Spending Without Speaking: China's Middle Class, Governmentality, and Conspicuous
Consumption
Abstract
This paper primarily aims to explain why the Chinese emergent middle class engage
conspicuous consumption despite the fact that both traditional Confucianism and
contemporary Chinese communist ideology regard wasteful consumption with disdain. Two
hypotheses are proposed. Conventional sociological study of consumption based on Western
capitalist societies leads us to identify the factor of status-seeking whereby the newly rich
want to show off their new social status by flaunting their wealth visibly. Another is
illustrated by the Foucaultian concept of „governmentality‟ whereby consumerism is utilized
by the authoritarian Chinese regime as a form of calculated „pastoral‟ control to stem the
spread of middle-class activism from a distance without directly confronting this growing
social force. It is premised on a claim that the Chinese party-state finds that it is in its interest
to exercise control and power over the people from within the individuals. Consequently, the
emergent middle class is confronted with the pressure to navigate their own consumption
patterns to align with the government‟s hidden preferences that the citizenry should be
engaged with materialist consumption rather than politics. An important theoretical
implication of this study is that we will re-assess the common-sense claims based on
modernization theory that with the rise of the middle class, China is heading towards a more
individualized and liberal-democratic society. Rather, there is likelihood that with the
Chinese party-state undertaking social engineering to govern the growth of a materialistic yet
politically apathetic middle class, new modes of selfhood and sociality are emerging in
reform-era China.
(249 words)
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Keywords and terms: Chinese middle class, consumer culture, conspicuous consumption,
governmentality, China
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Why is there conspicuous consumption by the middle class in present-day China where both
traditional Confucianism and the official ideology of the ruling Chinese Communist Party
(CCP) are disdainful of profligate consumption?1 One would not expect that many of China‟s
middle class participate in conspicuous consumption because, by the measure of gross
domestic product (GDP) per capita, China is only a lower middle income country of the
world on a par with Maldives and Turkmenistan.2 To address this puzzle, this paper examines
the consumer culture of China‟s rising middle class using an ethnographic approach.
Consumer culture provides a universal tool kit, a material and symbolic repertoire of status
and tastes for expressing class distinction and identities of the young generation. This paper
borrows the concept of consumption from Thorstein Veblen and Pierre Bourdieu to depict the
situation in post-reform China. Consumer culture carries different meanings in different
localities, and offers different opportunities for the young generation (Zukin and Maguire
2004: 191). The positionality and narratives of the young generation regarding their pleasureseeking habits and self-consciousness suggest that they remain enamored with Western
modernity, individualized lifestyles, and conspicuous consumption.
A consumer revolution is quietly spreading across today‟s China, resulting in the
emergence of conspicuous consumption, a phenomenon first discussed by Veblen
(1899/1934) in the late nineteenth century. This revolution has the earmarks of proletariat
success in the form of a rising affluent middle class. The paper investigates two research
questions. 1) Why do the Chinese middle class engage in conspicuous consumption whereas
both Confucianism and the official Chinese communist ideology are disdainful of wasteful
consumption? 2) What is the role of the Chinese party-state in the emergence of this
conspicuous consumption? Is the approach active or laissez-faire, and why? Is there any
socialist form of governmentality?
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Similar to the then American „leisure class‟ under Veblen‟s study, Chinese middle
class wishes to impress „transient observers‟ (Veblen 1899/1934: 87) by showing that they
have enough wealth to waste on useless or overly expensive goods based on a social belief
that display – more than possession – of wealth confers social status and they are therefore
worthy of emulation and trust. We shall discuss in more detail below that behind conspicuous
consumption lies social or interpersonal relations in a social hierarchy. But it is only part of
the story; whereas other cultures historically relied on their middle classes to be the
vanguards of political and social change, a dangerous social experiment is underway to keep
China‟s political sphere untouched. China has embraced governmentality to encourage
marketplace success in order to distract its people from engaging political discourse about
their rights and the government‟s obligations. It makes sense for the CCP not to coerce their
population (due to the huge cost of direct governing), but to direct the conduct of them into
something apolitical in order to achieve the specific goals of the CCP, namely preserving
their predominant position in society. This paper highlights how the CCP tries to shape and
mobilise the desires, wants and lifestyles of the middle class by virtue of the notion of
governmentality. While encouraging consumption and the associated advertising activities
can be interpreted and understood for the sake of stimulating economic growth and
generating sufficient job opportunities for the masses, the most important factor is it is part of
the CCP „project‟ or „policy‟ to govern the emerging middle class and maintain a politically
docile middle class „from a distance‟. We attempt to use governmentality as an important
variable to explain the interaction and linkages among the two research questions in this
paper. What did the previous research miss and what are the remaining gaps in the
knowledge? Despite the insightful arguments of the sociological studies of both consumption
and governmentality and a growing scholarly interest in the rise of the middle class in China
(see, e.g. Goodman 2008; Li 2010; Zhang 2010; Ren 2012; Chen and Goodman 2013),3 there
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are few studies of how the prevalent patterns of conspicuous consumption by the rapidlyexpanding middle class are to be explained. In this paper, we consider governmentality
shapes people and it is a form of consumerism. It is strategic and state led by the Chinese
government. Foucault (1982) puts it in terms of people being governed through the logic of
the market. Consumerism is always emphasized as a form of governance and it used to
support governance. People are governed through or by means of consumerism.
The rest of this paper will mainly proceed in three sections. The first one will
introduce the target of this research: the post -1970 middle class. The second one will focus
on theories of consumption and governmentality. The third one will be the application of
conspicuous consumption and governmentality in today‟s China.
Target of Investigation: The Post-1970 Middle Class
This paper is focused on a subset of the rapidly growing of the middle class in China
known as the young generation. The Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) was the watershed in
classifying who belong to the young generation of the Chinese new middle class. The
interviewees in this paper did not experience or could only barely remember the tumultuous
movement. Those who experienced the Cultural Revolution were called the old generation
(Author 2013a). Born in the 1970s or thereafter, the young generation have grown up in a less
politicised environment promoting materialistic culture, and expect that they will have a
bright career future, and a secure job. This cohort of the young generation is seen as longterm planners of their education. Many tend to proceed with their first and higher degree
studies, and what to do after graduation. They are generally proficient in English or have
highly marketable job skill comparable to a native English speaker. Some may even speak a
third modern language such as French or Spanish, among others. They consider themselves to
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be more independent, individualist, strong-willed, friendly, and easy-going in everyday life.
Paradoxically educational attainment and conspicuous consumption are closely intertwined in
post-reform China whereby conspicuous consumption and discourse of distinction (Hanser
2008) are directly related to this way of life because it demonstrates their superiority over
other classes and legitimizes their position of superordination. The young generation often
give an initial impression that they act like modern and sophisticated consumers by
embracing the various hallmarks of modernity and consumerism. Fashion, food, villas, and
smartphones are „heterotopias‟ (Foucault 1986) to them. This paper finds that this group is
puzzled as to their self-identities. Conspicuous consumption becomes a process of selfestrangement and a form of self-objectification to maintain their intergenerational mobility
within their families (Pun 2003: 480).
An ethnographic research on the young generation of was done in the prosperous
province of Guangdong, covering seven cities of Dongguan, Foshan, Guangzhou, Shenzhen,
Zhongshan, Zhuhai, and Yangjiang. All the interviews were conducted from 2007-2010. In
identifying the interviewees, we focused on those who had the following distinguishing
features: having (1) a minimum per-capita income of RMB9,000 per month; (2) postsecondary education (technical or non-technical) or above; (3) managerial-level or
managerial-type job position such as managers and entrepreneurs or professional
qualifications (e.g. professors, doctors or engineers); (4) urban residency (urban hukou); (5) a
house or a car either by mortgage or outright purchase; and (6) disposable income of
RMB300,000 or above (Author 2013a). (7) The young generation was born in 1970-1989.
Potential respondents were selected among this broad group of the young generation. Within
each selected city in Guangdong, three to five natives introduced me to potential candidates
(professionals, entrepreneurs, and cadres) for in-depth interviews. The participants were
identified by snowball sampling, starting from my personal contacts. It quickly became
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apparent that it was the most effective strategy by far in terms of time and disbursements. A
total of 50 interviews with the young generation born in the period 1970-1980 were
completed. Their metiers were composed of cadres (10), professionals (26) and entrepreneurs
(14). In my samples, there were 28 men and 22 women. All the men were married but only
10 (out of 22) women were. All the interviewees received overseas Bachelor‟s, Master‟s, or
even doctorate degrees. They returned to China during the 2000s. Almost half of them (18
out of 50) held overseas citizenship either from the USA, Ireland, Australia, Germany, France,
Japan, and the UK.
This research employed both formal and informal interviews to help interviewees feel
more at ease and encourage them to reveal more openly and deeply their self-identities, life
philosophies, feelings of insecurity, imaginations, and outlooks on various issues. With
participant and non participation observations, the investigator can better understand the
features unique to the young generation. The identities of the respondents are protected by the
use of pseudonyms. The in-depth interviews were conducted using open-ended questions,
focusing on 1) What kinds of consumption patterns do they pursue? 2) In what ways are they
motivated to extend guanxi and status while they are practicing conspicuous consumption? 3)
How do they define their identities as members of the young generation of the Chinese new
middle class? 4) How did they negotiate their mentalities between traditional Chinese norms
and Western orientations both in terms of consumption and ideology? 5) In what ways do
they think the government is watching the media so it does not go against Chinese values?
Can they think of a specific way the government might be implicitly shaping their consumer
behaviour?
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Classical Theories on Consumer Culture
Consumption has been studied by students of marketing and sociology. Whereas students of
marketing are interested in what affects consumers‟ choices of goods (see, e.g. Amaldoss and
Jain 2005; Podoshen et al. 2011), 4 sociologists are concerned with social standing and
distinctions expressed through consumption. They argue that the goods and services statusseeking consumers, notably a group known as nouveaux riches, buy are often intended to
show others in a visible manner what their social standing in a status hierarchy is or what
they aspire it to be. By embodying taste, consumption is a marker of social class and
consumer goods are valued as status symbols. In turn, social standing determines consumers‟
differential access to scarce and valued resources. To put it differently, consumption produces
and reproduces social inequality.
Seen in this perspective, consumer culture, defined as “the „status differentiated‟ and
„market differentiated‟ culture of modern societies, in which individual tastes not only reflect
the social locations (age, gender, occupation, ethnicity, etc.), but also the social values and
individual life styles, of consumers” (Jary and Jary 1991: 116), is a lens through which we
can understand the ongoing social change of a globalizing China, as consumer culture and
conspicuous consumption are important for class analysis. As consumption becomes a
significant source of differentiation of social status and prestige, the ability to assimilate
themselves into a „tasteful‟ consumer culture is becoming a tool and survival kit for the
Chinese middle class to extend guanxi network and maintain their own social mobility. The
growing importance of materialism and consumers has led to questions about the nature of
what are referred to as worldly possessions. In a consumer-driven world, material possessions
are seen as the key to happiness, as people are judged by personal success. Perceptions about
self and others are affected by those judgments. Indeed, materialism and happiness-seeking
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through consumption is a key societal norm in Western civilization (Belk 1985; Chapbell
1987; McCracken 1988).
Veblen‟s The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899/1934) was the first that provided
insight into the relationship between consumption and class. He stated that material factors
determine cultural consumption, and the purpose of cultural practices is to demonstrate and
display material status. The affluent also consumes society‟s scarce cultural resources. Thus,
people with money are deemed to have culture, while people with no money are, by
definition, uncultured. For Veblen, conspicuous leisure and consumption demonstrate one‟s
„distance from mundane, productive labour‟. To attract public admiration, the affluent leisure
class would consume goods in wasteful and highly visible manners. That means consumers
do not buy things for reasons of utility, functionality or actual needs, but rather for the images
associated with what are consumed - i.e. consumer items (both goods and services) are pure
signs (acting as signifiers). In short, conspicuous consumption is a type of hedonist behaviour
in which an individual displays wealth ostentatiously through a life style of luxury in order to
earn social admiration and emulation (Trigg 2001).
Bourdieu’s Concept of Conspicuous Consumption
Not explicitly focusing on conspicuous consumption but all types of consumption
notwithstanding, Pierre Bourdieu (1984), however, points out that classes are distinguished
by cultural differences, especially those in lifestyles. Culture and lifestyle have a direct
bearing on social stratification. Social distinction is shaped by, among others, cultural capital,
which may take the forms of educational qualifications, artistic appreciation, lifestyles and
consumption patterns, and body make-up. People with different lifestyles develop their own
habitus and people of the same class tend to fit in with each other readily well and form
networks of social connections (i.e. „social capital‟ in Bourdieu‟s terminology). Bourdieu and
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Wacquant (1992) emphasize the leading function of education in predisposing an individual
or group to engage in certain cultural practices. The inference is that education brings about
differential cultural patterns. Class struggles are over what constitute high/elite culture and
the defence of high cultural capital by maintaining privileged access to higher education and
high cultural objects or practices. A dominant economic class able to gain access to superior
culture (e.g. good taste) legitimizes its position of super-ordination relative to other classes.
In this paper, Bourdieu‟s concepts of lifestyles, consumption, taste, habitus and distinction
are reconceptualized to account for the emergence of the conspicuous consumption among
the young generation.
Bourdieu focuses on the cultural tasks of consumption patterns, lifestyles, and identity
of class formation. Habitus can be defined as „a system of durably acquired schemes of
perception, thought, and action, engendered by objective conditions but tending to persist
even after an alteration of those conditions‟ (Bourdieu & Passeron 1979:12). Habitus is a set
of subjective dispositions that reflect a class-based social grammar of taste, knowledge, and
behaviour permanently inscribed in each developing person (Bourdieu 1977, 1989; Bourdieu
et al. 1999). As a deeply ideological category, taste functions as an indicator of class
(Bourdieu 1977, 1979, 1989). This group is one who shares the same consumer culture,
pursue the pleasure of consumption thesis – that consumption is primary – construct their
own identity and social status. While Veblen‟s conspicuous consumption is a form of
modernity involving pursuit of higher class status. Bourdieu‟s sociology of consumption is a
signification and construction of the self. His concept of class habitus indicates that cultural
capital is the pivotal determinant of values, instincts and lifestyles.
In his study of consumption, the sociologist Mike Featherstone (1991) argues that
consumption forms a circle of class distinction by incorporating class privilege into cultural
spaces. Lifestyle and consumption form the core of self-identity and consumption is regarded
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as a chief means to assert self-identity and display social status (Zukin and Maguire, 2004:
173-19).
Sociological studies of individual consumer goods are illustrative. Fashion signifies
unity with those in the same class while at the same time giving a feeling of the power to
exclude others. Fashion designs for the upper stratum of society (composed of political
bureaucrats and intellectual elites) are rarely identical to that for the lower class (such as
manual workers and marginal groups). It is a product of class distinction and yet it also
operates as a mechanism of class distinction based on a strategy of inclusion and exclusion.
Fashion therefore has the function of reproducing social power and privileges by maintaining
social differences and distinctions (Bourdieu 1984, 1996). John Storey (1999: 40) considers
fashion in the context of power and ideology, and argues that it is „fashion‟ per se (rather than
the content of the fashion) that is the signifier of social difference that helps differentiate
social statuses in society. Roberta Sassatelli (2000: 214) insightfully illuminates the way in
which the consumption of fashionable commodities is central to class status. Fashion
constitutes and communicates a position in the overall social order while also challenging
relative positions within it. As such, Malcolm Barnard (1996: 39) notes that „fashion and
clothing are used as weapons and a defence in that they express the ideologies held by social
groups which may be opposed to the ideologies of other groups in the social order‟. For
example, fashion acts as a resource by which a social group can maintain a dominant position
within a social order. Eating establishments are another hub of socially significant activities
and food markets are useful places to investigate changes in consumption patterns. Ann
Veeck (2000) points out that food has long been recognized as a central vehicle for analyzing
identities, roles, relationships, rituals and ceremonies. An individual communicates the nature
of his/her relationship with others through the acquisition, preparation and consumption of
food (Bestor 2005).
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Foucaultian Governmentality
Defined by Foucault (1982: 220) as the „conduct of conduct‟, governmentality refers
to „the regulation of conduct using various technical means and [by] encouraging individuals
to regulate themselves‟ (Joseph 2003: 181). It is the ways or organized practices the state uses
to regulate and shape, from a distance and by calculated means, how its population best
behaves in order to fulfil the state‟s policies. It is concerned with the ways in which state
power is exercised over the people not through prohibitions or controls, known as
disciplinary power, but through shaping choices, desires and lifestyles of individuals and
groups (Dean 2010: 12). In contrast to a top-down, statist understanding of the state that
power is exercised by the monolith central sovereign institution from above, Foucault argued
that governing is not the exclusive business of the state or government; it is essentially about
how to secure the optimal welfare of the population, which may start from the household at
the lowest level, and power is exercised through a network of already existing institutions and
practices (Joseph 2003: 179-80). If the conventional understanding of power and politics is
about the use of coercion or extraction, governmentality is focused on a „pastoral‟ approach
whereby the government sets conditions under which individuals regulate their own
behaviour by following their perceived self-interests, serving in so doing the interests of the
state or those who govern the state (Pierson 2011: 78-79). 5 Power, for Foucault, is a
productive and enabling force (Joseph 2003: 182). To improve the well-being of the
population, governmental rationalities – or interventions – are required.
So governmentality is often equated to a neoliberal form of governance, whereby the
population is governed through their free choices, encouraged by virtue of the means of
liberal market forces (i.e. the governed‟s freedom is well respected and the noninterventionist government allows things to take their natural course) (Joseph 2012: 25). It
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shifts the locus of exercising power from without to that from within the individual.
Neoliberal governmentality promotes and produces self-governed citizens best suited to meet
the goals of the government. Seen in this Foucaultian light, neoliberalism is not about
freedom from regulation or simply laissez-faire economy but instead a very specific form of
regulation that emphasizes „rationalized and responsible self-conduct‟ by responsible
individuals, aided by governmental interventions that introduce and extend the norms and
values of the market such as competition and risk-taking (Joseph 2012: 28). 6 Therefore,
neoliberal followers of governmentality studies emphasise the ideas of free conduct, selfawareness and self-limitation of the state (ibid: 26). The essence of this neoliberal form of
governance is that power relations do not necessarily result in a loss of liberty or options
available to individuals. The exercise of power could result in a self-regulation,
„empowerment‟ or „responsibilisation‟ of subjects, enabling them to take individual
responsibility for their well-being (Lemke 2001). Individual liberty should be understood as a
governmental product (Jeffreys and Sigley 2009: 5).
Inspired by Foucaultian concept on governmentality, discussions of how possible
relationship between the state and the management of middle-class behaviour and desires, as
a form of governance and its socio-political implications in a non-liberal setting are scarce
because of the dominance of neoliberal approach to governmentality studies. We are to
enquire in this paper whether governmentality must be associated with advanced liberal
democracies in the West. It stimulates us to think further the case in China. Can
governmentality travel to non-liberal, socialist societies, ending in a socialist form of
governmentality? Mitchell Dean (2002) already points out that liberal governments possess
both facilitative and authoritarian dimensions. The facilitative aspect obliges a liberal
government to allow its people to pursue their interests freely; however, the authoritarian side
acknowledges that the government must set up and put in place desirable social norms for the
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individual to behave in society. There can be liberal and non-liberal rationalities of the
„conduct of conduct‟. We will get back to this part shortly.
From France to China: Bourdieu and the Chinese New Middle Class
To answer the first research question, we need to know the conspicuous consumption
pattern of the young generation first. Based on ethnographic interviews with members of the
post-1970 middle class in Guangdong, this section discusses different kinds of consumption
in fashion, food, housing, cars, and mobile phones. Conspicuous consumption by Chinese has
transformed how western luxury brands do their business in Europe. They now open shops in
high-end department stores in Paris and other major European cities, for instance as
Printemps and Galeries Lafayettes in Paris, largely because Chinese tourists are led there for
shopping (Masidlover and Burkitt 2013). Among the interviewees, the majority (45 out of 50)
said that if they had money, they would purchase whatever they wanted. Most of them
expressed the desire to go to Hong Kong and other countries to buy the latest and trendy
fashions to show that they are more fashionable than the middle classes of other countries.
They had strong preferences for high-end brands like LV and Prada. They actively sought to
avoid the stereotype of the notorious poorly-fitting rural Chinese wearing Maoist outfits of
the past and to rid the old perception of poor fashion sense they believe to be held by
foreigners and Chinese alike as well as the undertone of „village provincialism‟ (tuganjue)
that comes from it. So a fashionable outlook depends on having that quintessential imported
or foreign style of dressing.
Mary, a 25 professional woman, is a French/German-educated accountant. She feels
that practicing conspicuous consumption with her peers is a strategy to strengthen and
enhance relationships with business partners. They never buy counterfeits even though there
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is no noticeable difference and blue-collar workers would never notice. More important for
her is the belief that it would be shameful in front of their friends because they can identify
whether or not they are fakes. To play it safe, most of them buy in Hong Kong or in France.
Among her peers, an LV bag is a must-buy item. Ada, 32, an entrepreneur in a large garment
factory, echoes Mary‟s attitude:
I don’t have any confidence in the brand-name goods in China since there are so many
counterfeits. I order the latest LV bag from Paris and ask for shipping. Otherwise, when you
carry a supposedly LV bag, [people could see] it’s a counterfeit and it’ll be awkward and
awful. Our business partners measure our wealth and businesses by brand-name products,
luxury cars, and apartments [that we have].... (Ada, 32, entrepreneur)
Fashionably dressed teenagers of the Chinese middle class are often seen relaxing in
such fast-food outlets as Starbucks or Westernized cafés during leisure time or on public
holidays. Indeed, dining in Western-style fast-food shops is an integral part of their new
lifestyle because that kind of dining makes these people feel as well as appear to be more
civilised (Watson et al. 2005). They usually utilise this space to chat with their friends or
even meet with their business partners. Lily, 30, a professional, said a café served as her third
office. There, she had a strong sense of pride and superiority, feeling that she was one of the
Chinese middle class. American culture describes these types as „movers and shakers‟ or
„young turks‟. They feel they world belongs to them, their time is now, success is their right.
I personally like Starbucks, cafés, Italian restaurants, and some buffets in a hotel. I don’t
know how to say it…but I like the settings of some Western restaurants or hotels. They give
me an individualized, modern, trendy, hygienic, elegant, and innovative feeling. I love this
feeling… (Ben, 35, entrepreneur)
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There is an enormous yearning among the young generation for spacious, comfortable
living quarters. Their homes are comfortable and elegant in decor and typically located on a
hillside or by the seashore. Western-style houses built on green grassy knolls and near a
stream show harmony. The home is usually constructed in a way that is evocative of a
natural, healthy, and sunny environment for a life of comfort and leisure in a highly cultured
atmosphere. Tsang, 37, an entrepreneur, owns such a dream home where it can provide a high
quality of life. He did not just have it designed for luxury, but rather for a taste for the
modernity. He bought materials from France, Italy, and other European countries to decorate
his house.
The reasons for the young generation to have conspicuous consumption, and to apply
the sociological studies of consumption to today‟s China, an implication is that middle-class
families tend to have similar cultural capital, tastes, habitus, distinction, and class. The young
generation under study have the same educational capital, family inheritance, tend to have the
same distinctive tastes in consumption, and have the same consumer culture. The taste that a
person shows in goods is an indicator of his or her social class in a commodity-oriented (i.e.
consumption) culture. That makes consumption culture a „field‟ in which to create, preserves,
and replicates social differentiation and social disparities (Bourdieu 1977, 1989; Bourdieu
and Wacquant 1992). Veblen‟s and Bourdieu‟s work on „cultural intermediaries‟ remains
useful (Bourdieu 1984: 359) because it includes the growing ranks of those involved in
media, marketing, advertising, tourism, fashion, entertainment, and cultural industries which
provide symbolic goods and services.
In addition, consumption of fashionable commodities may become the main means
for the Chinese young generation to create a new public space, a consumer space of
commoditized objects, services, and information, for them. Consumption would serve as an
important aspect of cultural lifestyle, status, and cultural reproduction for the young
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generation. Shared tastes, lifestyles, and consumption practices form the new class boundary
and the means of admission thereof. Among the Chinese young middle class, it is common to
hire chauffeurs or part-time maids to help them to complete their daily tasks. Displays of
possessions bearing famous brands underscore the personality of an individual and highlight
identity differentiation.
As noted above, those engage in conspicuous consumption wish to distinguish them
from the lower classes in visible ways. A similar dynamic is occurring in China. Most of the
Chinese new middle classes are evaluated and classified by their stylish yet expensive outfits.
In other words, fashion offers a space of difference between the middle class and lower
classes. The young generation believes that buying brand names and foreign goods and
having refined personal tastes and a modern fashion outlook would give them a higher social
status and a reputation for competence (or „symbolic capital‟ in Bourdieusian terminology),
enabling them to make the right social contacts. To differentiate themselves from manual
workers, they prefer to eat less and save up money to buy genuine brand-name products
rather than the almost identical counterfeits in defiance of simple economic sense. They know
well that their „dress code‟ of Guccis and Rolexes is everything to them, especially if they
wish to project a professional image to others. Conspicuous consumption is an important
modus vivendi for the young generation because they often lack well developed networks or
business associates. The ability to consume conspicuously enables them to impress upon
others that they have the capability to take on major business undertakings. Having coffee
nowhere else but at Starbucks, and dining nowhere else but Pizza Hut are typical examples of
the food lifestyle of the young generation. Starbucks and Pizza Hut can give them an
appearance and taste of „modernity‟ (Hsu 2005). These places represent modernity,
advancement, high technology, Westernization, and individualised lifestyle. As symbols of
corporate homogenization and sameness in the West notwithstanding, such fast food brands
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in China are ironically symbols of equality, freedom, and individualization. In traditional
Chinese restaurants, patrons typically leave the waste on the table for waiters or waitresses to
clean. But at Western fast food shops, patrons are supposed to dispose of their own rubbish or
leftovers. This Western practice of „do it yourself‟ is seen as empowering and considered
advanced, self-restrained, and polite. It is believed to be what a civilised person should do.
Western restaurants emerge as a borrowed public space for them to enjoy their private and
individualised freedom. This is what Yan called „Cultural Symbolism of Americana‟ (Yan
2009: 257).
Most of the young generation are attracted to the art of living not out of artistic
appreciation but because when they invite business partners to their home, the business
partners will see where they live and which brand of car they drive. All relate to business
opportunities. Ken, 30, is an MBA-qualified entrepreneur in an engineering company. With
luxury accessories like BMWs, Rolexes and villas or detached houses or even high-storied
apartments, he is in a good position to attract more new business partners. Chiu, a 28-year-old
entrepreneur, says he prefers buying a car to buying a villa since he can show off his car to
his clients, but cannot show off his house directly to his business partners. In face to face
meetings, his clients quantify his wealth by measure of the car he possesses (whether it is
BMWs), the watch he wears (whether it is Rolex), and the clubs to which he is a member.
There is a preoccupation with mobile phones and other electronics with a multiplicity of
advanced functions. Consumption of these luxury goods gives the young generation a sense
of greater connection with the rest of the world and helps them overcome the limitations of
their physical locations (Xu 2007: 373). That sense of connection with the more faraway and
more advanced outside world also helps the young generation to adopt newer status symbols.
All told, consumption has an intangible and intrinsic function in extending business networks
and opportunities, and plays the social function of reproducing social distinctions.
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However, it is observed that many of them feel stressed and seem to have „status
anxiety‟. They are concerned about whether or not their rising status is sustainable while
flaunting consumer goods as status symbols. One explanation is that there is concern over the
legitimacy of their materialistic-hedonistic tastes and individualistic consumption culture.
This is not regarded as legitimate by either Confucian values or Chinese Communist ideology;
the latter advocates frugality and collective welfare. Also, there are no „high-status‟ groups
inside China into which the middle class wants to become socialized or integrated. In contrast,
Europe was a feudal society before the Industrial Revolution and still has hereditary nobles
and royal families in some countries. Social advancement there can be seen in the emulation
of the consumption of the nobility. Historically China‟s „high-status‟ class contained
members of scholar-officials or gentry (shishen 士绅). Without nobility, China does not have
a higher class for the middle class to emulate so they instead emulate their counterparts
outside China. This behaviour may be deemed unpatriotic and Westernized – a form of
spiritual pollution – especially during periods when nationalist sentiment or xenophobia arise.
A result is a group having pragmatic bodies and consumption patterns yet insecure minds.
The young generation is situated in the process of „railroading with self-interest‟ (Yan 2002).
They are a combination of frail pragmatists and careful realists.
Governmentality: From Foucault to the Chinese Middle-Class Conspicuous
Consumption
To answer the second research question and to apply the notion of governmentality, initially
developed in a liberal context, to non-liberal China, we focus on its neutral meaning: the
techniques or devices the state uses to regulate or shape, from a distance, how people
(should) behave within its territory in order to act in the interests of the state. By directing the
conduct of the rising middle class into the activities that are believed to be harmless to the
19
Chinese Communist Party and letting them regulate themselves through technical – noncoercive – means, the communist regime can govern the population from a distance without
any recourse to coercive power, giving the governance a façade of legitimacy and apparent
„liberalism‟. Indeed, what differentiates Maoist China from post-Mao China is less about
whether or not the state is in retreat from interventions into individual life than about the
manner of interventions. In post-Mao China, interventions are less direct and less coercive;
but the essence remains intact: the Party is intent on asserting its control over individual
behaviour and thought. The aforementioned urban danwei is now transformed into urban
communities (xiaoqu) under an introduction of market-oriented professional property
management. While urban residents now no longer depend on their danwei for employment
and welfare, the communities still function as communal self-regulated entities (Bray 2005).7
Take another example. The CCP Central Committee General Office issued in April 2013 a
document known as Document No. 9 (2013), warning party cadres against seven subversive
currents prevalent in Chinese society. The seven perils are: Western constitutional
democracy, universal values of human rights, civil-society movement, neo-liberal market
economy, press freedom and media independence, nihilist criticism of the Party‟s history and
criticism of the reform and opening-up policy (Buckley 2013; Lubman 2013).8 But why does
the CCP not regard lavish consumption of luxury goods from the capitalist West – except that
by its cadres – as an imminent threat to China‟s socialist system? One may therefore
hypothesize that the CCP is putting in place Chinese socialist governmentalty. Allowing a
seemingly spontaneous development of a profligate consumer culture to emerge in reform-era
China may be used by the CCP as a technique of governmentality that aims at shaping the
desires of the burgeoning middle class conceived of as consumers. More importantly it may
serve the political purpose of preserving the predominant position of the ruling Communist
party by both promoting economic growth and stemming the growth and empowerment of an
20
autonomous civil society. We found that this form of relationship between the Chinese new
middle class and party-state may be regarded as a socialist form of governmentality. We
found out the capitalist changes in socialist China will not necessarily lead to political
liberalization. We shall examine the mutual relations between the middle class and party
cadres and ask whether consumerism is used to support the CCP governance. This can likely
supplement and strengthen a growing literature on the application of governmentality to the
analysis of contemporary Chinese society (see, e.g. Jeffreys and Sigley 2009).
What the new mode of selfhood (Liu Xin 2002) and sociality are appear to be related
to how the party state encourages people to consume. In today‟s China, the self is not
informed by an orientation to the past or future, but by all-consuming gifts of money and
markets (Otis 2004). In post-reform China conspicuous consumption is not all about selfconsumption by the buyers, it is also for gift-giving. What is displayed when gifts are given is
not wholly a flaunted status but also a quest for relationship (or social capital) building with
party-state cadres. All interviewees were of the same view that how cadres would help them
depended on what kind of gift was given. An informal rule of the game is that cadres will be
more inclined to offer help to those who give them jewellery (diamond or gold) or brandname products than those who just send them inexpensive Chinese tea set or Chinese tea. The
maintenance of human ties (renqing) and guanxi network based on reciprocity and multitiered gifting is of crucial importance to the middle class. Liu Xin (2002) asserts that a
„structure of rupture‟ reigns supreme. In the „structure of rupture‟, the cadres and CCP
members are entangled in a fiercely reciprocal relationship with entrepreneurs and
professionals. With state agencies still being in substantial control over the allocation of most
of the valuable resources, middle-class entrepreneurs and professionals have to cooperate
with them and seek acquaintance with cadres at banquets, karaoke lounges, and beauty
parlours. They grease the wheels of capitalism in China in order to maintain their
21
intergenerational middle class mobility. Not only are party cadres beneficiaries of the rising
consumerism but also are informal allies of the entrepreneurs or professionals. Therefore,
consumption becomes a new form of governmentality that manipulates and exploits
individual desire in the service of domination by party-state officials who form an implicit
alliance with capitalists to stem the rise of civil society activism and political participation.
Many cadres have told me through informal chat and non-participant observation that
the CCP is working behind the scenes to promote consumerism in China. Among others, the
cadres are requested to make allowances to multinational enterprises to aid them to set up
businesses in Guangdong, even in environmentally destructive industries. Chinese
government encourages cadres to have collaboration with foreign enterprises. Preferential tax
concession has been granted since the early 1990s to foreigners to set up factories in China.
The „official‟ mission for the Chinese government is to beef up economic growth. Corruption
and gift giving, however, become a de facto institutionalized policy (guoce) to bolster
personal consumption and economic development. Uncle Fang, aged 49, is an influential
local cadre. His work unit often invites professors from Tsinghua University to give lectures
on how to „beep up economic development and consumption in China while maintaining
apolitical‟. He says,
‘Gift giving becomes an institutionalized policy (guoce 國策). Our leaders from our team
always encourage gift giving to beef up economic growth. They also remind us of the need to
forge collaborations with the so-called influential people in society in order to shift people’s
attention to economic development without harming political stability. Our leaders are really
concerned that the influential people like entrepreneurs and professionals will arouse the
public to confront the central and local governments.’(Fang, 49, cadre)
22
The above conversation explains why gift-giving and consumption become two of the
hidden guiding principles for the Chinese government. The patron-client relationship in
Mao‟s China persists in today‟s China, especially in the bureaucracy. It is an open secret that
cadres make use of their positions in their workplace to earn personal profits. Aunt Jane, a 40
year-old doctor in a government hospital revealed that to maintain good relationship with
their supervisors, cadres become extravagant spending money on luxury goods. She says,
If you can maintain a good working relationship with your supervisor, you’ll be assigned to a
better job with special bonuses and commissions. For example, you’d be asked to buy
medicinal products, medicines or equipment. Not only do you get repaid for what you’ve paid,
but also you’d be paid an extra bonus worth ten to fifteen percent of the price for your hard
work. But obviously not every doctor gets such a privilege. This only goes to those who are
on good terms with their superiors’ (Aunt Jane, 40, professional and cadre).
Social connections are important for social events, which provide the venue for „extra
legal functions.‟ In China it is commonplace for the Chinese new middle class to pay respect
to and maintain or improve connections with local cadres by gift-giving (Yang 1989, 1994),
notably during the Chinese New Year or the Mid-Autumn festival (also known as the Moon
festival). My ethnographic data show that cadres receive a lot of gifts from various groups of
people. Gifts are not just mooncakes or the equivalent, but also cash. Tony, 50, entrepreneur,
says,
…[cadres] are always too busy to take care of those gifts, which are processed by their
domestic helpers, who put the gifts away for a while and then throw them out when the
freshness of the mooncakes is expired. The cleaning ladies who scrounge mooncakes for a
living may well be blessed with an unforeseen income, as there is money inside the
cakes…(Tony, 50, entrepreneur)
23
Purchases of the mooncakes are often financed by public funds rather than paid by
gift-givers out of their pockets, and obviously there are no effective „budget constraints‟ on
extravagant present (Reuters 2013).9 Material and non-material gift exchange helps cement
reciprocal assistance and continuing indebtedness between cadres and those outside of the
party-state. Uncle Fong, a 40-year-old businessman, elaborates that pleasing cadres‟ family
members is crucial as well. He and his wife usually go to Hong Kong to buy diamonds,
bird‟s nests, Rolexes, gold and brand-name handbags [like LV, Gucci and Prada] in order to
please cadres‟ wives, sons and daughters or even their relatives. In that sense, gift exchange
constitutes a way whereby public power over society is exercised via the management of the
life of the individual, thereby a matter of governmentality. The eagerness to build
interpersonal relationships with cadres to improve economic fortune drives the middle class
to be a staunch partner of the party-state not only economically but also behaviourally.
Meanwhile, while the Chinese government imposes strict media censorship, it only
suppresses information about politically explosive social movements, like Falun Gong,
uprisings in Xinjiang Uyghur and Tibetan areas, the June Fourth Incident, Wukan Incident,
and the Jasmine Revolution. All kinds of consumption advertisements are left untouched.
Taobao (淘宝), xiecheng (携程), and other online shopping websites play the role of official
„propagandas‟ in promoting consumption. The young generation get numerous information
from the Internet and smart-phones, being in the grip of an obsession with computer games,
iPhones, and computer games. They rely heavily on social networking sites, like renren (人
人), weibo (微博), and QQ (a Chinese form of MSN), for information, even though much of
it is unreliable. They find comfort in the digital world. They want to remain silent in political
issues.
24
This ethnographic account has identified an emerging individualistic, utilitarian and
pragmatic proclivity among the young generation, displacing political ideals, social morality
and reflective self-criticism. On the one hand, the exorbitant expansion of consumption for
the young generation accounts for the rise of consumer revolution and individualistic pursuit
of material-driven desires; on the other, the individualistic attitudes of conspicuous and
pragmatic consumption patterns can be regarded as the consequences of governing whereby
the Chinese party-state deliberately shapes and directs the behaviour of the middle class
through their choices, desires and lifestyles according to apolitical hedonistic norms for the
specific end of maintaining the CCP predominance over society. The state-party of PRC want
to maintain political stability, and it turns out spreading the Confucianism like gift giving
among the middle class members stimulates the emergence of conspicuous consumption.
This is an unintended consequence by the party-state but it work perfectly for the Chinese
new middle class. This is made easier because most of the young professionals, partly shaped
by the government, are in pursuit of higher social status and hedonistic success. The young
generation therefore have two faces. They are the frail/rational pragmatists and also the
careful realists. The conspicuous or pragmatic consumption which the young generation
practices is a result of the state policy of the PRC, which encourages the young generation to
consume and to contribute to society by consumption.
Conclusion
This paper notes a sociological trend of the young generation embracing global marketplaces
and goods as eager consumers. Consumption and chasing materialistic trends are not options
but necessities in today‟s China. The young generation construct their identities through
conspicuous consumption which emerges as a system of signs that codify social differences
25
and social networking. The ability to consume at high quality and quantity creates and
reinforces the appearance of conspicuous consumption. The youngsters are more
economically and culturally successful than the lower class people. They keep up a distinct
social status in order to emphasize individual economic ability and cultural aptitude. In a
globalising China, the youngsters have a market-oriented identification, one that blends
instrumentalism and pragmatism in consumer choices. They employ conspicuous
consumption for self representation, community-building and identity construction. In fact,
the young generation have an illusion of power and branding through conspicuous
consumption. They belong to the „deceitfulness of riches‟, while they have a high degree of
anxiety and uncertainty in post-reform China.
The new mode of selfhood and sociality are intertwined with the consumer culture
and the governmentality of social control from the party-state. The concerns of the youngsters
are consumption rather than political liberalization (Author 2013b). The Chinese government
and the Chinese new middle class play a „pastoral‟ role in the emergence of conspicuous
consumption. We discussed the capitalist changes in socialist China will not necessarily lead
to political liberalization.
In studying conspicuous consumption in today‟s China, this article will shed light first
on class divisions in contemporary China. The results will likely spark a re-visit of the
applicability of conventional class theories to China, which is often regarded as a hybrid
capitalist-socialist country. We may need to analyse the Chinese people‟s class location less
on the traditional economic indicators of market position, occupation or possession of the
means of production (i.e. economic capital) but rather on such cultural factors as lifestyle or
consumption patterns. Second, this article will also engage an ongoing lively debate about the
prospects of democratization in China in the wake of the emergence of the middle class.
While conventional wisdom has it that the middle class is often a crucial agent for political
26
transition to democracy in many parts of the world, but we found out the Chinese Communist
Party is undertaking a social engineering process of controlling its population „from within‟
by directing their activities towards the pursuit of hedonistic consumption. The contributions
are expected to lie with offering new perspectives on the study of state-society relations in
reform China, prompting us to think we should understand and analyse China‟s social
stratification and class formation from a new cultural angle.
Future research on conspicuous consumption, governmentality, and middle class may
be investigated either comparatively or using a more nuanced approach, like survey.
Therefore, additional research may look at different urban areas of China. Comparing diverse
areas from the coastal region to interior China and to northwestern China enhances
generalizability.
(7993 words)
27
Notes
1
Upon assuming the position of the CCP General Secretary, Xi Jinping began to take measures against lavish
banquets, gift-giving and corruption. For banquets, only four dishes and a soup would be allowed (Jacobs 2013;
Li 2013).
2
See World Bank‟s GNI per capita data at http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GNP.PCAP.CD.
3
Goodman, David S. G. (ed) (2008). The New Rich in China: Future Rulers, Present Lives. London: Routledge;
Li, Cheng (ed) (2010). China’s Emerging Middle Class: Beyond Economic Transformation. Brookings
Institution Press; Zhang, Li (2010). In Search of Paradise: Middle-Class Living in a Chinese Metropolis. Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press; Ren, Hai (2012). The Middle Class in Neoliberal China: Governing Risk, LifeBuilding, and Themed Spaces. Abingdon: Routledge; Chen, Minglu and Goodman, David S. G. (eds) (2013).
Middle Class China: Identity and Behaviour. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
4
Amaldoss, Wilfred and Jain, Sanjay (2005). „Conspicuous Consumption and Sophisticated Thinking,‟
Management Science 51(10): 1449-66; Podoshen, Jeffrey S, Li, Lu, and Zhang, Junfeng (2011), „Materialism
and Conspicuous Consumption in China: A Cross-Cultural Examination,‟ International Journal of Consumer
Studies 35(1): 17-25.
5
Pierson, Christopher 2011. The Modern State. Abingdon: Routledge.
6
Joseph, Jonathan. 2012. The Social in the Global: Social Theory, Governmentality and Global Politics.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
7
Bray, David. 2005. Social Space and Governance in Urban China: The Danwei System from Origins to Urban
Reform. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
8
Buckley, Chris. 2013. „China Takes Aim at Western Ideas,‟ New York Times, 19 August,
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/asia/chinas-new-leadership-takes-hard-line-in-secret-memo.html;
Lubman, Stanley. 2013. „Document No. 9: The Party Attacks Western Democratic Ideals,‟ Wall Street Journal,
27 August, http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2013/08/27/document-no-9-the-party-attacks-westerndemocratic-ideals/ (accessed 9 September 2013).
9
In a move to contain public anger over bureaucratic corruption, the Chinese government issued an order in
early September 2013, in the run-up to the Middle Autumn festival later in the month, banning officials from
using public funds to buy and offer mooncakes as gifts (Reuters 2013).
28
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