Systematic Avoidance: The Dissolution of Punishment Function in the Socialization of Chinese Minors and Its Cognitive Cost — A Full-Chain Analysis from Picture Book Narratives to Artificial Intelligence

In contemporary Chinese society, the function of punishment in the socialization of minors is undergoing a systematic dissolution. This dissolution does not occur in a single domain but simultaneously across five interrelated dimensions: cultural products, public discourse, school institutions, law enforcement practices, and artificial intelligence. Drawing on behaviorist operant conditioning, Piaget's theory of moral development, Freud's reality principle, and Foucault's concept of disciplinary power, this paper argues that the punishment function is an irreplaceable infrastructure of socialization. It then analyzes the retreat mechanisms in each of the five domains: picture books and children's stories are systematically de-conflictualized; public discourse conflates any form of negative feedback with violence; schools and teachers adopt defensive withdrawal under institutional pressure; law enforcement tends to exempt minors from substantive consequences for deviant behavior; and AI, through statistical averaging and reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), reifies existing discursive patterns as technical facts. These five domains form a complete avoidance loop, depriving an entire generation of the opportunity to learn, in a protected environment, how to face non-negotiable consequences. Using data on workplace adaptation, mental health, deviant behavior, and cognitive structures of the post-2000 generation (Generation Z), this paper demonstrates that the cognitive cost of this socialization deficit is not a distant prediction but an observable social fact. Finally, it analyzes how AI enables the intergenerational self-replication of systematic avoidance and argues that the way out of this loop lies not in technology but in the reconstruction of human discourse itself.