The Cultural Politics of Conspicuous Consumption in China

Zhou Min

Abstract:To adequately understand contemporary conspicuous consumption in China,one needs to put it in a historical background and look at it not only from an economic perspective but also from cultural and political points of view.Both China and the West have had the phenomenon of conspicuous consumption at different historical periods,which,in their own ways,have constituted different cultural and political narratives and have demonstrated in them different characteristics.Three Confucian values that affect Chinese people’s consumption of luxurious commodities—namely,maintaining consistency between behavior and status,family reputation and the awareness of other people’s influence—are the cultural reasons that distinguish Chinse conspicuous consumption from that of the Western mode.

Keywords:conspicuous consumption; consumer society; culture; politics; Confucian values

On November 2,2015,there was a riveting scene:Xu Xiang,a famous broker who is also known as “the Chinese Soros”, was arrested publically in a badly fitted,much wrinkled Armani suit and taken away by the police.The scene quickly became a social media sensation.A few years earlier,on August 26,2012,when a horrible traffic accident happened on a highway in Shanxi province,an official at the investigation site was spotted by netizens to be wearing a Rolex watch,which later led to his imprisonment for bribery.These two examples,taken from many,show how luxurious brands have found their way into not only the daily life of the rich,but also the public sphere of the Chinese people more generally.

I

“Conspicuous consumption” as a concept was introduced in the 19century by Thorstein Veblen(1857—1929) to describe the behavioral characteristics of the new rich class who applied their great wealth to ostensibly manifest their social status,either real or perceived.In the20th century,the term “conspicuous consumption” was more broadly attached to people who had obtained a type of financial freedom that allowed them to engage in the consumption of goods and services that were motivated by the symbolic value embedded in commodities and services, rather than by their practical use-value.The conspicuous consumption of luxury goods in China is generally believed to have developed in the wake of China’s entrance into a consumer society in the 1990s. In actuality,however,China’s history is not unfamiliar with the phenomenon of the consumption of luxurious objects.Philosopher Yang Zhu was the first person in Chinese history to have encouraged luxury consumption based on his philosophy that life is short and,therefore,it is important to realize oneself and enhance one’s self-esteem,even if it means the owning of material goods.If Yang Zhu encourages consumption for the sake of the realization of the self out of a hedonist view of life,earlier than him,in the time of Guan Zhong(719BC—645BC),luxury consumption had been encouraged as a way to increase employment,and to boost the development of economy.Guan Zhong wrote in Guanzi that before boiling an egg with wood fire,painters should be hired to paint the egg and the wood so that opportunities of employment could be increased.Doesn’t this sound familiar?Keynes in his The General Theory of Employment,Interest and Money gave the example of filling a used bottle with banknotes,burying it in an excavated mine shaft,filling up the hole with city garbage,and leaving the money to be excavated by private enterprise again.As a result,unemployment would be resolved and social wealth could be increased through the process(129).The only difference between Guan Zhong and Keynes is that the former’s method was stated 2000 years earlier and is more aesthetically appealing. Another example happened in the Northern Song dynasty (960—1127). In the aftermath of a flood in Hangzhou, instead of following the common practice of endorsing frugality in times of scarcity,the governor then in charge,Fan Zhongyan(989—1062),promoted luxurious consumption of food,travel,and basic infrastructure construction so as to increase employment,which was so successful that it made Hangzhou the only prosperous city among the flood-stricken areas.Until the Ming Dynasty(1368—1644),conspicuous consumption had been very popular.Lu Ji(1515—1552)believed that if consumption was encouraged,it would consequently make common people’s life easier and if frugality was encouraged,it would be more difficult for ordinary people to make a living.

At various times,luxury consumption has been considered a moral issue.Sumptuary laws have existed almost everywhere including Ancient Greece and Rome,China,Japan,the Islamic World,England. Such laws regulated people’s attitude toward luxury consumption.They concerned mainly the imperial privileged classes.For the nobility,consumption of luxurious items was an expression of taste and a symbol of privilege,and for the lower classes,it was judged as wasteful and immoral behavior.Mike Featherstone therefore believes that the spreading of luxury consumption in modern society is a democratic movement,thanks to the influence of media as well the increase of the purchase power of the middle class(89).The consumption of luxurious goods is made conspicuous largely because of the symbolic meaning embedded with them,as well as their connection with status,identity, taste, and so on. Unlike ordinary commodities, they don’t simply function in a utilitarian manner to satisfy a particular need,instead,they manifest,speak of,and radiate the desires of the consumers.Motivated by the longing for the symbolic power of luxury goods,consumers fall under the spell of them,which reflect on the consumers when they look out to the world outside them(Featherstone 93).Conspicuous consumption consumes at a hidden level the inner desire of the consumer who believes he or she is the one in control of consumption. On the contrary, it is the consumption that controls the consumer.It thus transforms its own position of being owned by the consumer into that of an owner’s.The relationship between the consumer and luxury goods is a dialectical one,like that of Hegel’s master and slave.

Conspicuous consumption is not a privilege of the rich only. According to Virginia Postrel,conspicuous consumption comprises not only socioeconomic behaviors practiced by rich people,but also socio-economic behaviors common to poor social classes and economic groups.Displays of wealth are used by such groups to psychologically combat the impression of poverty,usually because such men and women belong to a socio-economic class perceived as poor by the society(1).Thomas J.Stanley and William D.Danko found that Americans with a net worth of more than one million dollars are likely to avoid conspicuous consumption and that millionaires tend to practice frugality—that is,prefer to buy used cars with cash rather than new cars with credit,in order to avoid material depreciation and paying interest for a loan to buy a new car(32).

Though there are precedents for the consumption of luxury goods in China,ones that are ancient in origins,the practice did not become a major economic and cultural phenomenon until the late 20th century. Since the 1990s, with the constant increase in the number of people of high salaries,luxury brands began to enter the Chinese market and the consumption of luxury goods among Chinese began to explode. Although the consumption of luxury goods in China started comparatively late,it developed very quickly.In 2005,China was the world’s third biggest consumer of luxury goods.Only six year later,by 2011,it had become the second biggest consumer of luxury goods(Yuan 83).Not only in big cities like Shanghai and Beijing, but also in middle sized cities like Chengdu,Dalian and Zhengzhou,shops of luxury brands have been opened in large numbers.In 2015,Chinese people spent$118.6 billion on luxury goods,which amounted to 46%of such goods consumed worldwide (“Fortune Research Institute”).Apparently,China has now become a super power of luxury consumption.Why does conspicuous consumption thrive in such a way in a developing country like China,when its economy as a whole still lag far behind other developed countries?

To answer this question, it needs to be reminded that before entering into a consumer society China was an underdeveloped society where frugality used to be enthusiastically encouraged as a great virtue.This transformation from frugality to extravagance is intrinsic to the structural changes of the Chinese society,which runs parallel with its transformation from a planned economy to a market economy.The rise of consumerism is,therefore,the inevitable outcome of China’s social transformation,as well as the outcome of the nation’s political strategy in which consumerism was encouraged so as to maintain the legitimacy of the government.In other words,China’s transformation into a consumer society is not only the outcome of the development of the economy,it is also because the old social structure could no longer sustain the fragile economic and political structure of the society.The reason why people choose to pursue either frugality or consumerism is because the nation has successfully reconstructed the structure of their desire.In the years between 1949 and 1979, frugality was encouraged as a national objective or goal due to the political and social condition of that period,when the People’s Republic of China had just been founded and the shortage of commodities was a prevailing phenomenon.“Thriftism”,as is generally understood,is a kind of psychological mechanism or mode of desire that restrains the subject’s desire to consume. Instilled as a longtime resistance to consumption,thriftism is built into the mindset of the subject as an instinct and a habit,even an objective.Under this psychological mechanism,the subject’s desire is restricted to a basic survival level.When thriftism was advocated as a national objective,desire for consumption of something other than what was necessary was often condemned and looked down upon,whereas thriftiness was respected as a virtue.Luxury consumption,as opposed to frugality,is deemed immoral,even reactionary.For a long time,any consumption beyond the satisfaction of basic needs was condemned socially and politically.

If frugality is a rational habit of consumption typical in a developing or pre-modern economy,consumerism tends to be more prone to instinctive consumption and is seen more often in an abundant society.Consumerism,as analyzed by Wang Ning,is the outcome of industrial society,especially its post-industrial variant. It is a psychological mechanism and desire format that suits the surplus economy.It follows the principle of hedonism,materialism,and expressionism.Consumerism is a type of psychology format that is forever chasing new desires and the satisfaction of such desires.The transition from the agricultural society to an industrial one is followed by the transition of the subjects’desire format(19).In the agricultural(production)society,the mainstream psychology for consumption is thriftism, and in the industrial(consumer) society the mainstream psychology format is consumerism.The transition from thriftism to consumerism is on the surface a transformation of the subject’s desire pattern,but in essence it is the result of a structural transition from the society of production to that of consumption.In China,it is also parallel with the transformation of its mode of economic governance,from the one that was planned to the one that is organized around the mechanisms of the market.In a planned economy,the desire pattern of the consumer tends to be edited according to the macro economic situation while in the market economy the desire pattern is let loose according to the macro economic situation. In the mode of consumerism,what people desire usually surpasses their basic needs,where the search for pleasure,status,and self-realization is emphasized.Desire becomes a type of constructive force that transcends the restriction of basic physical needs. It is shapeable,moveable,and increasable,similar to the“desiring-production” claimed by Deleuze who sees every social order as built around particular systems of desire.What made mass consumption possible,according to Daniel Bell,is technological revolution,the wide spread of the use of home appliances like washing machines,refrigerators,and vacuum machines,as well as production lines and a credit system(57).Technological revolution and mass production constitute the technologicaleconomic foundation for consumerism while the credit system and the mortgage system work as its financial foundation.Besides,consumerism is also a cultural mechanism that is the result of the marketing strategy which sets free and even creates desires for the consumers.

II

Both China and the West have been through this transition from a producer’s society to that of the consumers’, followed by the move toward consumerism where people’s desires for material goods are set free and encouraged.What is unique about consumerism in China is that,unlike in the West,where this process took about a century’s time to transpire,it took only about thirty years’time.The transition happened so quickly because of the ideological work that the national government put into abetting and encouraging this transition.With the transition from a planned economy to a market economy,the nation’s attitude toward consumption has undergone great changes.Suffice it to say that without the change of the nation’s political strategy,this change would not have happened so soon,if at all.

At the beginning of the foundation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949,in order to realize industrialization nationwide as soon as possible,so as to catch up with and surpass capitalist countries, the development of heavy industry was prioritized. Therefore, the major resources of the nation were used in the development of heavy industry. The emphasis then was on accumulation rather than consumption.To reduce the cost of industrialization,the salary of the workers had to be reduced.To realize this,the prices of basic life necessities had to be put under control.The government therefore had to monopolize the buying and selling of agricultural and sideline products so as to control their prices.The principle of low salary and a rationing system was thus applied in order to bring the basic consumption level under control.Within such a system,people led a life of extreme austerity.In a nation that lacked necessary resources,control of consumption itself was not enough,and it also had to cultivate the laborers’ motivation and their enthusiasm,which was actually the only advantage that China could draw on at the time,so they could put all their energy into national production.The Chinese Communist Party had been good at articulating the needs of the individual into the bigger needs of the party and the nation.The objective of the individual was combined with the objectives of the nation so thoroughly that only the objectives of the nation remained. Through ideological and political propaganda at different levels,in a manner similar to what Foucault described by as the“panopticon” ,individuals took into themselves the national objective of frugality and made it their own personal belief.At the same time,methods like“criticism” and“self-criticism”were constantly used to condemn and diminish ideas like“individualism” or “hedonism”. With such methods,the nation successfully made the idea of hedonism, consumerism, and individualism shameful notions as they were not in lines with the nation’s collective needs.People who opposed such ideas were tagged as reactionary.They were seen as lusting after the life of the capitalists and were politically persecuted and socially excluded.Such mechanisms functioned as suppliers of meaning to instill ideas of collectivism, idealism, and asceticism.On the one hand,through a strategy of defilement,by defiling the individuals’material desires,the idea of thriftism was strengthened,which coordinated with the systematic arrangement of the nation to repress consumption.On the other hand,through a strategy of sublimation,it made the national objective a resource for ultimate meaning for the individual,whose sacrifice for and devotion to the nation were thus sublimated.In this way,the laborers were successfully motivated spiritually even though their material desires were suppressed.

In the time of the planned economy,people’s consumption practices were thus instrumentalized and all desires that were not pertinent to the basic survival needs were viewed as contradictory to the grand national objective.It was even considered a threat that was illegal and unjustifiable.Within this mechanism,thriftism was made doubly significant.On the one hand,as a mechanism of meaningproduction, thriftiness was rendered culturally legitimate.And on the other hand,by combining the needs of the individual with that of the nation’s,the thrifty life style was made materially more bearable.People were willing to live a life of austerity because they believed that by doing so they were making it possible for later generations to live a life of affluence and abundance. However, as the contradictions of the planned economy became more and more obvious—the lack of consumer goods and the decrease of people’s living standards, the nation’s promise of deferred consumption was manifested as vain and people’s motivation was shaken.While their complaint of shortages kept increasing,people became less and less tolerant of frugalism,which led to the decrease of people’s motivation, and the lack of motivation further resulted in the lack of the production of material goods;as a result,a vicious circle came into being.Reform seemed the only way out of this vicious cycle.Since the traditional way to motivate people had lost its momentum,new ways had to be found.The Reform policy the nation began in late 1970s advocated a liberation of the minds,which meant that the old ideological system as well as the frugalism on which it relied would face new challenges regarding their authority. In this historical and cultural context,the nation had to give up the old utopian ideology as the provider of meaning,while an ideological vacuum appeared as new guiding ideologies had not been formed yet.At the same time,with the deepening of the Opening and Reform policy, as well as the massive introduction of western thoughts and ideas,old ideologies that cut China away from the rest of the world could no longer hold.It became harder and harder to persuade the public that by way of practicing frugalism,they were pursuing a sublime,national objective.There then appeared a vacuum of ultimate objectives as the nation could no longer function as the provider of overall meaning.This absence of national objectives left the nation in a state of uncertainty.It seemed that both the nation and the people had lost their sense of orientation.

It was in this political,historical and cultural context that the famous“Shekou Storm” happened in 1988.Shekou used to be a small fishing village.In 1979,with the approval of the State Council,it was arranged to experiment as a special industrial area.Within 10 years’time,Shekou had developed from a small fishing village into a modern industrial port city as well the focus of the whole nation.Anything happening there would attract national attention.On January 13,1988,a group of famous educators from Beijing visited Shekou.They had been traveling around China to give lectures to the young people on ideological education.Unlike any other places on their lecture tour,where young people accepted what they said wholeheartedly,while lecturing in Shekou they were met with unprecedented questions and challenges.When one educator argued in his talk that some people came to Shekou only to seek money and that the special zone should not welcome such gold-diggers, he was challenged.Some in the audience said that there was nothing wrong with wanting to make money,as long as the way to make money was legal.For the young people,even though the gold-diggers came to Shekou for the sake of money,they also contributed to the development of the city.Some educators then pointed out that there had been some businessmen who donated what they earned to the nation and that such deeds should be encouraged.Some young people disagreed with that and said that those who donated did not do it out of their own will,but out of their fear for the leftist belief that it was wrong for the individual to make money and become rich.For the young people,business people should proudly put the money they made into their own pocket as they contributed to the country when they accumulated wealth for themselves.One of the young people from Shekou sharply declared that there was no market for the educators’“ oldfashioned”thought in Shekou.This young Shekouer said that one should express his love of the country in ways that were practical rather than vain,fake,and empty:“We express our love of China with our labor.We work for the country and should have the right to enjoy the fruit of our labor” (“Shekou Storm”).Triggered by this,very heated discussions then arose regarding individualism,the meaning of life,and the role of the market,and so on.The next day after the talk,on the 14of January,one of the educators published a paper criticizing how polluted the minds of the young people in Shekou had become.On the 1of February,Shekou Newsletter published an article criticizing the three educators’ thought as being out of date and rigid.Ten days later,Yangcheng Evening reported on this debate again.Soon discussions regarding the talk took off and on the 6of August,1988,the most famous national paper,the People’s Daily,published an essay 7000 words long regarding what had happened around the Shekou talk and it opened a column for discussion.From August 8 until September 14,People’s Daily received 1531 letters from the readers.Among them only 17.4% readers were on the side of the educators.Hundreds of local media got involved and it was commonly accepted that new ways were needed to implement ideology education and new standards should be established.(“Shekou Storm”)

Not many people would think of the“Shekou Storm” today when talking about the consumer culture in China.Yet it actually established the basic cultural soil for a consumer culture to flourish in China.At the same time,the legitimacy of individualism,as well as people’s right to enjoy the fruit of their labor advocated then was very important for the emergence of luxury consumption in China because,as we have already seen,for many years,consumption itself was something to be ashamed of in Chinese culture.At the same time,from the prism of the discussion around“Shekou Storm” we see young people’s demand to express their will and their individualist spirit,which is parallel with the psychological motivations of conspicuous consumption.

III

In retrospect, the development of the phenomenon of luxury consumption in China can be roughly divided into three periods.The first period from 1979 to 1997 coincides with the time that China entered the World Trade Organization. In the beginning of the Opening and Reform,few reports on consumption had been published because the majority of Chinese people were still struggling at the level of survival for basic food and clothing.The first two famous foreign brands that entered China were Pierre Cardin and RADO,both in 1979.RADO’s first TV advertisement ran for one minute on the Shanghai TV Channel at6pm on the 15of March in 1979.In the same year,Pierre Cardin had its first fashion show in Beijing.Roughly speaking,this is a period when luxury consumption began to take off in China and people’s sense for and appreciation of luxury commodities began to be slowly cultivated.Chinese people began to learn about and enjoy luxury goods,which together with the new social zest for being rich,had become a very conspicuous phenomenon nationwide.The second stage of luxury consumption can be roughly put between the year that China entered the WTO in 1997 and 2013,when the national anti-corruption campaign swept China.During this time,conspicuous consumption really rooted itself in China and became an important social indicator of the fluidity of social classes.Unlike in the first period when people mainly shopped for luxury goods inside China,with the deepening of the opening policy more and more Chinese began to travel and shop abroad.In 2010,more than 50%of the consumption of luxury goods were acquired outside China.Apart from the fact that in foreign shops people have more choices of goods,another very important reason is that because of the taxes China placed on imported goods,the prices of luxury goods could vary drastically inside China and outside China.During this period,China became the world’s second biggest market for luxury goods.The third stage of luxury consumption began with a drastic drop in sales. It is commonly attributed to the anti-corruption movement in China since gift culture had played a large role in the rise of luxury consumption in China.

From the beginning of the development of luxury consumption in China, some prominent characteristics made it distinctive from the process in the West.First,in terms of the group of luxury consumers,unlike in the West, where people between the age of forty and seventy are the majority of consumers of luxurious goods,in China frequent shoppers of luxurious goods are people under the age of forty,among which a majority were business people,their teenage children,and popular stars.Many young people born in the 1980s are fans of luxury goods,the so-called Guan Erdai(the second generation of officials)and Fu Erdai(the second generation of the rich,who are more aware of luxury brands. Second, the purpose of conspicuous consumption in China tends to be more irrational.Many people buy out of vanity,for the sake of“face”, without considering the cultural and historical connotations or consequences of the product.Very often people’s choice of luxury goods is solely based on the price,because they buy in order to impress others.Third,different from the West where people buy luxury goods for themselves,people in China who use luxurious goods don’t buy them and people who buy them don’t use them.This unique phenomenon is due to the so-called gift culture by which luxury goods have been very much instrumentalized into a means for bribery.This is also why all the buyers care about is the price of the goods.The object exists in this gift economy only to function as a bearer of price.What comes next is that most people choose to buy luxury goods outside China due to the price difference as China attaches a high tax to luxury goods.Lastly,most luxury goods consumed in China are foreign brands;few of them are products of China.It is because on the one hand Chinese consumers of luxury tend to be more attracted by foreign products and on the other hand it is because Chinese luxury goods have not been fully developed and there are few products that are comparable with the foreign ones.

In addition to what has just been discussed,in China there also exists another type of luxury consumption practiced by ordinary people for special cultural events.Luxury consumption in the context of the cultural domain does not necessarily refer to expensive goods owned by the minority group,but it can also refer to the process or consequence of some rituals and habits. People often resort to extraordinary acts of consumption to express or obtain what they really need in social life,which is closely connected with issues of power,desire,regulations,and emotions.To understand luxury consumption comprehensively,we need to look at it not only from the economic point of view but also from the cultural point of view because,to a large degree,luxury consumption is not so much an economic event as it is a cultural one.What made luxury consumption a cultural event is the cause as well as the consequence of conspicuous consumption.

As is mentioned at the outset of this paper,the concept of conspicuous consumption raised by Veblen is used to describe acts of consumption for the purpose of showing off.Mason has a similar idea:the motivation of conspicuous consumption is to impress other people with the consumers’ability to pay for expensive commodities.For him,it is a form of consumption that is defined by its social effect rather than its economic or physical effects(16).Belk holds that conspicuous consumption is a type of purchasing behavior that the consumer conducts in order for others to feel about himself in ways he wants them to through this purchasing activity.(1988:146) No matter how complicated the psychological motivation can be, conspicuous consumption refers to the public consumption of expensive and luxurious commodities and service(Belk,1982:14;O’Cass et al.71).The reason why consumers are willing to pay higher prices for goods of the same function is because they long for the kind of status that is associated with material wealth(Bagwell et all.152).Actually,according to the study of Richins,very often people would judge whether someone is successful or not according to the material objects he owns(213).Conspicuous consumption has,therefore,become a significant means of expression in people’s daily behavior.People would buy conspicuous things that are associated with their social status to imitate or be different from other consumers,which creates the bandwagon or snob effect(Leibenstein 190).However,apart from rich people,there are also people of low economic status engaged in conspicuous consumption(Banerjee et al.152;Charles et al.436;Christen et al.157).Compared with rich people,some low-income people tend to spend more on conspicuous consumption and so compromise on education,entertainment,and health insurance.What puzzles economists is why relatively poor people would demonstrate stronger desires for“unnecessary” conspicuous goods.Research shows that when consumers are of relatively low or unstable social status,they tend to be more willing to pay for specific things that will make up for their psychological losses(Gao 32;Sivananthan 567).When subjects are under self-threat, they demonstrate a desire to pay for things that are more associated with higher social positions and when the self-threat is restored, such desires lessen.Moreover,individuals of lower self-esteem show a higher tendency toward luxury consumption.Obviously,people hope to compensate for their low status,lack of power and self-esteem with luxury consumption,hoping to cope with the challenges of their confidence and lack of self-consistency through acts of conspicuous consumption(Banerjee et al.153;Charles et al.437).

IV

For Chinese consumers,another factor is worth looking at—the influence of traditional Chinese culture.Research shows that what is most closely connected with luxurious, conspicuous, and signifying purchasing activity are traditional Confucian values(Zhang Mengxia 2006:109;Yuan Shaofeng 57).The three Confucian cultural values that affect Chinese people’s consumption of luxury commodities are consistency between behavior and status, family reputation, and other people’s influence(Zhang Mengxia 2006:27).Among such factors, “consistency between behavior and status”is the most influential one:the more a consumer cares about the consistency between behavior and status, the stronger his interest in conspicuous consumption(Yuan Shaofeng 63).According to Zhang Mengxia,the idea of“consistency between behavior and status” teaches people to consider whether a certain behavior is in consistence with his social status(2006:25).Traditional Confucian culture emphasizes the relationship between individuals as well as the relationship between the individual and the community.People are taught to acknowledge one’s own social status as well as his difference from others and being content where one is to maintain the stability and harmony of the society.

In regard to consumption activities,the idea of“consistency between behavior and status” teaches people to consume according to their social status.Those at a lower social status should buy things that match their position and spend their money in a rational way,while those at a higher social stand should buy more expensive things to demonstrate their identity and status in the society.In this way,the harmony between individuals and the community can be sustained.Under the influence of the idea of consistency between behavior and status,those who believe they are of a higher social status tend to actively demonstrate themselves through conspicuous consumption so that their appearance matches what is defined by their identity and status. A“conspicuous” way of behavior as a way to demonstrate one’s social status is also reflected in the long nail traditions with both men and women in ancient China.Noble classes wore long nails as a demonstration of their social status,meaning they didn’t have to be engaged in manual labor.And according to the symbolic self-completion theory,many activities that the individuals are engaged in,for example, purchase of commodities, are performed in a way to support the definition of the self so as to express the individual’s identity(Wicklund et al.93).Accordingly,the more a person believes his behavior should match his social status,the more active he will be in purchasing so that he can strengthen his self-definition.Consumers can show their status with the act of consumption of certain things(Belk et al.12),especially with the consumption of luxury things and the ownership of rare objects(Han et al.17).

Another important element in Confucian cultural values is the“consciousness of face” (Pan Y et al.82;Zhang X.A.et al.17). “Face” refers to the individual subject’s positive self-image gained through his interaction with other people.Specifically,face means the social,open,and fluid self that is connected with other people’s behavior and attitude.It also means a desire to sustain or improve one’s image,and a desire to avoid losing one’s face in social interactions,especially with important people(Bao et al.749).As social beings,we have all had experiences related with our“face”.On the one hand,people strive to sustain or improve their face;on the other hand,when one’s face is under threat or attack,they always try to keep or protect it.In a culture which emphasizes on the spirit of collectivism,this is more so because an individual is never an independent self but a self in relationships.In China,what needs to be protected is not only one’s own face,but also the face of those important to oneself.One’s face is always that of one’s family.Face is,therefore,very important for Chinese people.This sense of face will connect consumption with social relationship and affect many other facets in social life,from one’s own physical needs to the need for self-realization(Belk 15).Studies show that because of the emphasis on“face”,consumers in south-east China pay more attention to commodities that will attract public visibility(Wong et al.431).And for Chinese consumers,the more a person pays attention to his“face”,the stronger his desire to buy expensive things(Yuan 19).

These factors influenced by Confucian values demonstrate that for Chinese consumers,the major motivation for conspicuous consumption is out of the“signaling motive”,not the “compensating motive”shown in the behavior of western consumers.For Chinese consumers,luxury consumption to a large extent leads to the growth and expansion of the self.For them,therefore,luxury consumption is practiced for the purpose of demonstrating an individual’s social status as well as a sense of privilege.Because of this,conspicuous consumption tends to attract more attention in the public eye,as is seen in the opening paragraph of this article.

Conspicuous consumption in China,as we have seen,has a long history and is of particular importance in understanding today’s China because it functions as a signifier—or rather a chain of signifiers—that reveal characteristics about a society the way symptoms tell of a body.Just like the long nails,the Armani suits,and Rolex watches they bear not only the economic,but also the cultural and political undercurrents of Chinese society,among which,branding and labeling typical of that of the“capitalist” consumer society speaks of as loudly as“individualism” that has been in dire shortage in the cultural milieu of Chinese society.As a mechanism of distinction,what is political about conspicuous consumption in China is that is related to power,as well as the history of its modes of economic and political governance.The cultural politics of conspicuous consumption in China therefore distinguishes itself from that of the Western mode in that it is more deeply interwoven with state power that either gives rise to or tears it apart according to its own agenda under or above the water.

Notes

① There is no clear date of Yang Zhu’s birth and death.He is believed to have lived between the time of Mo Zi(479 BC—381BC)and Mencius(371BC—289BC),because Mo Zi has never mentioned Yangzhu,while by the time of Mencius,Yangzhu had already enjoyed a status equal to that of Mo Zi.In Mencius time,“the world prevails with the thoughts of Zhai Mo(Mo Zi)and Yang Zhu,it is either that of Mo Zi,or that of Yangzhu.See in Youlan Feng,A Short History of Chinese Philosophy,p.36.

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