Two stories today bring up the question of how we define "Chinese culture," a question dear to the heart of The Useless Tree, which everyday pursues its quixotic mission to apply elements of ancient Chinese culture to modern life.
First, this story from the Asia Times about the construction of large-scale malls in China. Apparently, "mall culture" is catching on. And if culture is, as some anthropologists would say, what people actually do now, how they behave in the present, then, I guess this is Chinese culture now:
The rise of the moneyed Chinese consumer may be old news. But the rise of consumers who insist on parking as close as possible to a doorway and who drink cappuccinos above a skating rink while their five-year-olds run circles around a potted palmetto has just started to hit commercial developers.
OK... but this is the passage that really caught my eye:
Shopping malls should succeed because they nurture the Chinese urge to be seen in a luxurious setting, said Tom Doctoroff, author of the 2005 book Billions: Selling to the New Chinese Consumer. "The key thing about buying in China is that it's very public," he said.
What's this about a "Chinese urge to be seen in a luxurious setting"? What is especially "Chinese" about that? Now, maybe it is true that nouveux riches consumers want desperately for the world to know just how much money they have and just how many expensive things they can buy. But conspicuous consumption, a term coined by Thorstein Veblen, is a much more general phenomenon. So, while mall culture may be what some (obviously not all) Chinese are doing now, we might see it as an assimilation of Chinese practices into broader patterns of globalized consumption. Should we call it "Chinese culture" or "consumer culture"?
Which brings us back to the topic of "national branding." Here's the story:
When they think of China, many people around the world associate it with cultural heritage and, unsurprisingly to some, sport.
Tourism, exports and investment are other aspects the country is closely identified with.
These are the results of the latest national branding index released yesterday in which China figures 19th overall in a list of 35 nations. The countries at the top are European nations, the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan
Surveyed globally by market intelligence solutions provider GMI, the Anholt Nation Brand Index (NBI) measures the power and appeal of a nation's brand image in various categories.
So, this company goes around and asks people to rank countries in certain categories - "cultural heritage," "sports," "government," etc. - to come up with the "brand image" of each place. "China" here is reduced to the images that will sell in global markets. "Cultural heritage" likely stands for the key tourist spots: the Great Wall, Ming Tombs, Guilin, etc. That is "Chinese culture." Some embarrassment comes along with the unreported, but briefly mentioned, Chinese results in "people" and "governance:"
Index creator Simon Anholt, an adviser to the UK Government and the United Nations, said Chinese scores had improved in most areas in the past year.
He attributed the low ranking for "people" and "governance" to ignorance and negative stories in the foreign media.
In the area of people, where questions are about whether the people of the country are perceived as welcoming, whether foreigners would like to have somebody from the country as a close friend, and whether people would prefer to hire a well-qualified individual from the country in a senior management position, China ends up 30th.
"When it comes to such questions, people automatically think about enormous language and culture problems," Anholt said.
Maybe language is a barrier, but what about that "governance" thing? Perhaps we need to tone down the "dictatorship of the proletariat" thing; it doesn't sell well in LA...
My main gripe is that those facets of "Chinese culture" that resist commodification and exchange - oh, say, the thinking of Confucius and Mencius and Taoism - are flattened and hollowed out and prettified for purchase. Pay no attention to the rejection of profit-seeking and excessive consumption found in the ancient texts. Ignore how they would scoff at "mall culture;" they just get in the way of the "brand image."
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