Treating the youth like trash is part of the human tradition. The WW2 generation sacrificed their kids to a pointless meat grinder in Vietnam. Those kids, in turn, decided to cash out the entire western world and leave a decaying husk behind for their kids. And so the world turns.
The worse we treat young people, the worse they will pass on to future generations. China has done some pretty horrible things to young people in the last 3-4 generations. Maybe much worse than anything the west has subjected it’s children to. They are paying it forward, as is the tradition.
The main point of the article is that Mao tortured xi’s dad and sent xi to shovel shit in the country. He is putting todays kids through what he thinks they deserve.