Transnational China Project Update

Consumerism and Chinese Culture: TCP-Sponsored Research

As China continues to develop a market economy and open up to the global economy, advertisers are making appeals to middle-class lifestyles. What are the values expressed in these appeals? Some lifestyle advertisements tell Chinese to think of themselves as citizens of great cosmopolitan cities, such as Shanghai or Beijing. Others ask consumers to identify with the Chinese nation. Still others appeal to a distinctly unbounded, transnational Chinese middle class. Are these advertisements affecting the way the Chinese identify with each other?

Rice University’s Transnational China Project (TCP), with support from the Henry Luce Foundation of New York, is using a combination of surveys of advertising campaigns in Asia’s urban spaces and surveys of Chinese consumers to explore the impact of consumerism on this aspect of Chinese culture.

The Transnational China Project is directed by Steven Lewis, senior researcher at the Baker Institute; Benjamin Lee, Rice professor of anthropology; and Richard Smith, the George and Nancy Rupp Professor of Humanities and professor of history at Rice.

Preliminary results reveal that corporations, nongovernmental organizations, and governments are all asking Chinese to think of themselves as members of an emerging, transnational Chinese middle class. These results were presented by TCP researchers Lewis and Smith at four international academic conferences last year on cultural and media studies: on the new culture of global cities in Asia at Washington University in St. Louis and the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in Washington, D.C., in April; on new forms of communications technology and culture at Mass-achusetts Institute of Technology in May; and on Chinese media and visual culture at the Univer-sity of Melbourne in October.

Lewis, Smith, and Lee will conduct field research in Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Taipei in 2003 and 2004, examining how advertisements in public spaces are urging the citizens of these global cities to think of themselves as members of a distinctly Chinese transnational middle class.

The Media of Contemporary Chinese Culture in Transition: Public Lectures

How are Chinese political and economic reforms progressing after World Trade Organization (WTO) accession? The TCP sponsored two public lectures by America’s top experts on Chinese leadership changes and trade reforms in March and April 2002. In “China’s Road Ahead: Will the New Leaders Make a Difference?” Li Cheng, professor of government at Hamilton College, ex-plained that many current policies in the People’s Republic of China will continue under a new generation of technocratic leaders. Economist Nicholas Lardy of the Brookings Institution, in “Integrating China Into the World Economy,” described the rapid changes across sectors that are driving China’s emergence as a future economic superpower. The text of his talk is available on the TCP website.

Are Chinese independent filmmakers concerned about the ways that contemporary cinematography and editing techniques influence the content of their works? In October 2002, the TCP sponsored a discussion of Dogma95 film in Asia by Mette Hjort, professor of comparative literature at the University of Hong Kong. Hjort described how independent film directors in Hong Kong and elsewhere have made unique critical and even satirical adaptations to the film movement’s strict guidelines on independent artistic control over production and content. She showed Leaving in Sorrow (youyou chouchou de zoule), a Dogma95 film created in 2001 by Hong Kong director Vincent Chui that portrays the fractured and frenetic social lives of young Chinese in Beijing, Hong Kong, and San Francisco.

The TCP will also explore current themes in China’s contemporary installation art world through a talk by Xu Bing at the Baker Institute February 11, 2003. Xu Bing, China’s most well-known contemporary artist, will discuss how his work presents unique understandings of the importance of calligraphy, printing, and text in Chinese society.

Explaining Social Changes in China and Chinese Societies: Pedagogy and Community Outreach TCP scholars are developing innovative teaching techniques to explain the many ways that Chi-nese culture is adapting to an increasingly global cultural marketplace. As part of a program sponsored by the Freeman Foundation, Richard Smith and Steve Lewis helped 22 junior high and high school teachers from Dallas and Houston create new lectures and resources for teaching Chinese culture and history in their classrooms, including a study tour of six Chinese cities in June. And as part of an exchange with the University Mobility in Asia Program at Kyushu Univer-sity in Japan in July 2002, Lewis taught a seminar on globalization and China to students from Rice University and universities in Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Mainland China, Singapore, and Taiwan.

TCP scholars also explained the ways that WTO accession will affect Chinese society to members of the Society for Intercul-tural Education, Training, and Research in Houston in Septem-ber 2002. TCP visiting researcher and writer Jianying Zha described the public apathy in China over the recent leadership succession in a November 11, 2002, New York Times editorial. Steven Lewis discussed the many potential synergies between the economies of Houston and China in the Houston Chronicle and on Voice of America.

Lewis was also called upon to discuss the significance of Chinese basketball player Yao Ming’s hiring by the Houston Rockets in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, ESPN the Magazine, and on CNN after briefing the Rockets’ administrators and coaches on Chinese history and culture in September. “Houston is now known all over China,” said Lewis. “You can’t pay for publicity like that.” The efforts of a local franchise of the National Basketball Associ-ation to globalize parallel the worldly aspirations of China’s changing middle class.

“Chinese culture is changing in fundamental ways, as evidenced by advertisements geared toward a new generation of young people who identify less with national culture and more with a blend of European, Asian, and American values,” Lewis said. Yao represents that new generation and suddenly has become an important political, social, and cultural symbol.

Because he comes from the state-run sports system, Yao contributes to Chinese national pride in great athletes. Chinese urban youth are huge basketball fans, and Yao has the potential to inspire them. Because Yao has come to the United States to work and live independently, he serves as a reminder to Chinese that China is opening up to the world and is no longer a closed society. He will be a symbol of how Chinese work together with people from different societies, which is especially important for younger generations of Chinese who must grow up in a post-WTO economy.

The Transnational China Project examines how the circulation of people, ideas, values, and technologies among Chinese societies affects contemporary Chinese culture. Reports, transcripts, audio files, and extensive image archives from workshops and public lectures can be found on the project’s bilingual website, http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~tnchina. The website continues to receive awards and acclaim. Recently, a report by the Center for Research Libraries at the University of Chicago listed the TCP’s digital image archive as a major resource in the study of mass communication in the People’s Republic of China.

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