PROMPT
With specific references to the video, how does the focus of this course differ from standard narratives of post-Mao China since 1976? For instance, what topics have we covered that the documentary does not? And vice-versa: what does the documentary cover that we have spent less time on? Think about these different ways to study (and teach) history.
Note: Add specific evidence from the assigned readings/videos to SUPPORT, at least 250 words
YouTube ?China – A Century of Revolution – Part Three 1976-1997, Author :Son of Africa 1hours 52 mins
REPLY TO
1 ? I think the documentary mainly focused on telling a narrative of how these different changes in China from 1976-94 from the perspectives of different groups within China. It told a story of the different impacts and different policies had on peasants during the time and the perspectives they took on the different reforms and changes happening on the time. I thought it was an interesting way to frame the story as I feel like it is a perspective that is glossed over in favor for the perspective of leaders and government officials. Instead it took the time to explain the goals of peasants from being fed, the welcoming of Deng Xiaoping for providing that food, the discontent from later being left behind in the economic surge and later the indifference to political movements at the time. Later in the video, it also painted a picture of the rising student movement and the factors that lead to it like China opening up and the expression of free thought in Universities. While telling the stories of these students, it also told a larger story of how this movement came to be and the economic and political changes that lead to the Tiananmen square protests.
I think the topics covered in class take a much different approach to studying this time period in China. Rather than targeting the stories of specific groups of people I think we focused more on looking at the structural and economic impacts in China during this period and the factors that lead to these things. For example, we spent a lot of time covering the climate crisis to paint a picture of how China’s economic development bring light to a larger issue about capitalism and what that kind of system encourages in exchange for economic benefits and development. We also spent a lot of time talking about a more overarching discussion about the different factors that played into China’s current model of state sponsored capitalism and it’s impact in turn on the factors that played into it (consumerism, social changes, money, economic development, etc.). Many of the sources we went over used individual stories to help tell this narrative and as a way to look at China’s history during this period.
2. things that we discussed more: capitalist consumerism, how Chinese intellectuals at the time feel about the consumerism
things that we didn’t discussed much: cultural revolution (“his policies had brought so much suffering and catastrophe to China, when he died”, many people found freedom and relief, cultural revolution destroyed traditional culture and many literature , Mao’s regimes and what they did to China)
From the documentary this week, I found many topics that we have not specifically discussed. One of these topics is the cultural revolution and its aftermath (after Mao’s death). Not only was the cultural revolution sort of equivalent to the destruction of traditional values, but it was also painful to many families at the time. According to the documentary, it was pointed out that “his [Mao’s] policies had brought so much suffering and catastrophe to China”. Many resented Mao Zedong so much to the point that his death was like a celebration to them. Moreover, the documentary also mentioned the democracy wall, which was to express the people’s anger and sorrow toward the cultural revolution. Although we didn’t talk much about the cultural revolution in class, we did discuss other topics that the documentary had skimmed through. For example, the capitalist consumerism that bloomed in China after Mao Zedong’s death was widely discussed in our class. Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping focused more on the economic development (though he was also intolerant toward politics), and his goal was to make at least one group of people rich first. During Deng’s regime, the nation’s desire to consume grew exponentially (especially in middle class), which simultaneously stimulated the growth of industrial production. Nevertheless, the documentary gives us different perspectives and interpretation on China’s post-Mao era, which encourages us to think critically about the events that occurred during this era. In a word, it is important to learn from different perspectives while studying history, that way we won’t be biased in our interpretations.
R5 CHINA GOES,
SO GOES THE WORLD
Houu C hinese C o n su m ers
fire Transform ing Everything
★
KfiRL GERTH
HILL AND LUANG
n DIVISION OF FORRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX
NEW YORK
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
3
1. NO GOING BRCK?
19
1*3
2. WHO GETS WHRT?
3 . MRDE IN TRIWRN
65
M. STRNORRDIZING RBUNDRNCE
91
5. BRRNOING CONSUMER CONSCIOUSNESS
6. LIVING IN R WORLD OF FRKE5
7. EXTREME MARKETS
111
133
157
B. ENVIRONMENTAL IMPLICATIONS
181
CONCLUSION: THE CHINESE INK BLOT
201
Notes 209
Further Readings and Resources
Acknowledgments
Index
239
243
247
vll
M * STANDARDIZING ABUNDANCE
Before you can have a consumer culture, of course, there must be
something to buy. When I first visited China in the mid-1980s, my
Chinese friends would tell me there were only two words I needed to
know when it came to shopping: mei you, or “we don’t have any,” the
most common response one heard from store clerks. Worse than hav
ing little choice was having nothing to choose from at all. When I
arrived in China to study, things had improved a good deal, but short
ages remained a fact of everyday life. At the time, most Chinese un
doubtedly would have viewed the fare available at our student cafeteria
as sumptuous, but I certainly didn’t. Although the food cost almost
nothing, I would gladly have paid extra for something more edible
than the stringy chicken and adulterated rice we were served. Though
my Chinese fellow students were accustomed to it, they were also
aware of the extremely low quality of the food, especially as vegetables
grew scarcer by spring. My Chinese roommate back then developed a
theory: the student protests that broke out across college campuses
each spring were inspired not by the students’ stated high-minded
reasons (that year, a desire to elect their own student representatives)
but by the quality of the available food.
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This, too, changed rapidly with the coming of economic reforms.
A decade later, urban Chinese were beginning to have access to super
markets, twenty-four-hour convenience stores selling foods and snacks,
and (perhaps the most revolutionaiy change in a country formerly
plagued with famines) all-you-can-eat buffets. Since the mid-1990s,
this plenty has spread outward to smaller Chinese cities and down
ward to the less affluent.
While a few decades ago there was little to buy and even fewer
places to buy it in China, the country’s urban areas have since under
gone not only a transition from scarcity to abundance but also a rev
olution in how things are sold. At Walmart supercenters, 7-Eleven
convenience stores, traveling peddler carts parked outside high-rises,
and even among the permanent shops lining the lanes up to Buddhist
and Confucian temples, the Chinese today are never far from opportu
nities to shop. They have seen a stunning increase in the number of
products available to buy and of places to buy them; exercising con
sumer choice among an abundance of items is now an everyday activity
for the Chinese, just as it is for consumers in the United States and
other developed nations. And urban Chinese love to shop. According
to a 2008 survey, they have come to spend on average nearly ten hours
a week doing it (while Americans spend slightly under four), and two
in five called shopping their favorite leisure activity. Such retailing op
portunities are the primary mechanism by which market economies
expand consumption and translate consumer desires into economic
realities.
Although this retail revolution has taken place across the full range
of consumer goods and services, perhaps in no area of Chinese life has
the transformation been more obvious and dramatic than in how the
country now meets the most essential of human needs, food. As late
as the 1980s, grocery shopping was a time-consuming and grim expe
rience as customers faced long lines and uncertain supplies. What
little was available to buy was unattractively packaged and sold by
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unmotivated and unhelpful workers ever ready to respond to inquires
with mei you. At the advent of the Reform Era in 1978, city dwellers
spent 58 percent of their income on food, most of it on staples such as
rice and locally available vegetables. Today they spend only about a
third of their income on food, and have many more varieties of food
stuffs to select from, including frozen foods, snacks, wines, carbon
ated drinks, and imported fruits and vegetables, all of them attractively
marketed, packaged, and displayed. Consumers are no longer limited
to shopping for food in state-run stores and mom-and-pop shops,
but can choose from a variety of superstores, supermarkets, discount
stores, and convenience stores. Such retail options, almost nonexis
tent until the early 1990s, now represent a third of urban food mar
kets, and they are spreading. According to the China Chain Store and
F ranchise Association, the number of supermarkets in China expanded
from just one outlet in 1990 to approximately sixty thousand just ten
years later, an expansion that only accelerated after China formally
joined the WTO in 2001. By 2003, these supermarkets were generat
ing an estimated $71 billion in sales. This metamorphosis from dingy
state-run stores to brightly lit international chain stores staffed by po
lite and helpful uniformed attendants at computerized checkouts is a
particularly telling and vivid example of the retail revolution (or “WalMarting”) transforming the everyday consumer experience in China.
Its history also provides a vivid example of China s larger shift from a
centralized to a consumerist economic model and the lifestyles it
made possible.
From Shortages to Rbundance
China s decision to allow consumers to decide where, when, and how
much to buy and to eat marked a dramatic reversal of the Maoist-era
model. After the Communist Revolution in 1949, the new govem93
RS CHINA GOES. 5 0 GOES THE WORLD
ment at first permitted the existing private, family-run shops to con
tinue, but within a few years its socialist reforms begin to centralize
retailing by creating a system of unified administration and monopoly
supply—that is, a state-owned distribution system. All urban staple
food shops fell under the control of the Staple Food Bureau, which
supplied all state-owned stores with nearly identical items at identical
prices. To purchase food in these stores required not only cash but
also, as I discovered when I tried to buy that bicycle at the Nanjing
Friendship Store, local ration coupons. Even when supplies were avail
able, a purchaser could buy only a limited amount. Prices and supplies
were set from above and fixed. The lack of competition showed, and
these stores quickly became notorious for their lack of service, variety,
innovation, and respect for local preferences. Packaging served only
the functional purpose of separating and protecting products—and
did even this poorly, as damage rates exceeded 10 percent. Clerks
often applied labels haphazardly and even incorrectly before placing
goods on shelves. Consumers, separated from the merchandise by a
wall of salespeople and counters, had to request products from inat
tentive clerks, who rarely let buyers examine goods before purchasing
them. Indeed, clerks often were responsible for maintaining their stocks
and therefore had a disincentive to take items out of their protective
cases and packaging for customers to inspect.
V
But starting with the economic reforms in 1978, the state began a
rapid withdrawal from managing the retail sector, ending its monop
oly over the procurement of commodities and relaxing state control
over prices. In effect, China began moving away from a command econ
omy, where the government decides how much of what is produced,
and reintroduced markets, where consumer demand determines pro
duction. The first to benefit were farmers, who began growing and
selling their surplus produce. But as private ownership, country fairs,
and urban marketplaces reappeared, other small retail entrepreneurs
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also emerged, the very ones who became Chinas first post-Mao newly
well-off. In towns and cities across China, such small-scale businesses
became critical participants in the réintroduction of mass retailing
and therefore of consumerism. Of course, these budding entrepre
neurs also needed to have something to sell, and in December 1978,
the Communist Party leadership restored “private plots” (though not
private ownership of the land) and permitted the reestablishment of
markets, both in the abstract economic sense and in literal market
places. The state now allowed producers to sell their privately grown
produce directly to consumers or private middlemen and not exclu
sively to the state, let alone at state-set prices. Motivated by the oppor
tunity to make a profit, farmers began to grow more. And as agricultural
production boomed;so did rural incomes.
Markets tend to beget more markets and consumption more con
sumption, so retail offerings quickly spread beyond agricultural produce.
Between 1980 and 1985, the number of individually owned mini-stores,
stalls, and booths selling goods rose from one million to six million, and
by 1986, sixty thousand local marketplaces had opened across China. To
give but one example, during this period Shenyang, the capital of Liao
ning province in northeast China, established ten large open-air mar
ketplaces and thirty-four smaller ones throughout the city, which
together served three million urban residents and another two million
in the surrounding area. The largest of these, the Bei Hang Agricultural
Market, was as large as an American football field.
The story of the Bei Hang Agricultural Market encapsulates the
tumultuous twentieth-century history of selling things in China. First
established in the 1920s, after 1949, Bei Hangs fate was tied to the
CCP s on-again-off-again policy of using market mechanisms in gen
eral and marketplaces in particular. It was allowed to operate until
1957, when it was abolished as part of the collectivization of farming,
the creation of giant communal farms. But after the dramatic failure of
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the Great Leap Forward and after the subsequent Great Famine,
Chinas leaders reversed their position toward small-scale market
places, making it legal for those living on communes to have small pri
vate plots and to grow some extra vegetables for sale, and reestablishing
Bei Hang in 1960. Six years later, however, the market was outlawed
again as the Cultural Revolution re-vilified material incentives, calling
the use of money and personal profit to motivate people “capitalistic.”
With the advent of economic reforms. Bei Hang was officially re
reopened at the start of 1979, and within two years became one of
forty-four large marketplaces hosting more than five thousand ped
dlers across the city. Dan Dejun, a longtime Bei Hang vendor, remem
bered the policy shift as it appeared in newspaper political cartoons.
In late 1978, the newspaper printed a cartoon with someone riding a
bicycle with two basketfuls of produce. Over the cyclist s head was the
caption “Speculator.” A month later, the identical cartoon was run, but
“Speculator” was replaced with a large red flower, signaling the Com
munist Partys endorsement of such commercial activity.
Because few Chinese had refrigerators and all had a tradition of
buying fresh meat and produce, more than half a million began shop
ping at Shenyangs forty-four marketplaces every day, immediately
reintroducing choice and consumer control. Within a few years, every
resident of Shenyang, and those in cities like it across China, had ac
cess to similar open-air marketplaces. Even state-owned enterprises
such as hotels and restaurants began going to such markets to buy at
least part of their supplies. Indeed, this reemergent market culture
spread so quickly and widely that state-owned shops and agricultural
communes began selling their own surplus produce in such market
places, although the latter still had to meet their hefty state quotas
before they were allowed to sell anything and keep the profits. During
the early years of the reforms, the contrasts between state-owned and
private retailing were quickly and easily visible.
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This réintroduction of mass retailing, beginning with these local
produce marketplaces, signaled the restoration of choice, an end to
chronic shortages, and a shift toward the perception of plenty. It also
signaled a change in everyday influences on ones purchasing deci
sions. In state stores, the Chinese had had to rely on employees to
select the particular items they could buy. As one woman recalled, ‘T
could only buy my favorite candies at a state-owned food store in Tian
jin. I could not chpose the flavor and wrappings of candies I wanted.
My favorite flavor was lemon, but shop assistants only grabbed ran
dom candies in a big jar. I was very disappointed that in the large pile
of candies there were only a few lemon ones.” But at marketplaces,
buyers could choose which piece of fruit or clothing item they wished
to buy. The reestablishment of private buying and selling, then, also
restored the power of choice to the consumer (and, as we shall see, ex
plains the simultaneous reemergence of branding and advertising to
coach consumers on what to buy). But although marketplaces usually
supplied much higher quality items than the state stores, they did so
at higher prices. True, Shenyangs inspectors joked that they could
identify goods originally obtained at state stores rather than private
marketplaces by their dirty appearance, poor presentation, and low
quality. But along with improved quality came steady price rises, sow
ing discontent among those earning fixed salaries. I vividly recall, for
instance, the anger of my Chinese roommate who in 1986 declared it
an abomination that many of these new entrepreneurs, including the
guys running the noodle stands that ringed the campus, earned more
than he would as a university professor.
I don’t recall, however, my roommate’s complaining about his new
found ability to buy hot noodle soup at all hours or to enjoy the newly
available fruits, vegetables, and other products from faraway provinces
now available in Chinese cities such as Nanjing. Where products were
absent or in short supply, peddlers now had an economic incentive to
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meet demand, and soon goods were moving across the country to
wherever they would fetch the highest price. Perhaps its not surpris
ing that many of his classmates decided that if they couldn’t out-eam
these peddlers, they’d join them. The original vendors at marketplaces
such as Bei Hang were mostly migrant laborers, former prisoners, and
farmers from the surrounding area—that is, those with low social and
economic standing. But a decade or so later, such vendors included
college graduates.
The ongoing creation of integrated markets for products spanning
the country also helped transform China from a country of shared
scarcity and immobility under Mao to one with circulating people and
products. The Bei Hang market, for instance, within a couple of years
of its reopening, hosted peddlers from nearly all of China’s provinces
and regions, and the variety of goods sold there expanded rapidly; the
development of national markets for regional products soon ensured
that fresh produce from southern China, which enjoyed later harvests,
was being transported north. Dual-track prices (that is, one price dic
tated by the state and the other determined by the private market)
further undermined state provisioning, as suppliers now had an in
centive to hold back their best products from the state to sell on the
market, hastening the end of state-run shops.
The experience of shopping changed in other ways as well. While
state stores had sold products at prices fixed by the state, the advent
of markets brought a gradual return to bargaining. At first both sellers
and buyers were reluctant to haggle, behavior that had been discour
aged as “capitalistic” and, given fixed prices, had been unnecessary dur
ing the previous decades. But within a few years nearly every customer
at markets such as Bei Hang tried to bargain for lower prices. The end
of fixed prices and the new diversity of goods also made comparison
shopping important again, although state-owned stores continued to
provide a reference point for what was a legitimate price. Likewise,
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choice made every consumer his or her own quality-control expert,
requiring heightened vigilance—particularly in a retailing environ
ment awash in fakes. Not surprisingly, the uneven quality of goods led
to the careful inspection of products by potential buyers. Few con
sumers now buy goods without the opportunity to inspect them; every
piece of fruit and every seam is checked.
The end of fixed prices also saw the return of the image of the
“cunning merchaijt” (jianshang). In traditional Chinese culture, mer
chants were generally viewed as making money not, like most Chi
nese, through hard agricultural labor in the hot sun or even making
things by hand, but rather by manipulating prices and information.
Even before the Communist Revolution, in the early twentieth cen
tury merchants were often portrayed in popular culture as treasonous,
helping to sell imported products from the imperialist powers, espe
cially Japan, who then dominated China. Then, as now, not everyone
sold the same product at the same price. Now price has again become,
like so much else in China, relational, with premiums demanded from
foreigners and anyone unfamiliar with the market or the seller. In this
environment, no wonder bargaining quickly reemerged as the quin
tessential marketplace experience. Although the subsequent standard
ization of shopping and prices in large retail stores doesn’t leave much
opportunity for haggling, in smaller shops and even in mid-tier depart
ment stores one might still ask for and perhaps get a discount. What
something should cost has once again become the source of endless
conversation in China: “What did you pay for that?” has become—
after the traditional greeting, “Have you eaten?”—the second most fre
quently asked question in the country.
One way to measure this initial stage of China s expanding com
mitment to consumerism is that between 1981 and 1991, the number
of retail outlets more than quadrupled, from 2.02 million to 9.24 mil
lion, and the number of people working in the retail sector doubled,
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from 7.63 million to 21.99 million. Consumerism, in short, has grown
more entrenched on both sides of the counter. The experience of ex
panding consumer choice necessarily means that millions of Chinese
are also experiencing the seller side of sales, especially as the Chinese
government pushes its economy toward developing a service sector to
match its manufacturing prowess.
The Retail Revolution
In 1992 the Chinese leadership under Deng Xiaoping recommitted
their country to pursuing a market- and consumer-driven model of
economic development, including gaining full membership in the
WTO. The latter meant meeting the demand of foreign governments
and multinationals for greater access to Chinese consumers, which
would also require the expansion of retailing opportunities and strate
gies. And just as they had with cars, Chinese leaders recognized that
one way to finance rapid reform and create domestic demand for
goods and services was to invite foreign investment without surren
dering complete control. Where shortages had been a way of life, now
the issue was clearly consumerist: how to entice people to buy and
consume more, shifting control from suppliers to consumers. This
new era of mass marketing in China began with formerly dreary stateowned stores experimenting with marketing techniques they were
learning from the Taiwanese and others. Even such seemingly small
changes as Beijings Number One Department Store on Wangfujing
handing out free samples belied a fundamental shift: rather than
dampening desire in an environment of scarcities, stimulate it. Like
wise, signs, billboards, and other public advertisements informing and
enticing potential buyers appeared in urban centers. Overnight, Chi
nese cities began to glow with neon lights advertising Becks beer and
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Oreo cookies. Major shopping streets such as Nanjing Road in Shang
hai, once drab and dull, again began to resemble Hong Kongs Golden
Mile at night, with families and couples strolling the streets window
shopping and responding to street vendors. Across the country, cen
tral planners introduced nearly identical pedestrian shopping malls
modeled on Wangfujing in Beijing, Binjiang Avenue in Tianjin, and
Shangxia Jiu Pedestrian Street in Guangzhou.
During the lijte 1990s, Chinese retailing underwent intensified
expansion and consolidation. Although the central government tried
to limit foreign investment, local governments began to ignore central
controls and encourage such investment. Soon international retail gi
ants such as Carrefour, Metro, and Walmart began to aggressively
expand across the country, further transforming the retail environ
ment. This process continued to accelerate after 2004, the end of the
three-year transition period following Chinas entry into the WTO,
as remaining restrictions on the ownership, location, and number of
branches of chain stores were abolished. Chinese retailers such as Wumart and Lianhua have countered this spread of these international
companies with their own mergers and acquisitions and become in
creasingly like their competitors: larger chains of bigger stores using
advertising to promote established brands promised at lower prices.
Several of the largest Chinese-owned chains are still state-owned, in
cluding Beijing Hualian Group and Dalian Dashang Group, further
ensuring that China will not simply surrender its retailing industry to
foreign companies. And these outlets are no longer limited to big
coastal cities. To achieve economies of scale, first-mover advantage,
and lower labor and land costs, both international and domestic retail
chains are rapidly pushing beyond the major coastal cities and into
interior second- and third-tier cities.
As with the spread of cars, the expansion of supermarket and con
venience store chains has benefited from political decisions at both
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the local and national levels. Some local governments, for instance,
have facilitated the transition to supermarkets by closing down tradi
tional street markets, often with the pretext that they were unhygienic.
In some cases, local officials have converted traditional large, indoor
‘wet” markets selling produce and meat into supermarkets. At the na
tional level, China’s Ministry of Commerce launched a five-year plan
in 2004 to develop a retail network of chain supermarkets and conve
nience stores in small towns, pushing the supermarket format into the
country’s vast rural hinterland. And all of this urban-rural national in
tegration is aided by the massive road-building under way in China—
the same roads carrying those millions of new automobiles also have
trucks supplying new regional and national distribution networks.
With them has come the demise of many medium- and small-size
retail establishments and family-operated shops across the country.
Supermarkets are rapidly gaining a competitive edge over these tradi
tional retailers, as they offer a cleaner, more comfortable, convenient,
and predictably standardized shopping environment, places where
the experience of buying bananas or canned yams is nearly identical
whether the items are purchased in the northeastern city of Dalian or
the southwestern town of Dali. Likewise, a younger generation is in
creasingly unfamiliar and uncomfortable with unbranded commodity
consumption; China’s youngest consumers want to shop in Walmart
and Wumart. As a young man told me, “China’s wet markets are gener
ally very dirty, so I don’t like to go to them. The things for sale at super
markets are much more trustworthy, though more expensive.” Of
course, Walmart and other retailers have responded to this percep
tion by using techniques such as loss leaders, selling some common
items at cost or below to stimulate sales, and the perception of “every
day fair prices,” to quote the catchphrase Walmart uses in China. When
Walmart first arrived in Nanjing, for instance, the store became syn
onymous with “eggs” and “rice” for selling those two items even more
cheaply than a nearby wet market.
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Beyond cheaper staples, imported foods, until recently a rarity in
China, are also now widely available, where everything from Washing
ton apples to California wines and from Thai lychees to New Zealand
butter are stocked on Chinese supermarket shelves. The same applies
to many international food brands, such as Kelloggs cereals, Hormel
sausages and hot dogs, Nestlé and Danone milk products, and Sldppy
peanut butter, many of which are manufactured locally, sometimes
with imported ingredients. Following Chinas entry into the WTO,
the fragmented domestic marketing system still hindered the transfer
of products to consumers, but supermarket chains have begun to
change this situation by introducing modem procurement systems
into China, thereby providing consumers with a larger and more uni
fied market. These chains have created their own massive distribution
centers that draw products from across China and around the world
and move them to individual stores around the country, from which
the Chinese are quickly learning.
Chewing with Confidence and Convenience
The recent history of rice, that quintessential Chinese commodity, of
fers a striking example of the transformation of the experience of buy
ing and consuming in China. Before the price reforms of the early
1990s, consumers bought generic rice at govemment-set prices from
state-run grain shops. Local farmers, who were forced to “sell” their
grain at set prices, unsurprisingly tended to sell their worst rice to the
state, which also practiced little quality control. This rice was often
broken and unevenly colored and unpolished and, worse still, often
contained stones or bugs. During my own earliest experiences as a
student in China, the first time I discovered a black bug in my un
polished white rice? I lost my appetite for rice for the next couple of
meals. As I gradually assimilated to eating state-procured rice, I began
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to simply pick out the bugs and continue eating. But I still had to
chew gingerly, as I often bit into tiny rock granules. Chewing rice with
confidence is a relatively new experience for the Chinese and visitors
alike.
Within a decade of my first encounter with a black bug, however, the
country had established a very competitive rice industry built around
brands, types, quality, origins, and prices. This competitive environ
ment allowed consumers across China access to varieties of rice and
catered to regional preferences. Beijing supermarkets, for instance,
now supplied local buyers with the most widely preferred japónica
variety (short- to medium-grain) and brands of rice grown and trans
ported from distant counties in the country’s northeastern provinces.
Indeed, the current availability of japónica rice throughout China
illustrates how food markets and brands are becoming national, some
times even eroding regional differences in tastes and preferences.
Southern Chinese, who traditionally preferred long-grain indica rice,
now often eat japónica rice, particularly in wealthy areas such as Shang
hai and Zhejiang province. The rise of branded rice has also addressed
growing concerns about food safety. Rice brands often seek and adver
tise government-designated “green food” seals, which certify the re
duced use of chemicals during production and a relatively pollution-free
factory environment. Since 2001, new labeling regulations’for foods
containing genetically modified organisms have also been in place.
Today more young Chinese live away from their family home, work
long hours, and need to manage two-career families. In short, like their
counterparts worldwide, Chinese consumers increasingly demand con
venience and predictability. And, as elsewhere around the globe, these
expectations have fueled the rise of convenience store chains. Chi
nese today are rarely far from places to buy something to eat. These
stores were first introduced into China in the mid-1990s by one of
Japan s largest chains, Lawson. By 2004, there were nearly five thou-
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sand identical Lawson convenience stores in China, over half of those
in Shanghai, where convenience stores now so blanket the city that
many blocks host several. As elsewhere, convenience stores carry all
the basics that people run out of or need more of at the last minute:
bottled water and juices, alcohol, magazines, salty snacks, prepared
lunch boxes, newspapers, and cigarettes. And, following the Japanese
model, they have, expanded to offering many other time-saving ser
vices such as photocopying and accepting payment for telephone, gas,
and electrical bills. By 2004, the Japanese-owned 7-Eleven chain, the
worlds largest convenience store operator, also had stores in south
China and had formed a joint venture with two Chinese companies to
open the first twenty-four-hour outlet in Beijing. Five years later, the
company had nearly six hundred stores in China.
To gain the economies of scale that make them profitable, conve
nience store chains like Lawson and its Chinese equivalents such as
Wumart have opened as many outlets as manageable, thereby dra
matically altering urban Chinas nightscape. The former darkness of
most city streets is being replaced with bright fluorescent fights, and
more people are out late picking up milk or a snack, browsing the
magazines and newspapers as they do so. Nonetheless, these retailers
are finding that convenience is not always enough to draw shoppers.
During Beijings long winters, for instance, 7-Eleven finds its stores
largely empty and unprofitable; what they offer is not inducement
enough to brave the cold. And despite national efforts of mass retail
ers to lure customers away from traditional wet markets, many Chinese
cling to the perception that these carry fresher, cheaper goods, espe
cially fruits and vegetables. Thus wet markets, though greatly reduced
in number, have not disappeared, even in cities such as Shanghai and
Beijing. Indeed, many shoppers continue to purchase fresh produce
from these markets, supplementing them with weekend trips to the
supermarket for other items.
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But such traditional preferences are not the most likely check
on the seemingly endless expansion of retailing in China. Rather, as
Chinese and multinational chains compete over smaller and smaller
markets, some economists and observers worry that China hasn’t yet
a sufficiently large middle class with enough disposable income to
justify this expansion and consolidation. But even if many of these
stores end up like some of Chinas spectacular shopping malls—huge,
empty spaces, monuments to misplaced hopes for demand that never
materialized—they will, for better and for worse, have transformed
the everyday experience of shopping for hundreds of millions of
Chinese. For the average shopper, the shift from simply not having
enough to having a bewildering range of choices is captured in the
transition in common Chinese expressions regarding food from chibaole to chihaole to chiqiaole: from the simple objective of‘eating to fill
your belly” to the pleasures of “eating plenty of rich food” to the pres
ent situation requiring consumers to “eat skillfully.” For as we shall see
later, navigating the now dense markets overflowing with new products
while avoiding food scandals, fakes, and misinformation is indeed a
learned skill.
Just as it would be difficult for most Chinese to go back to using
a public toilet, it would be similarly difficult for them to return to
shopping in a poorly lit neighborhood wet market after becoming ac
customed to driving a car to a Walmart and never worrying about avail
ability or the need to haggle overprices. Retailing, then, is transforming
the ways Chinese see the world. The idea that one would walk into a
Walmart to find it was out of toilet paper or into a McDonald s to find
it had sold out of hamburgers becomes unthinkable. In short, modem
retailing turns the population into consumers who are independent
(they get to choose), rational (they must comparison-shop), and indi
vidualistic (they have access to a variety of items and stores to suit
every consumer taste).
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Famine to Feast
Perhaps no irony better highlights the changed world for the Chinese
consumer than the fact that increasing numbers of them are using this
new abundance of choices to overeat, perhaps even to an early grave.
Food has always defined differences among Chinese in at least two
ways: who could afford to eat meat divided China by economic class,
and rice-eating custinguished southern Chinese from their wheat
noodle-eating northern compatriots. As noted, national chains have
accelerated the integration of national and even international markets,
bringing not only a wider variety of traditional foods but more meat
and processed food’to consumers across China. Similarly, when fastfood restaurants first arrived in Chinese major cities, they were novel
ties visited infrequently; now, as the thousands of KFCs, McDonald ses,
and their Chinese equivalents popping up across urban China confirm,
they play a wider role in urban lifestyles. The result: Chinese eat much
more oily, fatty, salty, and sugary foods. City dwellers, for instance, eat
twice as much meat as they did in the 1980s. Accompanying the in
crease in calories are expanding waistlines, a problem compounded by
sedentary office work and the displacement of the bicycle as the pri
mary means of transportation. Twenty years ago one rarely saw fat Chi
nese teenagers; now they’re commonplace. While twenty years ago
the idea of fat camps for overweight children would have been consid
ered absurd, now they are widely advertised. It doesn’t help that pudgy
babies have traditionally been viewed as healthy and that anyone bom
in the 1960s or earlier is old enough to remember famine. The new
food options, along with economic inequality, have expanded the tra
ditional distinctions made through food to include who can afford to
contract “lifestyle diseases” such as cancer and diabetes, which the
World Health Organization estimates could kill as many as eighty mil
lion Chinese in the fiext decade.
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The effects that economic inequality has had on the Chinese diet
are clearly written on Chinese bodies. For instance, urban residents
eat twice as much protein as their less affluent rural counterparts, mostly
from poultry, eggs, and shrimp, which translates into height differ
ences. Urban residents stand, on average, 4.6 centimeters higher, be
coming a symbol of the inequality between urban and rural consumers
and even a source of discrimination. But these diet changes have also
included increased consumption of fats. Over the past ten years the
number of Chinese suffering from high blood pressure increased by a
third, and hypertension now afflicts a fifth of those over eighteen. In
major cities, where the shift toward Western-style diets has been most
marked, nearly a third of adults are overweight, and one in ten is obese.
The trends for urban children are even more alarming. By the end of
the 1990s, childhood obesity in the country as a whole had increased
from 4 to 6 percent; but in urban areas, the percentage of overweight
urban children had risen from 15 to 29 percent.
Overconsumption is visible in other ways. In the Mao era, extrav
agant banquets and other opportunities to overeat were for most Chi
nese nonexistent or exclusively for special occasions such as New Years
festivals and weddings. The notion of “leftovers,” even less of “doggie
bags,” had not yet arrived. Now doggie bags are common, and dis
carding leftovers is even more routine. Shanghai alone throws away
two thousand tons of food every day, and Beijing discards sixteen hun
dred tons. Despite water shortages across the country, water, too, is
wasted in new ways. In one egregious and widely publicized example,
a Harbin brewery—in a bit of poorly considered consumer outreach—
used ninety tons of beer to create a fountain in a downtown square;
the stunt required not only eighteen tons of barley and rice but also
eighteen hundred tons of clean water.
Food waste is also embedded in Chinese customs. The difference
now is that what was once an affectation of a very select wealthy and
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powerful few has become a status-gaining gesture for the ever more
numerous aspiring middle classes. Wu Mingzheng, a manager of a
Hangzhou export company, explaining why he ordered sixteen dishes
at a four-star restaurant for a table of business contacts, few of whom
touched much of the food, said that “if there aren’t enough dishes or
the guests don’t have enough to drink to their heart’s content, every
one will think I api cheap and it may affect our business dealings.”
This scene is repeated hundreds of thousands of times a day across
China. According to a survey conducted in Zhejiang province, 70 per
cent of those taking guests out to dine decline to take away leftovers.
Officials make periodic attempts to discourage overconsumption.
In 2008, Zhang Xinshi, a city official in Jiangsu province, for instance,
charged in his blog that “China was the most wasteful consumer of
food and beverages,” adding that Chinese should emulate other coun
tries and have fewer but better dishes. His conclusion was backed by
stories of waste from around China. In the northeast city of Harbin,
one reporter estimated that the city’s twenty thousand restaurants dis
carded at least four hundred tons of food a day. Although she found
waste in all restaurants, she also discovered that the more expensive
the restaurant, the more the waste. In many cases, more than half the
food went to waste, particularly by those dining at public expense. But
in all cases at least a fifth of the food was left behind. In response,
Zhejiang provincial authorities launched a campaign to urge consum
ers to avoid “unscientific and uncivilized” consumer practices such as
deliberately wasting food and hosting extravagant wedding celebra
tions. But platitudes and a few specific policies have done little to
counter an ancient cultural practice suddenly put within reach of mil
lions more Chinese.
Obesity and waste are just two of the clearly unexpected and un
desired consequences of the increasingly unleashed and prodded
Chinese consumer. ‘And as has proven true elsewhere in the world,
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the new consumer culture is more likely to produce market reactions—
from increased sales of diabetes medication to food delivery services—
than it is ever to be reformed. Thanks to the introduction of modem
retailing practices, though, one thing we know for sure is that the
Chinese are unlikely ever again to be far away from opportunities to
consume as much and as frequently as they can afford—for better or
for worse.