The Kids Are Not Alright.(China)(Statistical Data Included)

A rhyme currently popular among school kids in Hunan province seems to parody the swaggering American youth ethos: "Going to school is a real drag/And it costs lots of money/Why not join a gang? Food, drink, status/And sleep each night with a honey." In the People's Republic--in Mao's home province, no less--one is hard-pressed to imagine the lines being much more than the braggadocio of a few fortunate kids with access to MTV.

Yet these are not empty words. In April police in nearby Sichuan province busted a local gang, the New Dragon Society, that had been terrorizing local farmers and students; most of its 100 members were middle-school students between the ages of 14 and 16. Some 70 percent of youth crimes in China are thought to be gang-related. And while crime statistics are still considered a state secret in China, most available evidence shows that the number of offenses committed by juveniles has been rising dramatically. Independent researchers say that the number of crimes tripled between 1978 and 1998--and that nearly three quarters of those were committed by Chinese between 14 and 25. Experts say that perpetrators are growing younger and increasingly violent--a worrying trend in a society already pulled taut by other disgruntled groups.

The more freewheeling elements of the Chinese media are now filled with tales of sensationalistic crimes committed by juveniles. In April, Liu Yang, an 18-year-old university student, was accused of stabbing his 17-year-old girlfriend 27 times after she allegedly attacked him with a pair of scissors. (She had a record of past violence.) Liu then allegedly burned the body in an attempt to cover up the murder. In June three semiprofessional soccer players in their early 20s were arrested in Shenyang after allegedly killing a peddler who refused them a cigarette and the loan of his motorcycle. More recently a trio of young women and a male accomplice were convicted in Beijing of robbing men who had hired the women for sex, netting more than $85,000.

The most dangerous trend may be the rise in youth gangs, which have begun to flourish both in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai and in rural areas. According to criminologist Feng Shuliang, around 70 to 80 percent of serious crimes in eastern coastal regions have been attributed to gangs. Many of the groups start out in schools--where kids say they are often bullied and robbed by older students--as informal self-protection societies. The New Dragon Society was formed ostensibly to "advance our brothers and resist outsiders." (They claimed they wanted to use the money they stole to open up hotels and teahouses to provide jobs for their comrades.) But according to Li Meijin, a criminology professor at the People's Public Security University, some gangs turn to kidnapping classmates, rape and murder. In Beijing last week a posse of six 16- and 17-year-old girls was busted for committing a string of robberies and assaults.

Parents lament the rebelliousness of youth in every country and every generation, of course. But criminologists cite a number of uniquely Chinese factors behind the kiddie crime wave. Most prominent is the infamous "little emperor" factor. Beijing's strict family-planning policies have produced a generation of only children who are by reputation spoiled, self-centered and greedy. "Young people are less family-oriented, less collective-oriented and more self-oriented," says Paul Friday, a professor of criminal justice at the University of North Carolina. According to him, egocentricity is a common theme in juvenile delinquency; most of the people involved in crime in Western countries have narcissistic tendencies. "As young people get more self-centered, you will get more serious crimes," he warns.

The problem is inextricable, too, from the economic and social changes that have revolutionized China in the past two decades. Liu Jianhong, a criminologist in the sociology department at Rhode Island College, says the phenomenon is "a reaction to change and loss of hope." ...