CONSUMING CHINA:

SOCIAL, POLITICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF

THE CHINESE CONSUMER REVOLUTION

DRAFT: PLEASE DO NOT CITE WITHOUT PERMISSION

Stephen Van Holde

Department of Political Science
Kenyon College
Gambier, OH 43022 USA
vanholde@kenyon.edu
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Introduction

China today is undergoing a consumer revolution, a revolution which is as far reaching

and radical as the political, social, and cultural revolutions that preceded it. Today the Chinese
people consume unprecedented amounts of goods, services, and experiences, and dream of
consuming far more. And, as China becomes more affluent, such domestic consumption has
come to play an increasingly important role in promoting and prolonging China’s unprecedented
economic growth. Consumption has also played a less obvious but equally important political
function, as it has allowed the Chinese state to divert public attention from China’s growing
social and environmental problems. Yet this strategy has come at an increasing cost. While state-
guided consumption may have helped to promote economic growth and to protect the party’s
hold on power, it has also produced increasing social unrest and unequalled environmental
devastation.

Such tensions have been particularly evident in three key sectors: the auto industry, the
housing industry, and the tourist industry. In each of those areas, increasing consumer demand is
placing more and more pressure on the Chinese state, society, and environment. Increasingly,
Chinese consumers are caught in a classic “tragedy of the commons”, where their individual
desires result in socially and systemically catastrophic outcomes.1 The Chinese hunger for cars
has produced congestion and pollution on a scale perhaps unequalled anywhere else, an emerging
crisis which will only grow worse as incomes rise and car purchases increase in the future.
Similarly, the demand for housing is leading to urban sprawl and widespread social unrest as
more and more people compete for less and less space. Finally, the unprecedented growth of
domestic tourism has led to the commodification and destruction of landscapes and cultures on a
scale probably unequalled anywhere else on earth. As China’s population continues to grow and
to grow richer, those crises are only likely to become yet more severe in the years to come.

This paper will explore these issues. By analyzing consumption and environmental
degradation in contemporary China, it will explain how and why the Chinese people and the
Chinese state have become entangled in this increasingly contradictory and self-defeating
trajectory of economic development and environmental destruction. In addition it will argue that
the Chinese state has sought to legitimate itself through selling consumption to its rising middle
class, and indicate why that strategy may no longer work. The paper begins by examining the
origins and consequences of China’s new consumerism, placing particular emphasis on the
growth and diffusion of a shopping culture in China’s new middle class. Next, it assesses three
other flashpoints in the relations between consumerism, environmental degradation and the state:
automobiles and transportation; land use and development; and tourism. As we will see, these
issues show particularly well the pressures which Chinese state and society currently confront,
pressures which threaten to destroy the delicate balance between economic growth, political
control, and environmental protection in China today.

1
This concept has had a huge impact on the discipline of global environmental politics. For the classic
statement of the “tragedy”, see Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Science, Vol. 162, No.
3859, December 13, 1968. At: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/162/3859/1243.pdf . Accessed on
3/12/2008. For a useful review of the concept, see David. Feeny et.al., “The Tragedy of the Commons
Twenty-two Years Later.” Human Ecology, Vol. 18 Issue 1, 1990, p. 1-19; for a critical assessment of the
TOC model, see Elinor Ostrom, “Coping with Tragedies of the Commons.” Annual Review of Political
Science,Vol. 2: 493-535.
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Creating the Chinese Consumer

The roots of today’s consumer revolution lie in the late 1970s, when the Chinese state
began to implement a variety of policies that would radically transform Chinese society. The
most important of these were the economic reforms which followed Deng Xiaoping’s rise to
power in 1978, the political crackdown following Tiananmen, and the one-child family policies
of the 1980s and 1990s. Not only did the economic reforms provide the means and impetus to the
astounding economic growth which followed – growth which has averaged over 8 percent
annually2 for more than 25 years! – they also began to transform China’s collectivist society into
a much more individualistic one. During the 1980s and 1990s the state gradually transformed
China’s planned economy to a market-based one. Beginning with a relatively minor tax reform
and rural decollectivization in the late 1970s, the state sharply accelerated the reform in 1984 and
again in 1992, when Deng Xiaoping called on China to build a “socialist market economy” which
would allow China to catch up with the “Four Dragons” of East Asia.3 At the same time, the state
gradually disassembled China’s collectivist society, reducing subsidies for housing and pensions,
abolishing the life-long employment system, and reforming the citizen registration system,
measures which served to further increase the economic individualism and social mobility of the
Chinese populace.4

Tourism, which would soon prove to be an important part of the state’s development
strategy, received special attention. 1978 saw China’s first national conference on tourism, while
the following year Deng Xiaoping gave no less than four major speeches on the importance of the
tourist industry to China’s future economic growth.5 According to Deng, tourism would allow
China to make use of its remarkable historical, cultural, and natural riches to generate income,
especially much-needed foreign exchange. It would also provide direct and indirect employment
in a variety of tourist-dependent or tourist-related sectors; invite and promote direct foreign
investment in buildings and infrastructure; and train the Chinese people in the skills necessary to
provide foreign tourists with a quality touristic experience. Additionally, tourism could serve as a
“signifier” of the new openness of the Chinese state, society, and economy in the post-Mao era.6
And while at first the Chinese tourist industry was largely oriented to international tourism, in the
late 80s and early 90s that began to change, as state leaders increasingly saw the importance of
domestic tourism to China’s economic growth, and began to develop the policies and institutions
necessary to promote it.7

Although such changes helped to set the stage for today’s consumerism, it was the
Tiananmen Square events which really forced the state to embrace and even encourage the
growth of mass consumption. There was at first considerable ambivalence about doing so, as state

2
United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2004, Table 13, “Economic
Performance”, p.185. At: http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2004/pdf/hdr04_complete.pdf. Accessed
2/20/2005. Note that for the period 1990-2002, the average rate of growth is even higher – at 8.6 percent –
despite the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1999.
3
Joseph Fewsmith, “Plan Versus Market: China’s Socialist Market Economy”, in Christopher Hudson, The
China Handbook (Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1997), pp. 97-108, esp. 101-105.
4
Congdua Li, China: The Consumer Revolution (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1998), p. 5.
5
Honggen Xiao, “The Discourse of Power: Deng Xiapoing and tourism development in China”, Tourism
Management 27 (2006) pp. 803-814; also see Trevor H.B. Sofield and Fung Mei Sarah Li, “Tourism
Development and Cultural Policies in China”, Annals of Tourism Research, vol. 25 no. 2, pp. 362-392.
6
Xiao, op. cit.
7
Pal Nyiri, Scenic Spots: Chinese Tourism, the State, and Cultural Authority (Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 2006), chapter 1, pp. 5-6.
 4

leaders identified consumerism with the appropriation of imported and unsocialist values. Indeed,
in the early 90s, the state reopened an old campaign against “spiritual pollution”, linking it to
“bourgeois liberalization” in the political and economic spheres alike. In 1992, however, Deng
sharply shifted course, once again endorsing economic growth and domestic consumerism.
Indeed, as Marc Blecher points out, economic liberalization was crucial precisely because the
state had no intention of liberalizing politically. Such “market Stalinism” would, it was hoped,
serve to relegitimate the state in the eyes of its people without requiring state leaders to make any
significant political reforms.8 And while continued popular indifference to most political issues
raises some question as to whether this legitimation strategy has actually worked as originally
designed, there is no doubt that it has helped to legitimate consumption, and thereby to create a
new and rapidly growing consumer class.9

Not only does this class have the means to spend, it is powerfully motivated to do so. One
important yet often ignored reason for this lies in the state’s family planning reforms. Beginning
in 1979, the state abruptly tightened family planning policies, switching from a two-child family
policy to a one-child policy, and adding numerous incentives and sanctions to encourage
“responsible” choice. While the policy has since been repeatedly modified, particularly in
allowing rural residents and minorities to have more than one child, in the cities it has remained
firmly in place.10 The result has been the creation of a new generation of single children – and a
generation of parents who, having suffered the privations of Maoism themselves, seek to provide
their single child with the benefits they themselves never had.11 Indeed, in a 1992 survey of urban
families in Beijing, a whopping 66.3 percent of total monthly expenditures were dedicated to
single children! National expenditure rates for urban families were only slightly lower.12 And of
course each child has four grandparents, and many aunts and uncles who are spending on
(usually) him as well. Stereos, designer clothes, motorcycles, private schools and vacations at
increasingly posh resorts; all are and must be made available to a generation of “Little Emperors”
who get everything their hearts desire but no more than they deserve.

Things You Never Realized You Wanted: China’s New Shopping Craze

Consequently, the consumer market in China has exploded. Once proud of their ability to
subsist on little more than rice and revolution, today’s Chinese are equally proud of their ability
to acquire and consume goods, services, and experiences at an ever-increasing rate. And they are
increasingly succeeding in realizing that goal. Today, washing machines, refrigerators, color TVs
and air conditioners are standard items in most urban households, as the following table shows:

Consumer Durables Owned Per 100 Urban Households13

8
Marc Blecher, “The Dengist Period” in Hudson, op. cit., p. 33.
9
Ran Wei and Zhongdang Pan, “Mass Media and Consumerist Values in the People’s Republic of China.”
International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 75-96, esp. 77-78.
10
For good overviews, see Tyrene White, China's Longest Campaign: Birth Planning in the People's
Republic, 1949-2005 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), and Susan Greenhalgh and Edwin Winckler,
Governing China's Population: From Leninist to Neoliberal Biopolitics (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 2005)
11
For an insightful discussion of the connections between Maoist puritanism and Dengist consumerism, see
Bin Zhao, “Consumerism, Confucianism, Communism: Making Sense of China Today.” New Left Review
I/222, March-April 1997, pp. 43-59. Online at: http://www.newleftreview.org/?
getpdf=NLR21802&pdflang=en
12
Li, op. cit., p. 52; Bin Zhao, op. cit., pp. 49-50.
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Year/Item Washing Fridge Color AC Oven Shower DVD Computer

Machine TV

1986 65* 18* 29* 0.1* -- -- -- --

1990 78 57 59 0.3 -- -- -- --
1995 89 66 90 8 -- 30 -- --
2000 91 80 117 24 18 49 38 10
2005 96 91 135 81 48 73 68 42

Many urban Chinese are now aiming higher, with ovens, showers, DVDs and computers
beginning to show up in increasing numbers of city homes. Among the richest Chinese (the top
tenth decile of city dwellers), consumption levels are substantially higher still: not only do pretty
much all such households own washing machines, refrigerators, and showers, on average they
own 1.72 color TVs, 1.79 air conditioners, .91 DVDs, and .85 computers.14 Other luxury items,
such as furniture sets, pianos, and component stereos are also increasingly seen as necessities.
Indeed, where once the Chinese sought to emulate self-sacrificing revolutionary heroes like the
soldier Lei Feng or the collectivist peasants at Dazhai, today’s Chinese are more likely to find
their models in the pages of Cosmopolitan, InStyle, or GQ.15 Instead of looking to the Party for
guidance, they are increasingly taking their cues from the multinational retailers like Wal-Mart,
Nike, Sony and the Gap. And while their parents’ generation found happiness in recreating the
Long March, today’s consumer class finds it at the mall.

And what malls they are! At Beijing’s Golden Resources Shopping Mall – the world’s
largest at 6 million square feet – there are 230 escalators, 1,000 shops, and restaurants enough to
fill up two football fields.16 And Golden Resources’ owner/operators make no apologies for the
mall’s gigantism: “From the beginning we wanted the largest shopping center in the world”, one
remarked. “We are the country with the most people in the world. We have the fastest growing
economy. The largest mall shows our progress as a society.”17 Billed as the “mall that will
change your life”, Golden Resources indeed has whatever China’s new consumers need to realize
their dreams of having a xiao kang (well off) life -- and to nicely decorate their homes in the
bargain.18 But while Golden Resources is the latest and the greatest in China’s parade of malls, it
is by no means that unusual. China is, as even the Party now realizes, in the midst of what one
official called a “shopping mall craze.”19 At least 400 have been built already and more are
springing up all the time. And if the malls are often still fairly empty – most Chinese find them
too expensive -- no worries. Eventually they will to shop, as the following comments make clear:

13
Sources: Deborah Davis, ed., The Consumer Revolution in Urban China (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2000), Table 1.1., p. 4; China Statistical Yearbooks 2004, 2006 (Beijing: China Statistics
Press, 2004, 2006), Tables 10-12, 10-14, pp. 366, 368 (2004), cd-rom (2006).
14
China Statistical Yearbooks 2004, 2006, Tables 10-14, p. 368 (2004); cd-rom (2006).
15
Maurice Meisner, Mao’s China and After, Third Edition (New York: Free Press, 1999), pp. 278,
357-358.
16
Robert Marquand, “China’s supersized mall.” The Christian Science Monitor, November 24, 2004. At:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1124/p01s03-woap.htm. Accessed 2/23/2004.
17
Ibid.
18
Ibid.
19
Ibid.
 6

I came to have a look because I heard that there is everything here - entertainment,
restaurants, relaxation therapies, things to buy. I think it is good that China is
Westernizing in this way. We all want the same thing - a beautiful life. I am a
Communist Party member, I still hold on to my beliefs. But now we all have equal
opportunities. – Ms. Lu20

This mall is huge, you can buy anything here. After I have finished my lunch I am
going to have a look around. There should be more places like this in Beijing - they
have everything you could want, and even things you never realized that you wanted.
– Ms.Yang 21

I could not imagine a more eloquent formulation of the global consumer ethic than these
comments here. While the shoppers are Chinese, the vision is the same the world over: “shoppers
of the world, unite! You have a world to buy!” China has indeed caught the shopping bug and is
rushing to the malls.

So what, then, is the environmental impact of all this consumption? To fully answer that
question, we would have to assess how rapidly Chinese are buying consumer goods, how quickly
they are replacing them, and how fast they are throwing them away. In addition, we would need
to know a lot about the waste stream and the rate of recycling in China. While such an analysis is
in principle possible, it is far too ambitious for a paper such as this. However, I think we can get
a rough idea of the impact of Chinese consumption by comparing the acquisition of consumer
durables to trends in electricity consumption rates. As consumers acquire durable goods,
electricity consumption should rise sharply as well. And such has clearly been the case in China
during the last two decades, as the graph on the following page clearly shows:

20
BBC News In Pictures: “China’s New Shoppers.” Sidebar to Tim Luard, “China’s Middle Class
Revolution.” October 11, 2004. At: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3732914.stm. Accessed
2/23/2005.
21
Ibid.
 7

Chinese Per capita Electricity Consumption 1983-2002

180

160

140

120
Electricity (kwh)

100

80

60

40

20

0
1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Year

Courtesy of Earth Policy Institute.

While annual per capita electricity consumption for non-production purposes stood at only 23.4
kilowatts in 1986, by 1990 it had roughly doubled, to 42.4. By 1995 it had doubled again, to
83.5, and by 2002 it again almost doubled, reaching an average of156.3 kilowatts per person.22
Of course, these are average figures for the entire country, and thus they are not representative of
the extent of electricity consumption (or the rate of growth) in the more affluent urban areas. Nor
do they tell us just how large the energy impact of acquiring particular goods may be. However, a
household study done in five eastern cities (Shenyang, Beijing, Yixing, Shanghai, and
Guangzhou) does provide some answers to those questions. Its key findings are summarized on
the following page:

22
Ibid.
 8

Household Electricity Consumption, Annual kWh/household23

City/Item Shen- Beijing Yixing Shanghai Guang- Average Percent

yang Zhou Total
Fridge 429.1 483.7 308.3 431.6 418.0 414.2 26
A/C 7.8 241.3 440.5 311.7 666.5 333.6 21
Lights 119.9 149.1 291.2 192.9 311.6 212.9 13
TV 136.9 139.6 156.6 150.9 162.3 149.3 9
Electronics 48.6 1090 118.4 53.31 202.1 106.3 7
Lg. Appl. 6.7 26.3 43.3 106.5 95.5 55.7 3
Other 295.8 208.7 602.5 371.0 239.8 343.6 21
Total 1044.5 1357.5 1960.7 1618.1 2095.8 1620.3 100

Per Capita 320.3 461.7 710.4 554.1 689.4 543.7 N/A

There are two things in this table particularly worth noting. To begin with, a look at the per capita
row24 at the bottom of the table makes it clear that electricity use in these cities is far higher than
in China as a whole (where in 2000 it stood at 132.4 kilowatts per capita).25 Even Shenyang, the
poorest of the cities, has a per capita energy usage rate more than twice the national average,
while Guangzhou and Yixing both have rates more than five times the national average.
Furthermore, it is worth noting that almost two-thirds (63 percent) of the electricity consumption
in these households comes from the use of four types of appliances: refrigerators, air
conditioners, television, and home electronics, such as computers, stereos, and DVDs. Thus, as
urban Chinese consumers become more affluent and consumptive, energy use rises
substantially.26 The Shanghai rates are perhaps worth special consideration, for two reasons. To
begin with, Shanghai has a more “typical” climate than do Guangzhou or Beijing, and thus its air
conditioning usage is likely to be more representative of what most Chinese city dwellers would
use. In addition, Shanghai is widely viewed by the Chinese people as a “trendsetter”, and we can
expect that they will seek to emulate Shanghai consumption patterns if and when they are able to.

While these figures are eye-opening, the real impact of Chinese consumerism becomes
clearer when we consider it not just at the level of the individual consumer but also at the
national, and increasingly, the global level – levels at which emerging Chinese patterns of
consumption actually intersect with the environment. At this level, the trends are truly
remarkable. As the following tables and graphs make clear, China is rapidly gaining on the
United States with respect to several key consumer goods:

23
Adapted from Debbie Brockett et. al., “A Tale of Five Cities: the China Residential Energy Consumption
Survey.” Human and Social Dimensions of Energy Use: Understanding Markets and Demand, Table 5,
“Composition of Household Electricity Consumption, Annual kWh/Household”, 8.35. At:
china.lbl.gov/pubs/crecs.pdf . Accessed 2/21/2005.
24
This figure is arrived at by dividing annual household consumption by the number of persons in the
family. Family sizes are: Shenyang: 3.26; Beijing: 2.94; Yixing: 2.76; Shanghai: 2.92; Guangzhou: 3.04,
and the average: 2.98. Since family size can skew the per capita figures a little, we must treat those figures
with a little caution. Thus, Shenyang’s per capita usage rates are depressed slightly by the larger family
size, while the opposite happens in Yixing. Per capita usage rates are more clearly comparable for Beijing,
Shanghai, and Guangzhou.
25
China Statistical Yearbook 2004 (Beijing: China Statistics Press, 2004), Table 7-13, p. 283.
26
Interestingly, large appliances, such as washing machines, do not seem to significantly affect the energy
balance, perhaps because they are not very frequently used.
 9

Consumption of Key Consumer Goods

in the United States and China

400
Compiled by Earth Policy Institute
350

300

250
Millions

United States
200
China

150

100

50

0
PCs Automobiles Cellular Phones Television Sets

Courtesy of Earth Policy Institute

Not surprisingly, China’s consumer revolution is beginning to have serious

environmental effects. As China’s people buy more, use more, and more rapidly exchange last
year’s products for this year’s model, the environment is beginning to suffer the consequences.
And the process has just begun. In the coming years, three developments in particular are likely
to have enormous environmental impacts: the rise of an automobile culture; urban sprawl and the
emergence of a luxury housing market; and the continued growth of domestic tourism. It is to
those developments that we now turn.
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The End of the Kingdom of Bicycles

China is progressing from a kingdom of bicycles towards an automobile society.27

Forget the Long March. In China these days, it’s all about the long drive.28

The authors of the articles quoted above are absolutely right: China is rapidly becoming
an automobile society, as more and more Chinese slide behind the wheel. In cities such as
Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangdong, and in many of China’s smaller cities as well, streets once
filled with bicycles are increasingly crammed with cars. The number of automobiles in China has
grown prodigiously in the last 20 years, and it shows little sign of slowing down anytime soon.
The number of (non-military) passenger vehicles in China exploded from less than 350,000 in
1980 to more than 31,000,000 by the end of 2005 – an increase of almost 90 times. And the
numbers are expected to go on increasing at or near the same rate, reaching a whopping 130-140
million by 2020. Growth of private automobile ownership has been and is expected to continue to
be even more spectacular. Private car ownership has risen from a miniscule 19,300 cars in 1985
to almost 14 million by the end of 2005, growing more than 700 times over in 25 years!29 In the
last several years, auto production and sales have increased by more than 50 percent annually,
and the trend is expected to continue.30

Indeed, car ownership is transforming people’s lives and aspirations. That’s certainly the
case for the rich and near-rich, many of whom already own cars. James Wang, a 27-year old real
estate developer who got rich building golf courses for the new Chinese elite, already owns two
cars – a Subaru WRX STi and a Porsche 911 – and recently picked up a third, an ultra-posh
Maybach 62. “I like cars more than clothing”, remarks Wang.31 But the dream of owing a car is
no longer limited to the rich. A China Daily article published in September 2004 profiled Liu
Min, a Beijing postal worker who had recently bought a car. Although the car, a bargain at 85,000
yuan (about $10,000 at the 2004 exchange rate) cost Liu more than twice his annual salary, he
couldn’t have been more delighted with his purchase. “I’ve always dreamed of owning a car”, he
said. “Cars make traveling around a lot more convenient in a big city, or to get out to the
suburbs. I love to travel.”32 While Liu’s reasons for buying a car are undoubtedly sincere, a recent
interchange on a China Daily electronic bulletin board twice suggested that auto buyers have
other motives as well. As “billbob234” remarked, “Everybody in china wants a car, I want one

27
“Car Society Replacing Bike Kingdom.” China Daily, October 7, 2004. At:
http://service.china.org.cn/link/wcm/Show_Text?info_id=108730&p_qry=china%20and%20daily%20and
%20october%20and%206%20and%202004. Accessed 1/30/2005.
28
Paul A. Eisenstein, “Preview: Beijing Motor Show.” The Car Connection, June 7, 2004. At:
http://www.thecarconnection.com/index.asp?article=7204. Accessed 2/21/2005.
29
See estimates from: 1, China Statistical Yearbook 2006 (Beijing: China Statistics Press, 2006) tables
16-26 and 16-27 (2006 cdrom); 2, Xiannuan James Lin and Karen R. Polenske, “Energy Use and Air-
Pollution Impacts of China’s Transportation Growth”, in Michael B. McElroy et al., Energizing China:
Reconciling Environmental Protection and Economic Growth (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1998), Table 3, p. 308; 3, “Peering Through the Smog: Can Cars Be Clean?”, Shanghai Star, 10/17/2004.
At: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-10/17/content_383042.htm. Accessed 1/30/2005; 4,
“Car Society Replacing Bike Kingdom”, China Daily, October 6, 2004, loc. cit.
30
“Private Car Ownership Sparks Problems.” China Daily, April 16, 2004. At:
http://www.china.org.cn/english/China/93206.htm. Accessed 2/21/05.
31
Paul A. Eisenstein, “China Goes Car Crazy.” The Car Connection, June 14, 2004. At:
http://thecarconnection.com/index.asp?article=7231. Accessed 2/23/2005.
32
Lin Jianyang, “ ‘Bicycle Kingdom’ rules no more. China Daily, September 9, 2004. At:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-09/21/content_376174.htm. Accessed 2/23/2005.
 11

too. Cars show poeple [sic] you have money. A car brings with it freedom. Bring with it the joy
to just drive around.”33 And “xuwenju1982” agreed, while calling on her compatriots to “buy
Chinese”:

Chinese is called the country of the bicycle!!!! 20 years ago, it's curiously for us
to see a car, but many person have their own cars today!!! There are so many
changes in our country. I think the name of 'country of the bicycle' should be
changed!!! Lots of us can afford a car today.... Let's support the automobile
industry of our country!!! We can own our trademark some day!!!!!!34

For many the gap between their aspirations and their incomes is wrenching. In a post poignantly
titled “oh car – my dream” “panbyy” simply said, “i want a car very much, but i have not
money.”35

Perhaps panbyy’s dreams will soon come true. By 2010, China is expected to be the
world’s second largest car market (it’s already third, having recently passed Germany), trailing
only the United States.36 And by 2020, the Chinese government estimates that 20 million cars
will be sold annually in China, a number greater than the number of cars now sold annually in the
United States.37 In the more distant future, state officials expect that the Chinese people will have
some 240 to 250 million cars, the vast majority of them privately owned.38

The environmental consequences of this astronomical growth in car ownership will be

severe. As more and more Chinese take to the road, city streets and highways are becoming
increasingly congested. Daily commuting times of 3 hours or more are not unusual in cities like
Beijing, where more than a million cars now jam streets designed for pedestrians and bicycles,
and rush hour traffic sometimes moves at no more than 5 kilometers an hour.39 Idling in traffic,
China’s mostly primitive cars pour enormous amounts of toxic chemicals and particulates into the
air. In the big cities like Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou, vehicles have already passed other
sources of air pollution, like home heating and industry, as the major sources of nitrogen oxide
and carbon monoxide.40 And it’s only expected to get worse. Vehicle emissions are expected to
rise very significantly by 2020, particularly in urban areas, making China’s already very serious
air pollution problems even worse. Indeed, as the authors of a joint (US) National Academy of
Engineering – Chinese Academy of Engineering report recently remarked, in the most likely
scenario “emissions of carbon dioxide will more than triple… carbon monoxide and
hydrocarbons will almost triple, and… nitrogen oxide and particulate levels will stay at their
current high levels.”41 Such data are particularly sobering when we remember that, of the 20
most polluted cities in the world today, 16 are located in China.42
33
China Daily Online Community, News Talk>Changing China. billbob234 “chinesse and cars.” Posted
October 11, 2004. At: http://bbs.chinadaily.com.cn/forumpost.shtml?toppid=204127. Accessed 2/23/2005.
34
Loc. cit., xuwenju982, “the car and the bicycle!!!!”, posted October 18, 2004. Accessed 2/23/2005.
35
Loc. cit., “panbyy”, “oh car -- my dream”, posted October 12, 2004. Accessed 2/23/2005.
36
Eisenstein, “Preview: Beijing Motor Show.”
37
William Rees-Mogg, “As China gets motoring, will the pumps run dry?” Financial Times, May 24,
2004. At: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9072-1120992,00.html. Accessed 2/12/05.
38
“Car Society Replacing Bike Kingdom”, China Daily, October 6, 2004, loc cit.
39
“Private Car Ownership Sparks Problems.” China Daily, April 16, 2004. At:
http://www.china.org.cn/english/China/93206.htm. Accessed 2/23/2005.
40
“Peering Through the Smog: Can Cars be Clean?”, loc. cit. Accessed 2/23/2005.
41
Chinese Academy of Engineering and (US) National Research Council, Personal Cars and China
(Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press, 2003), p. 211.
42
World Bank, cited in Tim Luard, “Paying the price for China’s growth”, October 14, 2004. BBC News
Online, at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3743332.stm. Accessed 2/18/05.
 12

We can of course hope that this nightmarish prospect can be avoided or at least mitigated
through the rapid development and extension of more environmentally benign alternative
technologies and policies, such as the construction of minimally polluting mass transit systems.
Should such policies be realized, the environmental gains by 2020 could be substantial, as Figure
2 clearly shows:

2020 Urban Transport Impacts – 3 Scenarios43

Fuel / Pollutant Base Year I. Auto-based, II. Auto-based, III. Public transit-
(1993) no change improved based scenario

_________________________________________________________________________
Gasoline (mTons) 29 789 473 144
Diesel (mTons) 8 144 86 49
CO (kTons) 8,389 215,359 55,105 15,831
NO (kTons) 956 22,305 8,824 3,094
VOCs (kTons) 1,138 22,895 6,025 1,948

Should the Chinese government take strong action to reduce vehicle emissions -- by requiring
and enforcing the use of unleaded gasoline (mandated in 2000 but so far largely ignored), by
introducing low-sulphur diesel fuel and implementing higher emission standards – the worst
possible outcomes outlined in Scenario I may well be avoided. However, it is critical to note that
even Scenario II – the most likely outcome – will entail very considerable increases in pollutants
and fuel demand. While environmentalists can hope that China will be develop the massive
minimally polluting public transit systems envisioned in Scenario III, the trends do not seem to be
running in that direction. As several recent articles have noted, the Chinese are simply “car
crazy”, and their love affair with the car shows little signs of slowing anytime soon.

And while reducing automobile emissions will certainly help to mitigate China’s auto-
related environmental crisis, it will by no means bring it to a halt. As any Californian can tell you,
there many other significant environmental consequences of the explosion in automobile
ownership. As car ownership rises, the infrastructure that an automobile society depends on must
rise as well. China currently has about 1.9 million kilometers of highways, of which about 40,000
kilometers are expressways.44 Total highway length has almost doubled in the last 15 years, with
about 60,000 kilometers of road being built each year.45 Beijing alone built more than 2000
kilometers of road between 1997 and 2002, and has spent more than $1.2 billion annually to
upgrade its streets and highways. Total expressway mileage has increased by a factor of almost
100 in the last 15 years, and in some areas the pace of construction is still more frantic.46 Beijing,
which recently completed a fifth ring road, is now building a sixth one and planning a seventh.47

43
Adopted from The World Bank, Clear Water, Blue Skies: China’s Environment in the New Century
(Washington, D.C.: The World Bank, 1997), Table 6.9, p. 84.
44
China Statistical Yearbook 2006, Table 16-4 (on cd-rom).
45
Ibid.
46
Ibid.; Also “China Invests Heavily in Highway Construction”, Xinhua, February 13, 2003. At:
http://www.china.org.cn/english/BAT/55777.htm#. Accessed 2/23/2005.
47
Wikipedia, “Expressways of Beijing.” At:
http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery;jsessionid=hvt2gocuffq8?
method=4&dsid=2222&dekey=Expressways+of+Beijing&gwp=8&curtab=2222_1&sbid=lc03b. Accessed
2/23/2005.
 13

Parking lots are also being built at a furious pace, as local and state authorities seek to address the
growing gap between car ownership and available parking spaces – a gap that now stands at about
5:1 in the major cities.48 In their understandable desire to solve this emerging parking crisis,
China’s planners are consigning increasing amounts of productive land to the cars. At present,
over 100,000 acres of land are lost each year to the automobile society, and, as China’s
automobile fleet continues to explode, the numbers can only be expected to rise.49 Moreover, the
construction of highways, parking lots and so on also has direct environmental effects, as it
greatly increases floodwater runoff, land erosion, and non-source point pollution.50 In a country
which almost annually faces catastrophic floods, and where more than 50 percent of the rivers are
officially rated as unsafe for human contact, such consequences are troubling, to say the least.51

China’s love affair with cars may not end happily. As more and more Chinese consumers
decide to buy their first car, congestion, commuting times, and traffic jams can only be expected
to rise. Air pollution, water pollution, and pressures on increasingly scarce land and forest lands
can be expected to rise as well. Yet while there are some signs of an increasing popular awareness
of the costs of car ownership, particularly in the biggest cities, such awareness does not seem to
be significantly reducing the incentive to buy.52 The increasing desire to own “a car of one’s own”
instead seems to point to a different, and grimmer, future: one in which Chinese cities will be
even more congested and more polluted, and the Chinese countryside still more devastated than it
is today.

Sprawling China: The Housing Market and Environmental Degradation

As Chinese cities become increasingly unpleasant places to live (if increasingly attractive
ones in which to shop!), those who can are going to want to escape. Indeed, that is already
beginning to happen: as poor migrants pour into the cities looking for work and the hope of a
better life, the rich are moving out to the suburbs now sprawling across the Chinese countryside.
Urbanization is increasingly rapidly, but suburban sprawl is far outpacing it. Thus while the
number of people (officially) living in urban areas rose from 148 million in 1990 to 180 million
by 1995 (a 22% increase), during those five years urbanized areas in China exploded from 11,608
km2 to 22,100 – an increase of more than 90 percent!53 And the pace only appears to be
accelerating, as the amount of land purchased and developed doubled between 2000 and 2003
alone.54
The reasons for this explosion are complex, as they stem from the combined and
sometimes conflicting interests of three different players: the central government, municipal
governments, and the private sector. The central government has historically been ambivalent
about urbanization, as it seeks to provide public housing and extract revenue from land taxes, yet
48
Yu Liang, “Driving into China’s parking mess.” China Business Weekly, September 9, 2004. At:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-09/04/content_371610.htm. Accessed 2/23/2005.
49
James Kynge, “Modern China is facing an ecological crisis.” The Financial Times, July 26, 2004. At:
http://www.geoffmetcalf.com/wwwboard/messages/4397.html. Accessed 2/20/2005.
50
F. Kaid Benfield et. al., Once There Were Greenfields (New York: Natural Resources Defense Council,
1999), pp. 80-84.
51
Elizabeth C. Economy, The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China’s Future (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2004).
52
“ Private Car Ownership Sparks Problems”, loc. cit.; China Daily Online Community, News
Talk>Changing China, loc. cit.
53
Tingwei Zhang, “Land market forces and government’s role in sprawl: the case of China.” Cities, Vol. 17
(2000) No. 2, pp. 123-135, Table 4., p. 126.
54
Statistical Year book 2004 (Beijing: China Statistics Press, 2004) table 6-39, p. 245.
 14

at the same time protect vanishing farmland. By contrast, municipal governments and the private
sector have been more united in pushing for development, which promises to simultaneously
appease a housing-hungry populace and to generate enormous profits.55 And of course some
municipal officials have been open to taking bribes from businessmen, particularly as the land
and housing markets have heated up.56 The private sector in particular has been very private
sector which sees in the housing and land markets the opportunity for enormous profits.57

The contending interests at play in the housing market have not, however, significantly
slowed China’s urbanization. To the contrary: China is currently building apartments and housing
developments at an unbelievable pace. Frequently this involves not merely destroying farmland
but also the livelihoods of the peasants who had depended on it.58 On the outskirts of Nanjing, for
example, small villages are being destroyed to make way for upscale apartments; the residents are
given a small token payment and then left to their own devices. Not infrequently they end up
living with relatives or in shanty-towns.59 The reasons for such de-housing are simple but brutal:
the villagers’ one-story buildings simply take up too much space. And similar processes are
underway in “underbuilt” inner-city neighborhoods, where people living in low-rise
neighborhoods are increasingly being de-housed so as to make way for skyscrapers.60 Ironically,
such displacement only exacerbates the housing shortage, as many of those being forced out
cannot afford to live in the new buildings now being constructed. And so it goes: central state
officials periodically call for the construction of more affordable housing and pledge to protect
arable land, although it is not at all clear whether urbanization and the protection of land can be
reconciled.

Yet while the Chinese state tries to square that circle, the construction goes ahead. In
2000, construction started on 244,010,000 square meters of residential floor space; three years
later that number had nearly doubled.61 And since the central state also aims to provide every
urban resident with 23 square meters of living space in the next few years, there is no sign that
the housing boom will slow anytime soon. Indeed, to meet that target, the state must build 8.4
billion square meters of housing by 2010.62 And every effort is being made to do so. Riding from
the airport to downtown Nanjing one day, I counted something like 100 tower cranes riding on
top of new buildings. And in Nanjing’s new “University Town” in the Eastern Suburbs,
thousands of apartments have been built in less than 3 years.63 No wonder that China today is the
world’s largest consumer of cement and steel.64 But however complex and self-contradictory the
politics of urbanization may be, its outcomes have been stunningly clear. Sprawl in China
currently results in the loss of 2.5 million acres of land a year, a catastrophic outcome in a
country that is trying to feed one-fifth of the world’s people on 7 percent of its arable land.65

55
Zhang, op. cit.
56
Ibid., p. 135.
57
Ibid., pp. 133-134.
58
Liang Chao, “Complaints on home demolitions soar.” China Daily, July 5, 2004. At:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-07/05/content_345669.htm. Accessed 2/19/05.
59
Personal conversations with Chinese interlocutors, Nanjing, various dates, 2006-2007.
60
Michelle Mood, interviews with de-housed persons, Nanjing, July 2007.
61
China Statistical Year book 2004 (Beijing: China Statistics Press, 2004) table 6-39, p. 245.
62
“Minister Urges More Affordable Housing.” China Daily, October 21, 2005. At:
http://www.china.org.cn/english/2001/Oct/21143.htm. Accessed 2/23/2005.
63
Author’s observations, based on repeated site visits from August 2006 to July 2007.
64
Lester R. Brown, “China Replacing the United States as World’s Leading Consumer.” At:
http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update45.htm. Accessed 2/18/05. See also Luard, op. cit.
65
Luard, op.cit.
 15

Yet in the long run it may be the emerging housing market for China’s nouveaux riches
which has the largest environmental consequences. After all, it is the rich who are consuming
resources at the greatest rate. Living in villas and “golf mansions”, driving in to work in their
upmarket Audis, Benzes and Bentleys, playing a few holes on one of China’s ubergolf courses,
and then zipping into town to dance at a tony club or shop at one of the new megamalls, the
nouveaux riches of China are doing their best to live out a fantasy of conspicuous consumption
that would put JR Ewing to shame. But such sybaritic glory is better experienced than described:

　
　

在维也纳森林别墅的欧洲农庄里，

过上一段不折不扣的欧洲田园生活…
…

In the European farm of Vienna Forest Villa ,

we can enjoy a real European idyllic life

闲坐，在流香中背靠篱笆轻啜葡萄酒的芬芳……

散心，穿过玫瑰山谷，去看看心爱的树苗有没有长高……

用一个下午的时间去为心爱的葡萄修枝、锄草，收获更多的
却是心情，在维也纳森林别墅的欧洲农庄里，空气中流动着一种永
恒的简单幸福，

我们习惯称它为“悠然”。

　
16
 17

These pictures are taken from a suburban development outside of Chengdu (in the central
province of Sichuan) called Vienna Forest Villa.66 Although I think the pictures speak for
themselves, a few comments are worth making. In particular, notice that while the site is clearly
designed to entice potential Chinese (as opposed to foreign) homeowners – after all, it’s virtually
all in Chinese! – the advertisers still feel it’s necessary to include an English tag line in the ad:

In the European farm of Vienna Forest Villa, we can enjoy a real European idyllic life

Even more surprising, however, is the picture that goes with the tag line: a little blonde girl in a
sundress holding a basket full of fruit! Just what exactly is going on here? How can that image
and that clichéd tag line possibly be attractive to Chinese consumers? What do they say about
China, the Chinese, and Chinese self-images in an era of globalization? We have, it seems, no
choice but to read image and text as insisting on the greater sophistication, authenticity, and pure
value of “Western” lifestyles and lives.

Of course, Vienna Forest Villa is just one development. Is it really fair to freight this one
ad with so much cultural baggage? Of course not. The problem is, however, that Vienna Forest
Villa is neither unique nor particularly extreme. All over China, similar Western-style
developments are springing up, developments with names like Park Avenue, Cannes Townhouse,
Beijing Asian Games Garden, Yosemite Villa, Phoenix Towns, Favorview Palace, and Sunlight
Manhattan. Sometimes the quest for international cachet goes a little awry, however, as at
Greenland Garden and Luxurtant City (sic). No matter; they sell all the same.67

And some of the developments are truly stunning in their ambition, opulence and scale.
Take, for example, Mission Hills Golf Club, a residential “golf community” outside the
boomtown of Shenzen, which not only boasts that it is the “Guinness World Records No.1 Golf
Club” (with 180 holes!) but has an ultra-slick website to lure prospective homeowners:68

[Reader: please play clip from Mission Hills website now. It is at:
http://www.mh-in-residence.com/intro-en.html ]

As the introduction opens, classical music swells while the camera gradually pans over
the glorious Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course, up to a huge mansion, around to an enormous
pool and patio, and then inside: to touch reverently on sweeping staircases, sitting rooms with 20
foot ceilings, Persian rugs, (dwarfed) grand pianos, and gigantic glittering chandeliers. All the
while, the following titles are emerging and then slowly scrolling across the screen:

Mission Hills in Residence

World’s No. 1 Golf Club

Every King has His Own Castle, History has Never Changed

Out of the Door and Into Your Garden of Eden

The Epitome of Grandeur

66
Pictures at Vienna Forest Villa website, at: http://vynbs.com/w_sglz.htm. Accessed 2/19/05.
67
List adopted from 1, Li Wen and Partners Law Firm website, at: http://www.lw-
lawfirm.com.cn/en/real3.htm; and 2, Yosemite Villa website, at: www.yosevilla.com. Accessed 2/19/05.
68
“Introduction” streaming video. At: http://www.mh-in-residence.com/intro-en.html. Accessed 2/19/05.
 18

For almost the entire ad, we see no people, just inviting views of a richly furnished mansion
fronting on a glorious sweep of green. Yet in this palace for the New Millennium, there is no one
at home. The only human figures we see are a sensual marble bust of a (Western) woman gazing
dreamily towards an inviting future and then, at the very end, a butler standing ready to welcome
the owner - you - inside. The house and the life that comes with it are waiting for you to occupy
them, to consume them. Consumption thus becomes its own best reward, a return to Eden for
those whose have earned the right to go there.69

While most Chinese have no chance of ever moving to a place like Mission Hills, such a
vision of development is powerfully attractive to the rich and to the rising middle class alike. And
therein lies the danger. As China grows more wealthy, it seems only too likely that more and
more people will seek, and find, some version of Mission Hills. They won’t be able to afford
mansions with 20 foot ceilings, but they may just be able to afford a house with a two or three
bedrooms and a yard.70 They may well be able to play a few holes at an upscale golf course,71
take a vacation in their car, or fly out to Yunnan or Tibet to gawk at the scenery and the
“minorities.” This sort of consumption is already becoming a reality for many Chinese and a
fervent wish for many more. And while it may help to prop up an ailing regime, it’s going to play
hell on China’s environment.

Touring China: Social and Environmental Consequences of Consuming Experience

China’s dreams of a consumer paradise are not simply limited to material consumption.
Consumption in the New China also increasingly means consuming experiences: visiting cultural
landmarks like the Great Wall, Suzhou, or the terracotta warriors in Xian; “ethnic” regions like
Yunnan or Tibet; or natural areas like Jiuzhaigou, Huangshan, or Tiger Leaping Gorge. Tourism
is thus one of the most important aspects of China’s new consumerism; a way in which the
Chinese can simultaneously (re-)connect with their land, history, and culture and display their
ability to do so in comfort, style, and increasing luxury. And while the Chinese desire to
consume experience via tourism is certainly understandable, its environmental impacts are
already enormous, and are only likely to increase in the years to come.

It would be a mistake to assume that the Chinese government has been opposed or even
indifferent to such ferocious development. While some government officials have on occasion
acknowledged that tourism is affecting the environment, they have been very much in the
minority, and have not seriously compromised the goal of continuously developing tourism in

69
“Introduction” streaming video clip from Mission Hills Golf Club webpage. Lest we think that Mission
Hills is trying to pander to Western nostalgia for colonialism and its comforts, it’s worth noting that the
video is available in a Chinese version as well. And why not? In the new China wealth and its privileges
are just as freely available to the Chinese as to foreigners.
70
See, for example, the comments of student David Zhang in Tim Luard, “China’s Middle Class
Revolution.” BBC Online, October 10, 2004. At: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3732914.stm.
Accessed 2/24/2005.
71
China now has more than 1 million golfers, and the number is increasing by 30 percent annually. It also
has well over 200 golf courses, which are consuming enormous amounts of land and water. For the
numbers of golfers and the rate of increase, see “China has million golf fans, half courses losing.” CRI,
November 25, 2003 (at: http://www.china.org.cn/english/travel/80835.htm ). For environmental impacts
and worries, see: “City Bans New Golf Links”, Eastday.com, August 14, 2002
(at: http://www.china.org.cn/english/China/39450.htm ). And for a chilling look at the likely future impact
of golf in China, see Mark Godfrey, “Golf’s Greener Pastures”, China Today, 2004. At:
http://www.chinatoday.com.cn/English/e2004/e200406/p22.htm. All pages accessed 2/25/2005.
 19

China, particularly in the less-developed West.72 Indeed, the post-Maoist state has consistently
pushed tourism as a near-perfect way to simultaneously promote rural development and increase
the consumption of China’s growing middle class. When the economy is booming, tourism, and
domestic tourism in particular, will accelerate and diversify that growth, and when the economy
slows, the tourist industry can help to stabilize it.73 In short, it serves as a “win-win” policy with
no real “downside”, one which benefits both the rich and the poor. It also works to the advantage
of state and party leaders, both economically and politically. Because high officials often directly
invest in and benefit from tourism, they have a real economic stake in seeing it succeed.74 And
because tourism is seen as promoting strong feelings of national identity and national pride, it
also serves important political functions, creating allegiance to China and the Chinese state.75
And while the social and environmental realities of developing tourism in the hinterlands may
often be considerably grimmer, such consequences are generally ignored, or seen as incidental
“externalities”, not as a logical or even inevitable outcome of uneven development and
uncontrolled consumption.

Tourism is not uniformly destructive, of course. Managed properly, tourism can and often
does inject much-needed cash into impoverished regions, providing unemployed or
underemployed populations with jobs, training, and the real hope of a better life.76 Indeed, in
areas where geography, the local economy, or political considerations have drastically reduced or
eliminated other possible sources of income, tourism may be the only remaining means of
development available. That seems to be the case in certain parts of southwestern China, where
increasing population and declining revenues from traditional cash crops or resource-extraction
activities have led to falling incomes and rising unemployment.77 And it is even more evident in
regions where a government-mandated ban on logging upland areas resulted in sudden and
catastrophic losses of revenue and employment in forest-dependent communities.78

Not only is tourism economically attractive, it may sometimes result in the preservation
or even improvement of once-threatened natural environments. Such may have been the case, for
example, in Sichuan’s Jiuzhaigou Biosphere Reserve, where the growth of nature-based tourism
provided local people with a reliable source of income, and so, a powerful incentive to help
protect the region’s environment.79 As tourist visits to the park grew, locals increasingly turned
away from environmentally destructive activities such as hunting, farming, and forestry, and
began to work in the rapidly expanding tourist industry in and near the park. By 2000, virtually
72
For official worries about tourism, see, for example, Yao Siyan, “Beijing Forest Bureau Suggests
Limiting Great Wall Visits”, Xinhua, November 21, 2007. At:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-11/21/content_7122187.htm. Accessed on 3/12/2008. For the
more optimistic official view, see Pal Nyiri, Scenic Spots, chapter 1, esp. pp. 3-7.
73
Ibid., pp. 5-6.
74
Ibid., pp. 71-75.
75
Ibid, passim, esp. pp. 15, 17, 49-51, and esp. 71-78. Also see Tim Oakes, Tourism and Modernity in
China (New York: Routledge, 1998), chapter 1, esp. pp. 47-48.
76
Su, op.cit,; Ben Hillman, “Paradise Under Construction: Minorities, Myths, and Modernity in Northwest
Yunnan”, Asian Ethnicity, Vol. 2, No. 2, June 2003, pp. 175-188; and Wenjun Li et. al., “Tourism’s
Impacts on Natural Resources: a Positive Case from China”, Environmental Management (2006), Vol. 38,
pp. 572-579 for arguments to this effect. But compare John A. Donaldson, “Tourism, Development and
Poverty Reduction in Guizhou and Yunnan.” The China Quarterly, Vol. 190, June 2007, pp. 333-351, who
argues that the economic benefits of tourism do not always translate into real benefits for impoverished
peoples or regions.
77
Hillman, op.cit; Ralph Litzinger, “The Mobilization of ‘Nature’: Perspectives from North-west Yunnan.”
China Quarterly 178 (June 2004), pp. 488-504.
78
Hillman, op.cit.
79
Wenjun Li, op.cit
 20

all of the local peasants had moved into the tourist business. They managed family hotels, drove
buses, worked in restaurants, sold souvenirs, or simply cleaned up the park so that it would be
more attractive to visitors. And, as peasant livelihoods shifted from the extraction of resources to
jobs which at least indirectly depended on the preservation of Jiuzhaigou’s natural environment,
that environment began to recover and even in some respects improve. Degraded land recovered
and wildlife began to increase. In short, by offering local people the opportunity to profit by
protecting rather than despoiling natural resources, tourism has helped to preserve Jiuzhaigou
Biosphere Reserve.80

We should also be wary of too quickly concluding that tourism will necessarily lead to
the debasement or destruction of “authentic” cultures. Not only do such judgments assume or
even construct an ersatz authenticity that may bear little to no relation to actual beliefs and
behaviors, they may lead us to ignore the many ways in which tourism can serve not only as
employment but even empowerment for marginalized groups. By performing for tourists, local
peoples may be able to rediscover their identities and to valorize beliefs and practices that
otherwise might be devalued or lost.81 While many Western tourists are deeply uneasy viewing
staged performances by exotic “ethnics”, such uneasiness may testify more to the viewer’s “post-
colonial guilt” than to resentment on the part of the performer.82 And while probably no one
really wants to entertain tourists for a living, when the alternatives are unemployment, poverty,
and environmental destruction, tourism may be the best available option.

All the same, there is no denying that the impact of tourism on China’s people and
landscapes has been immense. Domestic tourism in particular is increasing very rapidly, having
almost doubled from slightly less than 700 million person trips in 1998 to almost 1.3 billion
person trips in 2008. And average tourist receipts are growing even faster, as an increasingly
affluent tourist population spends more, and expects to receive more goods, services and
experiences in return.83 Consequently, tourist destinations are being constructed, expanded, and
“upgraded” at a breathtaking pace all across China, generally with little regard for their social,
cultural, and environmental consequences. From the Dai watersplashing festivals (and associated
sex tourism) of Xishuangbanna, to the cable cars and four-star hotels littering Huangshan, to the
climate-controlled tourist trains running out to Lhasa, the Chinese are seeking – and finding –
more and more exotic experiences to consume.84 And to meet that demand, enterprising capitalists
and officials are continually finding more ways to market, package, and sell fragile environments
and cultures to the new Chinese tourists.
80
Ibid., pp. 575-578.
81
See the writings of Tim Oakes for deeply insightful analysis on these issues. Particularly helpful are his
Tourism and Modernity in China, esp. chapters 1, 4, and 5; and his “Welcome to Paradise!: A Sino-U.S.
Joint Venture Project”, in Jensen and Weston, China’s Transformations, pp. 216-239.
82
See, for example, Nyiri, Scenic Spots, especially chapter 3, for a sophisticated theoretical discussion of
this issue. And for a richly documented and theorized empirical example, see Hillman, op. cit.
83
Liping A. Cai et. al., “Domestic tourism demand in China’s urban centres: Empirical analyses and
marketing implications.” Journal of Vacation Marketing, Vol. 8, no. 1 (2001), pp. 64-74; Bihu Wu et.al.,
“Trends in China’s domestic tourism development at the turn of the century.” International Journal of
Contemporary Hospitality 12/5 (2000), pp. 296-299.
84
On sex tourism in the Dai regions of Xishhuangbanna, see Sandra Teresa Hyde, “Sex Tourism and the
Lure of the Ethnic Erotic in Southwest China”, in Lionel M. Jensen and Timothy B. Weston, China’s
Transformations: the Stories beyond the Headlines (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007), pp.
216-239; on the development of Huangshan, see Dan Su et. al., “Emerging Governance Models for the
Protected Areas of China”, Environmental Management (2007), vol. 39, pp. 749-759, and Hu Shangfeng,
“Modeling of Tourist Flow to Huangshan”, Modern Physics Letters B, vol. 19, Nos. 28-29 (2005), pp.
1691-1694; for the statistics on tourist revenues on Huangshan, see Shangfeng, and Su, and also Huangshan
Tourist Development Company, Ltd., at: http://finance.google.com/finance?q=SHA%3A900942
 21

Moreover, even when developers have been sensitive to the social and environmental
consequences of tourism, the sheer numbers of visitors have often undermined their efforts to
protect fragile resources and promote sustainable development. Here again the example of
Jiuzhaigou is instructive. Between 1998 and 2002, tourist visits to the park increased by a factor
of 6, rising from an already substantial 200,000 visitors annually to well over 1,200,000 a year.85
During the 2002 October and May “Golden Weeks” (the national holidays when most Chinese
travel), up to 40,000 people a day were visiting the park, putting enormous stress on tourist
facilities, infrastructure and the natural resources themselves. To cope with this deluge, the park
administration closed the family hotels and guesthouses in the park as well as many of the more
informal family-owned souvenir shops and restaurants, replacing them with shopping malls and
over 120 tourist hotels, staffed almost entirely by Han Chinese from outside of the area.86
Increasingly, locally-oriented sustainable development was being replaced by mass tourism. By
2004, Jiuzhaigou was seeing an average of 7,000 visitors a day, and park officials were trying
hard to enforce a 12,000 person per day quota during the high season.87 As Sichuan’s top tourist
draw and an increasingly hot destination for well-heeled Chinese tourists, Jiuzhaigou increasingly
is being loved to death. And the problems are only likely to grow worse in the years to come.
With the construction of a new highway and a nearby airport – with direct flights to Chengdu,
Xi’an, and Kunming (and new nonstop flights to Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou scheduled for
2008) -- there is no reason to assume that the pressure will ease anytime soon.88

Paradise Lost: Northwest Yunnan and the Construction of Shangri-La

The neighboring province of Yunnan has perhaps been the most severely affected by the
exploding tourist trade. Bordering Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar, Yunnan is home to 26 of
China’s 55 different “minority” ethnic groups, and more than half of China’s native plants and
animals. It also contains a variety of natural wonders, such as the “Stone Forest” karst formations
at Shilu, and the Yangtze River’s Tiger Leaping Gorge, one of the deepest gorges in the world.
Not surprisingly, tourism in Yunnan is big business these days, with close to 50 million tourists
visiting the province in 2001, the vast majority (more than 90 percent) of them Chinese.89 Several
outstanding natural sites in Yunnan have been placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, the
Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan Protected Area, and the South China Karst Region.90 And, while
the standards of protection and preservation at the UNESCO sites themselves have generally been
high, surrounding areas and populations have frequently suffered.91 Freeways, airports, hotel
complexes, and a variety of associated facilities, ranging from cultural theme parks to karaoke
club/whorehouses, have sprung up wherever the land and funds have been available to build
them.

85
Wenjun Li, op. cit., p. 575.
86
Nyiri, op. cit., p. 31.
87
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiuzhaigou_Valley . Accessed 3/11/2008.
88
“More flights to Jiuzhaigou.” China Travel & Tourism News, January 17, 2008. At:
http://www.chinahotelsreservation.com/china_travel/More_flights_to_Jiuzhaigou_12973.html . Accessed
3/13/2008.
89
Donaldson, “Tourism, Development and Poverty Reduction in Guizhou and Yunnan”, esp. pp. 336-338.
The 2001 data is the latest provided by Donaldson; however, given that many new sites have been opened
up or further developed since then, including “Shangri-La” in what used to be Zhongdian, its seems highly
likely that the numbers of tourist visits to the province have increased very substantially.
90
See http://whc.unesco.org/en/list for the entire list of sites. Accessed 03/07/2008.
91
See, for example, Mimi Li et. al., “Tourism Development of World Heritage Sites in China: a geographic
perspective.” Tourism Management 29 (2008) pp. 308-319; and ,
 22

The fate of northwest Yunnan is particularly poignant, as it has seen development at a

pace and scale perhaps unequalled anywhere else in the country. In the small town of Lijiang,
another UNESCO World Heritage Site, there are now between 3.5 million and 4 million visitors
annually.92 Tour guides with megaphones and flags (so that their clients can see where to go) lead
huge crowds of Chinese tourists through the crowded Old Town, while on the outskirts hotel
complexes, entertainment parks, and even second homes are springing up as fast as local
contractors can build them.93 And while the provincial and national governments do appear to be
trying to protect Lijiang from (whatever they define as) further overdevelopment, the sheer
numbers of moneyed tourists visiting the town has made that task difficult to impossible. Within
the 2.7 square kilometer area of the Old Town, there are now more than 2,600 shops, as well as a
large number of itinerant vendors selling whatever they can, including the pelts of threatened or
endangered wildlife, to the throngs of tourists crowding the town.94

Further afield in Northwest Yunnan, the same process of “development” is proceeding at

breakneck speed. The Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, Tiger Leaping Gorge, and “Shangri-La” are
now all being developed as high profile (and high profit) tourist sites, with predictable outcomes
for their inhabitants and the fragile environments in which they live. In the Tiger Leaping Gorge,
low-impact “backpacker tourism” is increasingly being displaced by package tours which pay the
required 30 yuan entrance fee, stop for a few minutes so that their charges can snap a few pictures
or buy a few souvenirs, and then head on to the Tibetan counties on up the road. It should go
without saying that neither the tours nor the sites being developed have anything to do with
sustainable development. Because the majority of those operations are run out of big urban travel
agencies and companies based in Yunnan’s capital or even in the big East Coast cities, their
cultural and environmental costs – from the objectification and commodification of locals and
their customs to the damage caused by roads, billboards, buses, toilets, and litter -- greatly
outweigh their economic benefits. Indeed, the cynicism of some of the developers is breathtaking.
For example, the company which sells tickets to the lower Tiger Leaping Gorge is owned by Li
Xiaopeng, the CEO of one of China’s largest power companies and a leading advocate for the
construction of a dam in the gorge itself.95 Whatever happens to Tiger Leaping Gorge, Xiaopeng
will wind up a winner. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the people who live there.

On the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain nearby the story is much the same. As development
of the site and the region proceeds, high tech/high profit tourist facilities are increasingly
replacing older, simpler, and more sustainable operations. At Blue Spruce Meadow and “Glacier
View”, for example, tourists have largely abandoned locally owned and operated horseback tours
to ride up the mountain in “modern”, expensive ($25), and polluting chairlifts or cable cars.96
Once there, they briefly stroll around meadows or to a glacier, take some pictures with the
“natives”, buy some (mass-produced) “handicrafts”, and then head back into town for the night.
The result of such development is that local people and local enterprises are increasingly
displaced and replaced, while the natural environment is increasingly transformed into a
Disneyesque amusement park, complete with main attractions, sideshows, and rides galore. The
apotheosis of this transformation has perhaps come at the new Banyan Tree Lijiang Resort
92
Alessandra Sgobbi et. al., “Study on Payment for Ecological…Services in China”, p. 12, Fig. 2. At:
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTEAPREGTOPENVIRONMENT/Resources/FEEM_PES_Lijiang_St
udy_EN.pdf. Accessed 3/07/2008. See also Donaldson, op.cit., esp. pp. 345-347.
93
Author’s observations, based on site visit in July 2004.
94
Ibid., p. 346; pelts example based on author’s own visit to Lijiang in July 2004.
95
Donaldson, op. cit., p. 334. It is also perhaps worth noting that he is the son of Li Peng, the one-time
Premier of China who was the leading advocate for the Three Gorges Dam.
96
Author’s observations based on visit to sites on Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, July 2004.
 23

nearby. At the resort, which most definitely is not designed for mass tourism, but which does
cater to Chinese as well as international tourists, guests can enjoy all of the sybaritic excesses for
which the Banyan Tree brand is known. Hot stone massages, poolside villas furnished with local
“objets d’art”, multi-course meals – all are available to the high-rollers who can afford the $500
and up a night it costs to stay there.97 And for an additional $150, they can play 18 holes at the
world’s highest golf course nearby -- a golf course which, amazingly, has been built inside the
boundaries of the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain National Park.98

Finally, eager tourists can now quite literally enter Shangri-La.99 In early 2001, local
officials in the county of Zhongdian finally succeeded in their long campaign to get its name
changed.100 With that change, Zhongdian, which had been struggling to recover from the
economic impact of a mandated logging ban in 1998, completed its transformation to a major
tourist destination. By the end of that year, over 1 million tourists had visited Zhongdian/Shangri-
La, and tourism had earned the county more money than logging ever had.101 And yet the process
of constructing Shangri-La had only just begun. In 2002, an acrimonious dispute with the
province of Sichuan and the Tibetan Autonomous region for the bragging – and branding – rights
to the name Shangri-La was resolved by including counties from all three provinces in the new
“Shangri-La Ecotourism Area.” Once that was settled, the construction of Shangri-La began in
earnest, with Yunnan, Sichuan, and Tibet pledging to spend between $6 billion and $10 billion by
2010 to develop tourist infrastructure in the region.102 By the end of 2003, millions of dollars had
already been earmarked or spent for airports, highways, bridges, tourist service centers, tourist
entertainment companies, and various other “improvements.”103 And, with the 2.6 million tourist
visits of 2005 expected to triple by 2020, the boom is just beginning.104

In Zhongdian, the heart of the newly designated region, Shangri-La is on display for all to
see. Indeed, the conversion of the town into an “authentic” destination fully equipped for ethnic
and nature-based tourism is already well-advanced. The local monastery has acquired a new
gilded roof, and streets and buildings in the Old Town have been rebuilt during the last few years
in (an approximation of) indigenous Tibetan style.105 A new national park has just been created,
and has already attracted several hundred thousand visitors since it opened in the fall of 2006.106

97
Banyan Tree Lijiang Website. At: http://www.banyantree.com/lijiang/facilities/spa_main.html
98
Information from a webpage brochure advertising “golf tourism in Yunnan”, at:
http://www.yunnangolf.com/ShowAlle.aspx?id=1000112. Accessed 3/10/2008.
99
Donaldson, op.cit., pp. 333-334. On “Shangri-La”, there is a large and growing literature. See especially
Hillman, op.cit.; Ashild Kolas, “Tourism and the making of Place in Shangri-La”, Tourism Geographies,
Vol. 6, No. 3, August 2004, pp. 262-278; and Tim Oakes, “Welcome to Paradise!”, loc. cit.
100
See Hillman, op. cit., pp. 176-180 for an eye-opening account of the heroic effort – and intellectual
gymnastics – the county and its “academic experts” invested in establishing Zhongdian’s right to claim to
be the “real” Shangri-La.
101
Hillman, pp. 175-176.
102
“Shangri-La Dream Unites China’s Three Western Rivals.” People’s Daily, July 25, 2002. At:
http://www.china.org.cn/english/TR-e/37639.htm ; “Southwest China Regions Join Hands to Develop
Shangri-La” Xinhua, September 20, 2002. At: http://www.china.org.cn/english/TR-e/43639.htm
Both stories accessed on 3/12/2008.
103
“Shangri-La Eco-tourism Area Progressing Smoothly.” China Through a Lens, October 31, 2003. At:
http://www.china.org.cn/english/2003/Oct/78886.htm . Accessed on 3/12/2008.
104
Jonathan Watts, “Welcome to Shangri-La. By Order of the State Council of the Chinese Government”
The Guardian, June 1, 2006. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jun/01/china.travelnews . Accessed
3/12/2008.
105
Hillman, op. cit., p. 176; Watts, “Welcome to Shangri-La.”
106
ChinaTour.com, “Special Report: Shangri-la, Yunnan, China – Magic and Mystery”. At:
http://www.chinatour.com/attraction/shangri-la.htm . Accessed 3/12/2008.
 24

Signs and billboards – and there are many of them – must now be in Tibetan as well as Chinese,
and local farmhouses have been converted into entertainment centers, where tourists can watch
locals sing and dance, while noshing on Tibetan food.107 Or, for those whose vision of Shangri-
La is a little racier, something like 100 local hotels, karaoke bars, and massage parlors are full of
prostitutes ready to provide them.108

For most Chinese tourists, however, the charms of Shangri-La are more innocent. It is, as
one observer remarks, a place where the Chinese, who have witnessed unbelievable economic
changes and environmental degradation in the last 20 years, can briefly experience a simpler and
“purer” life.109 And that experience, however evanescent, perhaps helps to explain the astounding
popularity of Shangri-La, Lijiang, Jiuzhaigou, and other “paradise” destinations in today’s China.
Nothing better captures the powerful allure of such sites, perhaps, than a recent article in the
Shanghai Daily, entitled “Shangri-La: A Heavenly Experience in Yunnan.” There is, the author
tells us, “a real Shangri-La”, a “little paradise” where “time has stood still.” Even a short visit,
(s)he tells us, “can help one feel like the stress and turmoil of city life has never been farther
away.” And surrounding the town and its temple are mountains full of azaleas, whose petals drift
down each spring to cover Bitahai lake and its clear waters.110

While the development of Shangri-La has been especially spectacular, we should not
make the mistake of viewing it as anomalous or even particularly unusual. From one end of China
to another, mass tourism is commoditizing nature and culture with striking and frequently tragic
consequences. Buses, trains, airplanes and now helicopters are reaching into once-inaccessible
regions like Western Sichuan, Tibet, and Xinjiang, and transforming untouristed regions into
must-see tourist destinations. And greater and greater numbers of Chinese tourists are finding the
time and the money to visit them. In order to accommodate those numbers, entrepreneurs and
local officials (often one and the same) are transforming and frequently trashing the environment.
Cable cars now run up most of China’s sacred mountains, while roads, railways, and airports are
being built or improved to allow more tourists to access ever-more remote locations more easily
and quickly.

Nor is there any likelihood that this trend will change anytime soon. In today’s China,
disposable income is increasingly available, while leisure time is at a premium. The result is that
most tourists want to see as much of their country as they can, and to do so with a minimum of
mafan (trouble). And that means that mass tourism, with all of its negative consequences for
minority cultures and the Chinese environment, will only continue to increase in the years to
come. In a classic tragedy of the commons, this enormously destructive activity makes perfect
sense for almost each and every Chinese tourist. So there is simply no reason to change. As one
Beijing businessman put it, “The national holidays are my only chance to… see my country. With
a tour group, I don’t have to plan, I don’t have to worry, I don’t have to think.”111 And, while
foreign tourists are frequently dismayed by the huge numbers of tourists at top destinations like
Huangshan, which saw over 3 million visitors last year, or the Great Wall, which may see more
than 5 times that amount, such hordes do not particularly disturb most Chinese tourists.112 As one
107
Hillman, p. 182.
108
Hillman, p. 183; Watts, “Welcome to Shangri-La.”
109
Kolas, op. cit., pp. 272-273.
110
“Shangri-la: A Heavenly Experience in Yunnan.” Shanghai Daily, December 6. 2005. At:
http://www.china.org.cn/english/travel/151058.htm . Accessed 3/12/2008.
111
Tom Carter, “The Phenomena of Collective Travel.” Beijing Review, October 12, 2006. At:
http://www.bjreview.com.cn/eye/txt/2006-12/17/content_51146.htm . Accessed: 3/5/2008.
112
“Beijing forestry bureau suggests limiting Great Wall visitors.” Xinhua, November 11, 2007. At:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-11/21/content_7122187.htm . Accessed on 3/12/2008.
 25

tourist remarked, “We like to go where everybody goes. If there are no crowds, it means it’s not
a good place.”113 Indeed, the culture of mass tourism appears to be so deeply rooted in China,
that traveling alone can be seen as strange or even wrong. I was powerfully reminded of that
vision when I encountered two Chinese tourists while enjoying a rare moment of solitude on
Huangshan last spring. “Yes”, they agreed, “it certainly is beautiful here. But aren’t you awfully
lonely traveling by yourself?”114

Conclusion: Consuming China

As radical as China’s consumer revolution seems today, it has only just begun. According
to a 2006 report published by the McKinsey Global Institute, China’s middle class is likely to
nearly double in size by 2025, and to spend more than five times what it does today.115 The
growth rates for the more affluent sections of that emerging middle class (the “upper aspirants”,
“affluent”, and “global” classes) will be even greater than those for the middle class as a whole,
which will further accelerate the trend. By 2025, MGI predicts that there will be 8 million
“global” households, spending an average of over 290,000 yuan each year, the vast majority of
which will be spent on luxury goods and services. Indeed, by 2025, the middle class as a whole
is predicted to allocate about 74 percent of its income on discretionary spending.116 Altogether,
the growth of this middle class will make China the world’s third-largest consumer market by
2025. Moreover, because environmentally sensitive sectors such as transportation, housing, and
recreation (including tourism) are expected to grow particularly rapidly, we can expect that the
environmental consequences of that growth will be even greater. 117

It is not likely to be an easy ride. Where China’s consumer revolution is heading can
perhaps best be grasped by reflecting on a prescient article, “Realising the Dream of Private Car
Travel”, that appeared in Xinhua, the official state news agency a couple of years ago. In that
article, Xinhua’s writers simultaneously celebrate China’s new love affair with consumerism and
unwittingly point to its many contradictions. Clearly, the writers, carefully monitored employees
of the official state news agency, are at pains to show that they fully approve of car ownership
and the many freedoms it carries with it. Instead of being bound by the constraints of bus, train,
or plane schedules, the new Chinese consumers will soon be able to tour the Chinese countryside
at their leisure. And this freedom will be available not only to a select few, but to more and more
of China’s rapidly growing middle class. To drive the point home, they relate the story of Zhou
Shaolin, an “ordinary Chinese” who has recently been able to buy a car and is now using it to
discover the wonders of China:

113
Carter, “Collective Travel.”
114
Author’s observation, based on a site visit to Huangshan Mountain, March 2007.
115
McKinsey & Company, From ‘Made in China’ to ‘Sold in China’: the rise of the Chinese urban
consumer. (MGI, 2006) Online at: http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/china_consumer/index.asp
116
Ibid., pp. 16-20.
117
Ibid., pp. 74-77.
 26

Zhou Shaolin, a 38-year old editor of a Jinan newspaper, took his family in his own
car to the beach some 400 kilometers away for a ten-day vacation in early August.
He bought his secondhand Ford by borrowing 100,000 yuan (12,091 U.S. dollars)
from the bank last year. Usually he drives it to work. For an ordinary Chinese
family, traveling in their own car used to be a distant dream but this summer things
are changing. Another family drove all the way from Tianjin Municipality in north
China to Weihai, a coastal city in east China’s Shandong Province, where they are
enjoying a four-day holiday with blue skies, turquoise sea and silver sands. “It takes
less time for us to travel by our own car and we enjoy the beautiful scenery along the
way”, said Li Hongwei, father of the Tianjin family…China’ gross domestic product
has…led to a considerable increase in urban people’s incomes. A family like Zhou’s
earns… easily enough to afford a car loan and spend holidays away from the cities.
-- From “Realising the Dream of Private Car Travel”, Xinhua, August 26, 2002118

A closer look at the article suggests that the Xinhua authors – and so, perhaps state
officials themselves – are sending us a clear message about how Chinese consumerism should
develop in the years to come. Not only will the Chinese increasingly spend more time and money
traveling, they will also begin to choose Western-style travel, travel which will allow them to o
consume nature, culture, and the experience of travel itself in the way that they and they alone
choose. Car tourism, as the ne plus ultra of the new Chinese consumerism, will thus free
consumers from the demands and expectations of other consumers who might otherwise
jeopardize their experience and enjoyment of consumption itself. Travel by car will therefore be a
double liberation: a liberation from schedules and itineraries, and at the same time liberation from
others. To those of us who live in radically individualistic societies that double liberation is
camouflaged in banality – of course that’s why we choose to travel by car! For the Chinese,
however, it is revelation and revolution; an experience which is not only novel but which was
until very recently quite literally unimaginable.

Moreover, car tourism is a perfect solution for a state that wants to extend its recent
record of spectacular economic growth. And again, the authors and their sponsors in the state
offices clearly understand this. By enthusiastically gushing about the attractions of travel by car,
Xinhua is endorsing tourism, consumerism, the consumption of oil, steel, and concrete, and thus
the exploding economic growth which both promotes and increasingly depends on such
consumption of goods, nature and experience. Such a development is by no means new, of
course -- it follows logically from Deng Xiaoping’s 1992 dictum that “to get rich is glorious.”
And as can increasingly be seen in the cities, the tourist destinations and on the superhighways of
the Middle Kingdom, the Chinese people have clearly taken Deng’s injunction to heart. Getting
rich clearly is glorious, particularly once it becomes clear how radically wealth expands one’s
horizons and experiences.

Indeed, the article subtly conveys yet another message: that travel by car is not just a
form of liberation but liberation itself; that car ownership constitutes the essence of what the New
China is and should be. Cars, highways, tourism, consumption: all come together in a glowing
vision of the Chinese Good Life; a vision which is rapidly coming true for more and more people
in China today. By drawing such connections, Xinhua is able to strongly suggest that the new
freedoms for “ordinary Chinese” prove that the state-guided consumer revolution of the last few
years has succeeded. And that success in turn demonstrates the legitimacy of the Chinese

118
Xinhua, “Realising the Dream of Private Car Travel,” August 26, 2002. At:
http://service.china.org.cn/link/wcm/Show_Text?info_id=40353&p_qry=zhou%20and%20shaolin.
Accessed 1/29/2005.
 27

Communist party-state itself, since it was the Party and State which made that revolution
possible. The fact that the consumer revolution has so far touched only a small minority of the
Chinese people doesn’t significantly weaken its attractiveness or power. It promises the Chinese
people liberation via consumption, and that is a powerful vision, particularly in a country where
the legacy of socialist revolution has in many respects been a bitter one. The mere possibility of
such liberation is, after all, what really matters. How many American boys actually followed the
trajectories of Horatio Alger rags-to-riches stories? What counts are the story, the myth, and the
pull that such accounts have on their entranced readers.

In the last 20 years, the Chinese state has worked hard to sell its people a vision of human
liberation through conspicuous consumption. Through such methods, state leaders have
apparently hoped to turn their people’s attention away from the many social, political, and
environmental problems that confront China today. Such an approach has had the added benefit
of growing the economy and developing the domestic market for goods, services, and
experiences, a market which is already among the world leaders and may well eventually become
the largest in the world. It is by no means clear that this strategy of legitimation via consumerism
has worked, as most Chinese today seem far more interested in shopping than in supporting the
latest state campaign. Yet while state leaders may have failed to legitimate their regime, they
certainly have created a new class with an unending hunger for self-realization at the marketplace
and the mall. Consumption has thus transformed Chinese society and popular aspirations. And it
has increasingly devastated China’s environment. Yet tragically, as the Chinese regard their
garish cities and their vanishing natural treasures, more and more of them see not environmental
destruction, but a consumer paradise, one which promises them the liberation the Chinese state
and Communist Party have failed to deliver.