Adolescent Social, Emotional, and School Adjustment in Mainland China

Recent research has indicated that Chinese adolescents face a variety of challenges and difficulties in socioemotional and school adjustment. It has been found that Chinese adolescents' social and behavioral problems, emotional disturbances, and academic difficulties are highly interrelated and contribute to each other during development. Protective and coping resources that are provided in the culture, including extensive family involvement, support and monitoring systems in school, and regulatory peer group and social networks, may effectively buffer negative effects of adolescent social, school, and psychological difficulties, particularly of an externalizing nature. However, since individual socioemotional well-being has traditionally been neglected in Chinese collectivistic culture, adolescent internalizing problems such as depressed feelings have not received adequate attention from professionals and the public.