Consumerism and Depoliticization

by Rui Sun, 11 December 2016

Ever since the May-Fourth Movement, Chinese history has witnessed the young engaging as an active political group, and a major force in moving the society forward. From the demonstrations during the war period, to the passionate participation in the reconstruction era after 1949, and the fanatical “continuing revolution” in the Cultural Revolution and so on, Chinese youth has always been the most active group to voice and act out their political ideals.

However, starting from 1980s, Chinese youth’s enthusiasm to politics seemed to fade rapidly along with the Chinese economic reform. The Chinese economic reform, termed literally as “reform and opening up”, brought about “socialism of Chinese characteristics”, which was essentially introducing market principles to the country. The influx of products produced both domestically and overseas enriched people’s material life to a great extent as never before. As a result, the passion that was once devoted to revolution in the Mao era, was much re-channeled to the quickly booming product market. Consumerism gradually rose as a dominating value of the society, especially of the young, who are more accepting and curious to the new market environment.

In the following paragraphs, we will explore the characteristics of the consumerism among young Chinese in this period through Weihui’s novel “Shanghai Baby”. It depicts the lives of a group of well-to-do young people in Shanghai. Coco, the main character of the story, has a complicated relationship with her boyfriend, foreign lover, and other friends with mixed backgrounds. Published in 1999, the book in some extent reflects the society as a whole in the 1990s, when the economic reform really started to make an impact to people’s lives and values.

The most noticeable characteristic of the rising consumerism among Chinese youth, is its inclination to westernized symbol. Coco, the main character of “Shanghai Baby”, has this remark in the starting chapters of the book: “…This has a lot to do with living in a place like Shanghai ... an air of superiority, a hangover from the time of theshili yangchang, the foreign concessions.” In Coco’s eyes, the superiority of Shanghai comes from its history of once being a place of foreign concessions. The once humiliating past now, on the contrary, brought the city a certain kind of “superiority”. It is reasonable to say that, in many young people’s eyes, things that seemed to represent a western lifestyle, that were symbols of being “modern” and “international”, would be labeled as “high-end”, and are much welcomed.

This preference of westernization is not confined to living environments, rather, it applies even more to material products and social situations. In a paragraph describing her life with her boyfriend Tian Tian at home, Coco recalls: “Tian Tian ... poured Suntory soda for me, prepared fruit salad with Mother's Choice salad dressing for me, gave me Dove chocolate bar for inspiration, ...on the huge desk stood dozens of cartons of Mild Seven cigarettes…” This lengthy listing of foreign brands not only reflects the abundance of the product market, but also shows Coco’s preference of foreign products over domestic ones. It might be that the character sees owning products of foreign brands as a symbol of living a modern and more “high-end” life.

Another feature of this consumer group of the Chinese market is that, while enjoying material life as never before, they were spending more for recreational purposes. This is in great contrast with people in the previous decades, when their major expenditure was on basic needs, such as food and clothes. For meals of the day, Coco often orders delivery from the same Sichuan restaurant —— a way of getting food to fill the stomach that does not take too much money. Also, the young couple did not show any interest when a salesman came to market a vacuum cleaner. However, other parts of Coco’s life cannot avoid involving going to bars, parties, KTV, and high-fashioned restaurants. Most of her interactions with other people happen in the aforementioned places. Even when being alone, she will go to a bar called YY’s Bar “for a bit of fun”. When her cousin Zhusha advised her to not “stuck in the same room all the time“, Coco replied: “We often go out for a walk, or sometimes to a bar for a drink, or go dancing.” This conversation shows that Coco tends to spend the bulk of her spare time activities in commercial entertainment area such as bar and ballrooms.

From “Shanghai Baby”, we can see that Coco’s life is full of consuming various objects, both tangible and intangible ones, while the mention of political topics is lacking. Once when Coco and her friends are having “dejeuner sur l’herbe" (lunch on a open lawn), they were soon asked to leave by a foreign old lady living nearby. On the way back, people talked about the influx of multinational corporations and financial giants, and their sense of the foreigner’s superiority coming along with. “For the first time, we Chinese “Generation X’ers”” felt a direct threat to our self-esteem. In this incident, these young people “for the first time” considered the impact of the economic reform, while caring more about their “self-esteem” more than others —— social issues seemed to be a topic that had already lost people’s attention. The only time the story mentions politics-related issue is the news about United States bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. However, it merely serves as part of the environment description of the remaining chapter, and seems to have no obvious impact to the young people watching the news. The political participation of the generation was reflected nowhere in this story in the 1990s.

However, the depoliticization of Chinese youth does not mean the total vanishing of political engagement. Politics continued by other means, but in more indirect and veiled ways.

Some groups of Chinese young turned to rock music to express their social concerns. Rock music, a genre of popular music that inherited the spirits of counterculture and political activism from its origins, has served as a vehicle for cultural and social movements. It was exactly in the 1980s that Chinese rock music arose as a formal music genre in Chinese music, and soon became a hit among the young. In the movie “Beijing Bastards” released in 1993, a group of young people expressed their thoughts through rock music, and struggled to keep their rock band alive against all the odds. During the June Fourth Incident in 1989, Cui Jian’s song “Nothing to My Name” was also used by the activists as a symbol of discontent, and “as a laments over alienation and powerlessness”.(Clark, 194) Meanwhile, it is worth notice that the heat of Chinese rock music also declined to some extent after it came about for a decade, partly due to the censorship of the government, partly due to the shift of public interest to the market economy. Instead, the Internet appeared to be a larger platform for political expression, mostly in inexplicit ways. “…anonymously joining a discussion on the Internet about a newly released movie that was backed by a huge official publicity effort could have political implications.” (Clark, 195)

From rock music to the Internet, there are always young activists, but unlike those in the past decades, they did not yield as much impact to the whole generation any more. As evaluated by Paul Clark in his book, most young Chinese after 1980s were not politically engaged beyond a vague acknowledgement that “the state should continue to step back from its earlier intervention in people’s everyday lives”, and as the economic reform deepened, “so this acknowledgment grew of a public space where politics played a secondary or minor role.”(Clark, 196)

In the Chinese context, the rise of consumerism is unavoidably the most important contributor to the decrease of political engagement among the young, and the reason of which is multifaceted.

The influx of international goods to the domestic market triggered a huge transition of people’s lifestyles in comparison with those in the preceding decades. Along with the mushrooming of the product market was the awareness of individualism. Most spare time activities, including things from shopping, entertainment, to even finding a job, were open to individual selection from a spectrum of possibilities. Under this greater context, people are free to decide what to purchase from a wide range of products, thus one’s living environment and living routines are much less influenced by other people or the state. This situation is a great contrast with that before the reform era, when people’s meal, clothes, and work were determined by the group or the policies, and the barely developed market offered limited choices to the public. While most political activities in modern Chinese history are of collective forms, the celebration of individualism made the young to be less interested in similar activities.

In addition of having brought about individualism, consuming also replaced political engaging as a way of manifesting personal power. Purchasing was gradually accepted as a more quickly-repaying way for one to gain a sense of control, as well as for showing one’s capability through purchasing power. Jon Savage’s description of the ideas of teenager coincides with the situation: “living in the now, pleasure-seeking, product-hungry, embodying the new global society where social inclusion was to be granted through purchasing power.” Kristin J. Anderson, a social psychologist, concludes that the emphasis on individualism and consumerism “replaces resistance and collective action as sites for women’s empowerment.”(Anderson, 103) Though mainly focuses on women, this remark can also be applied to young Chinese after 1980s. There are also other factors, such as people’s own preference for political stability, since the rising living standards gave the young a stake in maintaining social and political stability, and so forth.

The rise and fall of consumerism and political activism among Chinese youth perfectly reflects how greatly the economic reform impacted this social group. Motivated by various incentives, young Chinese chase to “link up with the tracks of the world” by purchasing westernized products and recreational services.(Zhang, 93) While the notion of “political activism” has only left a vague impression in their minds, many keep seeking new spacesfor and forms of political expression. This generation of young Chinese is a special product of the era both before and after the economic reform. It will be interesting to see where the Chinese youth go in the future as the reform takes root, and where the country will be directed by this unique force of a society.

Works Cited

Wei, Hui.Shanghai baby. London, 1988.

Clark, Paul.Youth Culture in China: From Red Guards to Netizens. 2012.

Zhang, Zhen. “Mediating Time: The ‘Rice Bowl of Youth’ in Fin de Siecle Urban China.”

Public Culture (12)1: 93-113.Duke University Press, 2000.

Anderson, J. Kristin.Modern Misogyny. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/

9780199328178.003.0001 Published online November 2014.