Another sad story about suicide in China:

…Recent statistics from the Chinese Association of Mental Health show
that suicide has become the No 1 killer of Chinese people between the
ages of 15 and 34.

Suicide accounted for 26.04 percent of the deaths in this age
group last year, according to statistics. The number of suicides for
each year was not given.

In 2003, the last year for which statistics are available, the Ministry of Health, recorded more than 250,000 suicides and two million attempts. In the same year, 31,484 people committed suicide in the United States, according to figures from the American Association of Suicidology.

Many of the people who killed themselves were teenagers. A two-year survey by researchers at Peking University
that ended last May, found that 20.4 percent of the more than 140,000
high school students interviewed said they had considered committing
suicide at some point.

And 6.5 percent of the students surveyed said they had made concrete plans to kill themselves.

 This is a cost, a high cost, of breakneck modernization.  One of the reasons for the epidemic of suicide in China, the report suggests, is "the pressure on individuals in a transitional society…"   This rings true to me.  The place is changing so fast in so many ways, and the pressures to succeed, or just to find a job to secure a comfortable living, are so incredibly heavy, in the intensely competitive and crowded society, that it is understandable why so many young people would take a deadly step.

     Two things come to mind in all of this.  First, it is a gruesome reminder, once again, that we should not refer to China as a "Confucian" society.  It seems to me in a Confucian society social networks would be available to support and help young people as they gain education and move out into the world.  Confucius tells us that at 15 he turned his mind to learning, but did not "take a stand" until he was 30.  This suggests that the teen and twenty years are a time of learning and preparation.  From this point of view, we should not expect, and society should not create incentives or encouragements for, young people going out on their own.  But that is precisely what young people want to do (it is certainly what I wanted to do when I was 16 and did do when I was 18).  The desire for individual freedom and accomplishment is, I believe, a modern idea (I would be happy to be corrected on this by any historians out there), at least in terms of Confucian culture.   Here is the last line from the story on Chinese suicide:

The researchers asked students who were in their second year at
junior high school to draw self-portraits of themselves in an ideal
world. The pictures surprised them.

The teenagers did not want their parents and teachers watching
over them all day. They did not want uniform clothes and hairstyles.
They desperately yearned for freedom.

 How sad: a desperate desire for freedom.  (I thinking of Janice Joplin here, "freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose…").  Of course they want to be free.  The trick is to find ways to let them experience freedom, come into it without feeling that crushing pressure to succeed.  Give them some freedom earlier in life so they can learn how to deal with it, how to live through it without hurting themselves.  All of which is a peculiarly modern set of issues, largely alien from traditional Confucianism.

    This might raise another question: is the problem in China an incomplete transition away from Confucianism?  Are there still elements of Confucian culture that make the desire for youthful freedom much more acute, and the possibilities for handling it much more remote?   Perhaps.  But I think the issue is less a matter of vestigial Confucianism and more a result of especially rapid socio-economic change.  Moving from a socialist system, where some minimum of existence was more or less guaranteed, to an incredibly competitive and cut throat capitalist system, where each individual is hard pressed to advance, would put any culture, Confucian or otherwise, under incredible stress.

     There is a second issue I want to raise, however.  It seems to me that, however widespread suicide is becoming in China, it is not something that would find sanction in either Confucian or Taoist thought.

     Many teenage suicide stories in China have an element of apparent filial piety in them:  a child has not passed the college entrance exam or has not secured a good job and feels that he or she has become a burden on the family or not lived up to parental expectations.  These are certainly real feelings on the part of some young Chinese people, but they are, I believe, an ultimate distortion of Confucianism. 

      Confucius does not tell us that everyone ought to pass the college entrance exam or that everyone should be a lawyer or doctor.  Rather, he tells us that we should attend to our social duties with genuine and loving commitment.  For parents this should mean backing off students when it appears they may not be able to attain some particular educational or employment status.  For children it should mean accepting less than ideal economic or social outcomes, while still being respectful of elders, supportive of the young, and helpful with friends.   

    Morally good people are not necessarily those with the best jobs or formal educations.  They are those who "do not contend" and are willing, like Confucius’s favorite acolyte, Yen Hui, to accept meager living standards.  It is only when filiality is distorted by social and economic competition – which are most un-Confucian – that we get such tragic results.

     Confucius, in short, would not condone suicide among young people; especially among young people whose lives still stretch out before them, who have not yet had a chance to develop fully their moral capacities.  He might accept it for a gentleman in an untenable situation, but not for the young.

     Suicide is not a Taoist option, either.  It is a form of murder, self murder, and, as the Tao Te Ching says, if we take up the act of killing, instead of letting life follow through its natural course, then we will only emerge with bloody hands – i.e. not really accomplishing what we set out to do.  A Taoist would be especially averse to suicide for reasons of failing to live up to certain social or economic standards.  Such concerns should not matter in the larger scheme of things.  If only those depressed Chinese teenagers could see past their immediate frustrations and open themselves to Way, maybe fewer of them would die unnecessary deaths.