Consumer culture within China is rightly agreed to go against the grain of what China is founded on. The principle of sharing, collective earning and distribution have been out of fashion since before Deng Xiaoping declared that it was OK for some people to “get rich first” and that this was “glorious”.
For a start, this stance smacks of the Orwellian parody of Animal Farm where some members of society are more equal than others: distinctly un-socialist. Secondly, it suggests that China has embraced money and that it is all China needs to build and improve itself.
However, China has not embraced money in its entirety. The Chinese are still anxious to consider money as purely a token, a voucher given from a employing party that is wholly considered as thanks for a job already done. This is a very basic concept of money.
Money is still viewed as a medium that allows the user to avoid having to go somewhere to swap their goat for a collection of vegetables. It is a representation of wealth that can be stuffed into a mattress. It serves basically as a common denominator to tot up company profits as well as the losses that the Big Four Banks commonly make.
The fragile trust in money is commonly observable in the fact that most places require cash in payment, often even in government institutions. It is less observable but still evident in the fact that China typically saves 40% of every Yuan that its residents make. It seems that trust in peoples’ money within China is not widely accepted enough for people to readily accept deferred payments.
Clearly then there is a dislocation between what money represents and what its role is in the Chinese economy. There is still a great distrust in credit and indeed credit is not as widely available as it should be to allow China to grow over a credit period. This is because of unstable incomes (especially amongst migrant workers who greatly need credit) but also because of the ingrained Confucian belief that “riches and honors depend upon heaven” and one cannot have more than what they have.
China’s credit industry is grappling with this systemic lack of financial trust. It is a fledgling industry that still has much to achieve across the span of a vast population that already has 142 million credit cards (Feng, 2009). Whilst the prevalence of traditional thoughts and the current financial infrastructure suggest that China is not ready for readily-available credit, cogs are turning and big players are working towards changes.
The government is expected to back greater access to credit. However, the CCP will be mindful of another well-known Confucian saying: “In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of”.
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December 16th, 2009
I do believe that Mr Court has highlighted a key point about chinese monies in that “Money is still viewed as a medium that allows the user to avoid having to go somewhere to swap their goat for a collection of vegetables” as it would be awfully difficult taking a goat to the market. Where would the market vendors store all of these goats?