Urban Consumer Culture*
Deborah Davis
A BSTRACT Over the past decade,urban residents have experienced a consumer revolution at multiple levels.In terms of material standard of living,sustained economic growth has dramatically increased spending on discretionary consumer purchases and urbanites have enthusiastically consumed globally branded foodstuffs, pop-music videos and fashion.At the same time,however,income distribution has become increasingly unequal.Some scholars therefore emphasize the negative exclusionary and exploitative parameters of the new consumer culture seeing nothing more than a ruse of capitalism or marker of all that is negative about post-socialist city life.Building on nearly a decade offieldwork in Shanghai,this article disputes such a linear interpretation of subordination and exclusion in favour of a more polyvalent and stratified reading that emphasizes individual narratives unfolding against memories of an impoverished personal past,and a consumer culture that simultaneously incorporates contradictory experiences of emancipation and disem-powerment.
Over the decade of the1990s urban residents experienced a consumer revolution at multiple levels.Ma
cro economic growth doubled real incomes and almost all households substantially increased discretionary consumer purchases.Former luxuries such as refrigerators,colour televi-sions and washing machines became household necessities and by the turn of the century advertising for mobile phones,overseas holidays and family sedans generated substantial revenues for the state owned media.1 Committed to full membership in the WTO,the political elite enthusias-tically advanced a neo-liberal development model that identified personal consumption as a primary driver of economic growth and individual consumer choice as a spur to further efficiency and innovation.2Global retailers such as Carrefour,Wal-mart and Ikea invested heavily in China as the critical new consumer market of the21st century,and by2004 city residents had become avid–and knowledgeable–consumers of transnationally branded foodstuffs,pop-music videos and fashion.
*I thank the Council on East Asian Studies of Yale University for research grants in support offieldwork in1997,2002and2004,and colleagues at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences for repeatedly extending themselves personally on my behalf.
1.In1986,65%of urban households owned a washing machine,29%colour televisions and18%refrigerators;by1998the percentages were90.5%,105%and76%.State Statistical Bureau,A Survey of Income and Expenditures of Urban Households in China,1986 (Honolulu:East West Center,1
987),pp.242–44,Zhongguo tongji nianjian1999(China Statistical Yearbook1999)(Beijing:Zhongguo tongji chubanshe,1999),p.324.
2.“Zhengfu gongzuo baogao”(“Government work report”),Renmin ribao(People’s Daily),20March2003,p.1;Li Gangqing,“Jianquan he yuanshan shehuizhuyi shichang,”(“Develop and improve the socialist market”),Renmin ribao(People’s Daily),22February 2003;Du Haishou,“Genben mudi shi gaishan shenghuo”(“The basic goal is to improve living standards”),Renmin ribao,15October2003,p.6.
©The China Quarterly,2005
Urban Consumer Culture
693 At the same time,a newly formalized regulatory regime extended legal
rights to individual consumers.In October1993,the National People’s Congress passed China’sfirst Consumer Protection Law.3A month
earlier,the NPC had passed the Law Against Unfair Trade and a year
later China’sfirst Advertising Law.4Together these three pieces of legislation established the legal framework within which consumers could
seek compensation for shoddy goods,claim their rights to accurate information and organize to defend their interests.5Legal scholar Ben-
jamin Liebman has demonstrated how settlements awarded under the provisions of these laws created important precedents for future class
action suits.6Emblematic was the case where300Beijing residents received compensation after documenting in court that the widely pro-
moted Mao anniversary watches that they had purchased did not contain
the advertised gold and diamonds.
Article49of the Consumer Protection Law guaranteed cash payments
worth double the sale price whenever consumers could prove that mer-
chants had sold a fraudulent product or shoddy service.During the late
1990s,consumer activist Wang Hai popularized this principle of“double compensation”and tirelessly publicized his success via television appear-
ances and his own website.7Evidence of his success even reached the
pages of Chinese Civil Affairs,where one article explained why“hero”
Wang Hai need not pay income tax on the refunds he got from merchants
who had sold him counterfeit products.8
Since1994,the Consumer Protection Law has also gained prominence
in official publications directed at professionals.In2003,the weekly magazine of the China Law Society identified it as one of the ten most
influential laws enacted since the beginning of market reform.9To
3.For English translations see www.qis/chinalaw/prclaw26.htm,accessed in
May2004.
4.Copies of these laws can be found on the website of the China Consumers’Association,
5.Most relevant were the articles in the Consumer Protection Law that guaranteed consumers the right to correct information(articles8and13),the right to choose and exercise supervision over commodities and services(articles9and15),the right to fair trade including
fair measurement(article10),the right to receive compensation for damages(articles11,35,
36,37,38,39and49),and the right to form social groups to safeguard their legitimate rights
and interests(articles12,31and32).In addition,the law required the state to listen to
consumer opinions when formulating laws(article26)and the courts to simplify the procedures for consumers tofile a lawsuit(article30).
6.Benjamin Liebman,“Class action litigation in China,”Harvard Law Review,Vol.111 (1998),pp.1523–41.
7.See www.wanghai/business,accessed in May2004.
8.Chengning Ren,“Daxia yingxiong gaibugai nashui?(“For destroying fakes must a hero
pay taxes”),Zhongguo minzheng(Chinese Civil Affairs),September1996,p.6.
9.The other nine were:the new Economic Contract Law(1981),the Constitution of
1982,the new Code of Civil Procedure(1986),a draft Law for Village Elections (1987),Administrative Litigation Law(1989),thefirst Company Law(1993),thefirst Compensation Law(1994),the new Criminal Code(1997)and the2000Legislative Procedure
Law.“Gaizao Zhongguo de shinian dajing dianli”(“Major laws during the ten years of
Chinese reforms”)Minzu yu fazhi shibao(Democracy and Law Times),12March2002,
pp.12–15.
694The China Quarterly
illustrate the law’s importance the Law Society cited surveys that showed
an increase of more than50per cent in the number of consumersfiling
for damages in thefirstfive years after passage of the law and a rising
number of claims for losses under2,000yuan.10
However,amidst these positive trends for consumers in general,there
was more sobering news on skewed distribution of income and purchas-
ing power.Between1985and1995,income inequality in China increased
more quickly than in any country tracked by the World Bank since the
end of the Second World War.11After1995,disparities grew still larger.
For example,during six years(1998–2003)when the official consumer
price index for urban China barely changed,the income disparity between
the richest10per cent and poorest10per cent of urban residents
effectively doubled.Moreover,it was not only the very poor who fell
behind.The relative share of those in the middle of the income distri-
bution also steadily declined,dropping from46.7per cent in1998to less
than a third by2003(see Tables1and2).
In the case of Shanghai,the city that provides the empirical foundation
for this article,income inequality became particularly marked as priva-
tization intensified after1998.By2003incomes in Shanghai were more
skewed than in urban China as a whole,and the departures from the
distributions of the recent past were stark.In1998the gap between the
middle20per cent and the top10per cent was8,320yuan;by2003it
exceeded25,000yuan(compare Figures1and2).Clearly,analysis and
interpretation of the character and trajectory of urban consumer culture
must confront these income inequalities and consider if urban consumer
culture is fundamentally exclusionary.
Table1:Changing Income Shares among Urban Households,1998–
2003(%)
Income ratios199819992000200120022003
Bottom10%:
top10%22.721.720.018.617.311.7
Middle20%:
top10%46.745.644.242.041.733.0 Source:
Zhongguo tongji zhaiyao2004(Chinese Statistical Abstract2004)(Beijing:Zhongguo
tongji chubanshe,2004),p.104.
10.“Major laws during the ten years of Chinese reforms,”p.14.
11.The literature on increased inequality is enormous.I therefore cite only a few sources
from among those published since1998:Eugene Chang,“Growing income inequality,”China
Economic Review,Vol.11(2002),pp.335–340;Azizur Khan and Carl Riskin,Inequality and
Poverty in China in the Age of Globalization(Oxford:Oxford University Press,2001);
Xueguang Zhou,“Economic transformation and income inequality in urban China,”The
American Journal of Sociology,Vol.105(2000),pp.1135–74.
unequalUrban Consumer Culture
695 Table2:Annual Per Capita Urban Income and Expenditure,1998–2003
(in yuan)
199819992000200120022003
Average incomes
Bottom10%2,5052,6462,6782,8343,1682,762
Next10%3,3293,5183,6583,8884,4864,209
Next20%4,1344,3914,6514,9835,8265,705
Middle20%5,1485,5435,9306,4067,6387,753
Next20%6,4046,9427,5258,2139,87410,463
Next10%7,9188,6749,48410,44112,60414,076
Top10%11,02112,14713,39015,22018,28823,484
Annual change in consumer price index
99.498.7100.8100.799.0100.9
Average expenditures
Bottom10%2,3972,5232,5402,6912,9872,562
Next10%2,9793,1373,2743,4523,9133,549
Next20%3,5033,6943,9474,1974,6964,557
Middle20%4,1794,4324,7945,1315,8465,848
Next20%4,9805,3475,8946,2417,1557,547
Next10%6,0036,4437,1027,4958,7019,627
Top10%7,5948,2629,2509,83411,22414,515
Source:
Chinese Statistical Abstract2004,pp.88and104.
Figure1:2003Average Per Capita Incomes in All of Urban China and
in Shanghai
696The China Quarterly
Figure2:Change in Shanghai Per Capita Income between1998and
2003
Source:
Shanghai tongji nianjian2004(Shanghai Statistical Yearbook2004)(Shanghai:Zhongguo
tongji chubanshe,2004),pp.104and106;Chinese Statistical Abstract2004,p.104.
On the Possible Illusions and Exclusions of Consumer Culture
In her superb essay on the“phantom”of a consumer revolution Pun
Ngai places the pain and injustice of exclusion at the heart of her analysis
and interrogates consumer fantasy as the newest“ruse of capital.”12
Pun not only documents how the new consumer abundance lies beyond
the reach of the young migrant factory workers whose labour produces
the consumer cornucopia,she also argues that consumerism itself is a
particularly effective form of capitalist exploitation that erodes class
consciousness and offers no enchantment,emancipation or empower-
ment.Kevin Latham,drawing on his1997fieldwork in Guangzhou,also
found consumption practices to function primarily as a“marker and
measure of the negative aspects of economic reform.”13Pun and Latham
work within an intellectual tradition rooted in the Frankfurt school where
power relations at the workplace or within systems of production are
the primary sites of class formation;consumers–particularly as they
participate in mass consumption–are victims with little agency.Their
work also evokes Jackson Lear’s and Daniel Bell’s equation of consump-
tion with hedonism and thus stands in direct contrast to more recent
12.Pun Ngai,“Subsumption or consumption?”in Cultural Anthropology,Vol.18,No.4
(2003),pp.469–492.
13.Kevin Latham,“Rethinking Chinese consumption,”in C.M.Hann(ed.),Postsocialism
(London:Routledge,2002),pp.227–28.

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