributing to growing socioeconomic differences in patterns of family formation. This focus on East Asia extends research on the second demographic transition in the West by describing how rapid decline in marriage and fertility rates can occur in the absence of major changes in family attitudes or rising individualism.

Between Tradition and Modernity: "Leftover" Women in Shanghai

Abstract: Since the turn of the new millennium, single, educated women in China's major cities have found themselves increasingly castigated as "leftover" women (sheng nu) if they are not yet married by their late 20s. Anxious parents brave public embarrassment to gather in parks, displaying photographs of their daughters and listing their economic prospects in the hope of finding them a husband. Popular discourse, however, frames these unmarried women as selfish, picky, and only interested in men with financial resources. The issue of "leftover" women warrants headlines and feature stories in Chinese newspapers, popular magazines, and TV reality shows. International media such as the BBC News, The New York Times, The Economist, and CNN have also covered the issue.Unfortunately, academics have yet to accord the phenomenon much attention. Only a limited amount of quantitative research has investigated the effect of education on Chinese women's marriage timing, with only one study directly examining the so-called "leftover" women (Cai & Tian, 2013; Cai & Wang, 2011; Qian 2012; Tian, 2013; Yu & Xie, 2013). Qualitative research investigating the issue is similarly scarce (Fincher, 2014; Gaetano, 2010; To, 2013), but here too the few studies that exist are largely descriptive or have focused on mate choice strategy or the empowerment of the single experience. Little is known about the dynamics underlying these women's marriage decisions. It is thus urgent to investigate and conceptualize these educated women's constraints and struggles in regard to marriage formation in the rapidly changing context of China, which is understood by many of its own citizens as transitioning from tradition to modernity.Research indicates that marriage is still early and nearly universal in China, in spite of three decades of rapid industrialization, urbanization, and expansion of mass education after the economic reform initiated in the 1980s (Ji & Yeung, 2014; Jones & Gubhaju, 2009; Yeung & Hu, 2013). What is interesting is that the pace of educated Chinese women delaying or forgoing marriage is actually much slower/lower compared to equally educated Chinese men and equally educated women in other Asian societies. At the same time, alongside rapid economic reformation and modernization, China has witnessed a resurgence of patriarchal Confucian tradition in recent years (Fincher, 2014; Ji & Yeung, 2014; Sun & Chen, 2014). According to this tradition, women are valued in terms of their roles as wives and mothers, regardless of the impressive progress made in terms of gender equality in China, with women participating in the labor force en masse since even the pre-reformation Maoist period and receiving more and more education in the post-reformation period. The return of patriarchal tradition seems to be at least partially accountable for the now-stalled, if not declining, status of gender equality in China (P. N. Cohen & Wang, 2008; Davis & Harrell, 1993; Fincher, 2014; Ji & Yeung, 2014; Sun & Chen, 2014; Zuo & Bian, 2001).In this research I investigated how China's so-called "leftover" women draw on and integrate elements of both tradition and modernity as they pursue their own ambitions and negotiate various constraints vis-a-vis marriage and their careers. In doing so, this study challenges the linear narratives of progress and/or convergence claimed by modernization theories, which would predict that, through economic modernization, the "traditional" family mode in non-Western contexts will transition to the Western "modern" family mode. I use the terms tradition and modernity here in a deliberate but qualified way in order not only to critique the naturalization of the concepts and their assumptions but also to capture their resilient currency and meaning in people's everyday efforts to make sense of a society undergoing rapid change. In this study I conceptualized contemporary China as an uneasy mosaic, with expectations and elements deemed alternately modern and traditional commingling in educated women's marriage motivations and behaviors. …

China's Fiscal System: A Work in Progress (2005)

Abstract: We argue in this paper that unless China begins to tackle more systematically the serious problems that have emerged in the finances of its various levels of sub-national government the problems to which the present unsatisfactory system give rise will over time increasingly distort resource allocation, increase distributional tensions, and slow down the impressive recent growth of the Chinese economy. Despite the lack of solid and reliable information on the size and nature of China’s real fiscal system, we show that the evidence available is generally consistent with this pessimistic reading. China’s fiscal and – in time – economic future thus rests to some extent on reforms to key aspects of its fiscal system, especially its intergovernmental finances. Moreover, a more consistent and purposive framework to this complex of problems seems needed. Given the scale and scope of China’s underlying public finance problems, the ‘reactive gradualism’ evidenced in recent ad hoc reforms to this or that piece of the fiscal system has, we suggest, run its course.