by J. Gabriel Boylan, Boston Globe
We read the phrase all the time, even if we’ve long since relegated it to the part of our brains that processes parental warning stickers or emergency-landing procedures: MADE IN CHINA.
China, for most of us in the West, is where things are manufactured, and here on the other side of the Pacific is where those things get bought. That organization of the world is a way to make sense of the big changes we see: America’s deindustrialization, the rise of our tech and service sectors, and China’s growing appetite for energy and resources. It is also a comfortable place to be: If you’re the world’s top consumer, then everyone else is worried about providing the things you want.
But what if the arrow were to turn, and China, brimming with a population of over 1.3 billion, started buying with a vengeance? What if China became the place that manufacturers looked for their cues?
That question is quickly turning from a what-if to a how-soon. Hundreds of millions of Chinese want the sorts of things we want — from televisions and washing machines to bottled water and organic food — and more and more of them are turning those wants into purchases. China’s annual consumer spending is now around $4 trillion; though still only half the US figure, it is already a bigger consumer economy than Japan and close to that of the European Union. China is now the world’s largest consumer in a number of categories, including beer, cigarettes, and — remarkably — cars. Some Western automakers have begun skipping US and European markets and debuting models in China first.
Karl Gerth, an East Asian studies professor at Oxford, has traveled to China many times in the past 25 years, building a body of research on China’s consumer history and habits. He has amassed data and interviewed colleagues and strangers alike about what they buy, what they’d like to buy, and how it’s all changed over the years. His latest book, “As China Goes, So Goes the World,” now out in paperback from Hill & Wang, documents China’s massive shift in lifestyle and spending.
Gerth draws a picture of a consumer culture that in some ways remains vastly different from the West’s. The state still plays a huge role in directing the manufacturing economy and prodding certain kinds of consumption. A long-held culture of saving means the Chinese are a long way from our comfort with credit and household debt. But some of the trends are familiar: Chains are spreading through the country; advertising is increasingly shaping consumer tastes across China’s diverse regions; golf and skiing, formerly the provinces only of the super-wealthy, have begun to attract middle-class fans. And as a token of prestige, the classic Chinese liquor Moatai is swiftly giving way to a taste for cognac.
Gerth spoke to Ideas from his home in Oxford, England.
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