Mao is dead, long live Mao. In modern China, homage to the Great Chairman has also assumed post-modern characteristics – a dash of quotation, a dash of irony, and the myth Mao becomes a cult on T-shirts and key tags. Today’s idols tend to bear the names Nike, Sony or Apple. Young people, above all, are torn hither and thither between a liberalized consumer society, on the one hand, and the controlling state, on the other. Anybody growing up like this will learn to juggle with contradictions or to ignore them. He will live with the fact that he may surf the net in one of 113,000 Internet cafés but by no means everything on it is accessible to him – or that while he may purchase an iPod, direct downloading of iTunes is not possible. He realizes that apart from extremely tough entrance exams, studying also involves cramped student dormitories with a strict moral regime, high fees and overcrowded lectures. He is also aware that this is the royal route to a secure future in the country.
Prosperity as an individual opportunity
Modern China is urban, young. It is industrious and ambitious. In Western terms, it is still a country full of restrictions, in Eastern terms it offers unprecedented liberties. Yet the world’s seventh largest national economy is not proving homogenous. Yesterday’s classless China is being replaced by a society that Chinese sociologists divide into 20 strata and Western marketing experts presumably break down into even more target groups. People are striving for prosperity yet not everybody has a stake in this – the majority of the people are still poor.
A quick snack while shopping is replacing the meal taken with the family. Modern China, it ways of life, its people, all are changing.© Tan Wei Ming
The new middle stratum that had been emerging for some years is indeed being recognized by the government, it wealth officially defined in terms of property (including dwelling and car, between 100.000 and 300,000 euros) and income (minimum of 500 euros per month). Statistically, about 150 million people are doing that well, by 2020 it will be around half a billion. Forecasts suggest that by 2025, China will be the world’s third largest consumer market. By then, even more funds will be flowing into the country, and not just for such necessities for survival as clothing or food, but also for things that make life a little more pleasant, more luxurious, more comfortable. Modern China, it ways of life, its people, all are changing.
A country with a changing face
Growth, consumption and globalization are shaping the face of urban China. Major roads are strewn with advertising for cigarettes, alcohol, fashions and technology. Such mega-cities as Shenzen, Nanking and Wuhan are mushrooming out of the ground, temples of consumption following them at the same pace. The change they bring runs deep. The small shops and open-air markets that lined streets until now are disappearing and making way for department stores, malls and hypermarkets.
Growth, consumption and globalization are shaping the face of urban China. © Jonathan LarsenA quick snack while shopping is replacing the meal taken with the family. Peking’s Sun Dongan shopping centre covers no less than six floors, offering more than 120,000 square metres of retail space and thus room for around 270 passages and stores. Up to 300,000 people come and go here every day, until late at night on seven days a week. To speed up business, staff stocking the shelves move around on roller skates. About 5,000 retail chains with approx. 100,000 outlets are represented in the country, with practically all major department store groups, supermarkets, home depots are on the spot and all set for further expansion. Even international luxury brands also moved in long ago – addressing a far larger clientele than the country’s “only” 300,000 dollar millionaires. Yet for success in this market, a Western product needs to adapt. Along with its traditional fried chicken, KFC offers chicken in differing Szechuan styles rice pudding for breakfast. Toothpaste needs to taste of jasmine tea here. IKEA, running its largest store in the world here after Stockholm, trades as Yi-jia, “Nice things for the home and the family”.
Consumption as an expression of individuality
The new consumers with such an open attitude to everything are aged between their mid-twenties and late thirties, earn more money than their parents and are willing spenders – naturally for quite different things than previous generations. Whereas a bicycle, wristwatch and sewing machine would top Chinese lists of wants at the end of the 1970s, in the 1980s a TV, refrigerator and wash machine did so. A telephone, a PC and air conditioning followed in the 1990s. In the year 2000, finally, a home and/or automobile of one’s own and the children’s education were paramount. Expectations rose along with income, where this existed. Today money seems to carry more clout than political power. Such status symbols as a car of one’s own say more than a party membership book. As in the West, mobility is an expression of personal freedom. In the year 2000, there were about 1,200,000 cars in Peking, by 2004 there were already 2,300,000, and by May 2007, over three million. The proportion of vehicles used privately is increasing, for the leisure industry is growing and travelling forms part of that.
Young people live with the fact that they may surf the net in one of 113,000 Internet cafés but by no means everything on it is accessible to them. © Rene Drouyer - Fotolia.comChina’s future is Chinese
Naturally Chinese capitalism also has its downside. Drug addiction, prostitution and unemployment are prevalent, while official statistics indicate that youth crime has doubled in the last ten years. Whereas old China tended to be prudish, life in the cities today is extremely free and easy. A one-night stand: completely acceptable! Contraception: no idea! Teenage pregnancies are increasing and a quarter of all the 1,500,000 abortions a year are for minors. So is China just a really normal society?
Here a change that for other countries needed decades, if not a century, is occurring at breathtaking speed, like everything else. The new China is stirring. Perhaps quite soon it will no longer look towards the West. The current revival of Confucius, shunned under Mao, is a sign of a deliberate orientation on the country’s own tradition. China today has many potential models. Among them are Lu Yan, a multiple national champion in martial arts now training a new generation, or Frankie X., the first Chinese invited to Prêt-à-Porter shows in Paris, where he triumphed. Or they are called Kelly Chen, Jolin Tsai, Sammi Cheng and Stefanie Sun – better known as the Pop band “Jade”, who were elected by 128 million Chinese on a TV talent show.