Has China become a consumer society?
- Source: Global Times
- [21:07 August 04 2009]
- Comments
Editor’s Note:
The world economy has changed a lot, and so have lifestyles and consumption habits. Professor Desjeux Dominique from the University of Paris, director of the research center for cross-cultural applied sociology, participated in an online discussion held by Qiangguo Forum (http://bbs1.people. com.cn) of people.com.cn with Chinese netizens on July 22 on changing lifestyles and new consumption patterns. The interview was translated by Xuyang Jingjing.
Desjeux Dominique (center). Photo: Zhang Shengjun
Q: What’s the difference between Chinese and Europeans in terms of consumption patterns, and why?
Dominique: China today is quite similar to Europe in the 1950s and 1960s or the US in the 1920s. The middle classes spend a lot on home applicances and furnishing. Chinese are different from Europeans or Americans in that they save a lot more. Americans only started to save since the financial crisis, and the savings rate in Europe has always been low. China has long had a high savings rate but low purchasing power. That’s not a big problem though.
Q: The world economy needs consumption, but overconsumption can lead to financial crisis. How should we balance the two?
Dominique: The French government reduces consumption through taxation. For instance, the price of dairy products not only includes the direct cost, but also transportation and environment tax, such as carbon dioxide tax. The whole industrial chain – manufacturing companies, transportation industry and consumers – is actually paying for the products.
Social development is a triangle whose three sides are social fairness, economy and environment. It’s hard to balance the three.
Pursue social fairness and stimulate consumption, you damage the environment; whereas development might cause social unfairness. The three depend on and restrain each other. For instance, to protect the environment you need to invest more, which means less input for social fairness; if you increase tax on companies, you reduce the wealth they create.
Q: How do the consumption habits and lifestyles differ in industrial and agricultural societies? What about in an information society?
Dominique: That’s an interesting question. First the industrial and agricultural societies have different food consumption habits. The former uses processed food, while the latter doesn’t. Another difference is that since people eat more primary food in an agricultural society, they spend more time processing it. Therefore women spend lots of time cooking. In an industrial society, however, the processed food saves time so that women have more time for entertainment.
I shot a video at a Carrefour in Guangzhou. In China we can find both traditional and processed food. Not only can we see traditionally prepared products in supermarkets, but also imported, industrially processed products. But today European and US consumers prefer non-processed food.
The most important aspect of the information society is computers and the Internet. For European families, the most important room is the living room where they have computers and Internet access through which people book tickets and get many other things done without leaving their home. To a certain extent, information society shares some similarities with agricultural society, as people’s living space is limited to the community or local areas.
