"This is the stupid generation. They were raised on Coca-Cola and Western movies and they're very isolated from their country's history," said Zhang Shihe, 56, a blogger and political activist.
Phelim Kine, a senior Asia analyst for Human Rights Watch, said the indifference of young Chinese about Tiananmen Square was more a result of censorship than willful ignorance.
"People can't care if they don't know," Kine said.
But many do know and still don't care.
Zhou Shuyang, 23, who works in marketing for a European company, speaks fluent English and is tech-savvy enough to get around the "Great Firewall of China" and read whatever she likes online.
But she fully supports the government's efforts to restrict the information.
"If there is too much freedom, all sorts of false rumors can spread on the Internet," she said. "It's not easy to control such a big and diverse country as China."
Zhou added, "For me right now, I feel satisfied with my life, my country. I seldom think about politics."
If anything, when young Chinese raise their voices, they are more likely to be chanting patriotic slogans, demonstrating in favor of their government rather than against.
The largest mass gathering in Beijing in recent memory came a week after the May 12, 2008, quake in Sichuan province, when tens of thousands of mourners poured into Tiananmen, raising their fists and shouting, "Stand up, China."
"The whole square was filled with people crying, shouting, waving flags," recalled Zhou, who said it was the only time in her life she had attended a demonstration.
At times, the intense patriotism of the younger generation spills over into outbursts of nationalism. That happened last year in the run-up to the Summer Olympics in Beijing when free-Tibet protests disrupted the relay of the Olympic torch, infuriating many Chinese.
During the height of the demonstrations in April, the website anti-cnn.com was launched by a recent engineering graduate of Beijing's Qinghua University to protest what he believes is anti-China bias in the Western news media. It still receives about 500,000 hits daily and is the best-known of many new websites catering to young nationalists.
"They call us the post-1980s youth, the April youth, the Olympic torch generation or the 'Bird's Nest' generation," said the website's founder, 24-year-old Rao Jin, referring to the Olympic stadium. (Or rather, he "wrote." The interview was conducted by e-mail at his request.) "Our patriotism springs from a heartfelt love for the motherland, a belief in Chinese traditional culture, pride in being Chinese and confidence in China's future."
