Determinants of the Origins and Development of Chinese Consumer Society

This thesis aims to answer when and why Chinese consumer culture emerged, as well as identify key determinants of its evolution. With regards to contemporary development, this thesis also answers whether the existence of current Chinese consumer society is in accordance with communist government policy. The main methods used to answer these questions are the explorative and descriptive methods. Consumer culture emerged in China long before the reforms instituted in 1978. The National Products Movement, which stimulated domestic consumption and the development of the domestic consumer industry, established the 1920s and 1930s as the era of Chinese mass consumerism. However, this development was interrupted after the establishment of the communist regime in China in 1949. Therefore, modern consumerism, which had appeared worldwide in the 1950s, only began to appear in China thirty years later. Today, Chinese consumer culture is a fully developed Western-type consumer culture. However, political and economic factors were the paramount factors, instead of cultural specifics. In the early twentieth century, support for consumer culture was instrumental towards domestic industry support and the modernization of a backward and traditional society. In the new millennium, as economic policy shifts beyond the pro-export model due to rising Chinese labor costs, growing domestic consumption is now perceived as the main economic stimulus for domestic economic growth.