The word "millenials" as a classification is not used in China. Everyone gets classified instead as 80后，90后，00后， etc. (meaning born after 1980, born after 1990, born after 2000, etc.). Because of China's rapid economic growth, the difference in attitudes for someone born in the 80s versus someone born in the 90s is actually very pronounced.
I know nothing about China or how pronounced these differences are, but you see the same thing even in the "Millennial" generation everyone loves to talk about here in the US. You'll find a drastic difference between younger Millennials and older Millennials, to the point where Buzzfeed is writing articles comparing the two. No matter how much people want to pretend that "Millennial" is actually a real thing, it's not. It's entirely made up and the sub-generations inside of the category share very different cultural values and life experiences.
It's hard to argue that someone born in 1982 shares much (if anything) in common with someone born in 1998.
I think social scientists are now making a distinction between people who grew up with smartphone and without them. There are apparently quite large differences in behaviors and attitudes between these two groups of young people.
Compared to someone born in 1810, someone born in 2020 and 1950 have a lot in common. Compared to someone born in 1215, someone born in 2020 and 1810 have a lot in common. It still doesn't make much sense to lump them together and generalize their behaviors.
What is universal, evidently, is confirmation bias. From the linked page, "the quotation is spurious."
I clicked on the link expecting the Socrates quote and was not disappointed. But, if you read the page through to the end, it seems that this quote was made up in by William L. Patty and Louise S. Johnson and published in "Personality and Adjustment, p. 277" in 1953. It was popularized in the 1960's to trivialize complaints by the older generation against the hippies. I have believed for a long time that this was a true quote from ancient Greece and it has shaped my world view. I have used this quote in many conversations and I still am hoping the quote is authentically from ancient Greece. I'll have to poke around the internet some to convince myself one way or another.
There were a number of similar quotes in a recent review of Bruce Cannon Gibney’s book on Boomers:
‘And way, way before that, a letter published in a 1771 issue of Town and Country manages to sound laughably familiar, in sentiment at least: “Whither are the manly vigour and athletic appearance of our forefathers flown? Can these be their legitimate heirs? Surely, no; a race of effeminate, self-admiring, emaciated fribbles can never have descended in a direct line from the heroes of Potiers and Agincourt.”’
Though that quote in particular is attributable to Kenneth John Freeman's 1907 dissertation at Cambridge University, rather than Socrates (as it is often attributed).
it is a right of passage for each generation. In your 20s you are called lazy and entitled, then in your 40s-60s you say the same to people in their 20s.
Not quite, we didn't have social media when I was growing up, so we got it from lazy, smug magazine articles. Now you have memes that are equally unfair, but with highly evolved hilarity. And, of course, I'm just on the edge of Gen X while my brother is a millennial, so fairness be damned, you're all whiny hipster SJWs snacking on Tide pods.
China and the USA share a many values. I think in many ways, China in the USA are more closely aligned vis-a-vis values than the USA and Western Europe are.
As standards of living and society itself improves, dire necessity decreases, and the proportion of the population motivated by necessity decreases. As general wealth increases, the more the general populace feels entitled.
Right now, you may well feel more or less entitled to a flush toilet and the ability to access all of the world's information in your pocket. In years past, these things were luxuries. Most of you reading this: Almost everything in your sight was once a luxury.
So here's the thing: You are lazy and entitled. That is both a good and bad thing. It's good, because it shows we have made progress. It's good, because you now have the time and resources to do something positive. Where it's bad, is that you also have the choice to do something positive with those time and resources, or not. Where it's bad, is that you will have a harder time understanding the magnitude of the sacrifices that got us where we are.