This wide-ranging collection of essays by leading sociologists on the new consumerism of post-economic-reform China is an important contribution to our understanding of Chinese society and culture.

As China searches for a new identity, its people find themselves bombarded with countless consumer products and services from around the world. But what do they want to buy? What is their spending power? What are their aspirations? How do they spend? This fascinating book provides the first comprehensive analysis of China's complex consumer market. China: The Consumer Revolution discusses cultural issues and socioeconomic forces, fads and fashions, do's and taboos, all supported by a wealth of facts and figures.

Combining economic trends with the author’s anthropological background, China’s New Consumers details the livelihoods and lifestyles of China's new and evolving social categories.

Consumerism in China has developed rapidly. The Changing Landscape of China's Consumerism looks at the growth of consumerism in China from both a socio-economic and a political/cultural angle. It examines changing trends in consumption in China as well as the impact of these trends on society, and the politics and culture surrounding them. It examines the ways in which, despite needing to "unlock" the spending power of the rural provinces, the Chinese authorities are also keen to maintain certain attitudes towards the Communist Party and socialism "with Chinese Characteristics." Overall, it aims to show that consumerism in China today is both an economic and political phenomenon and one which requires both surrounding political culture and economic trends for its continued establishment. The ways in which this dual relationship both supports and battles with itself are explored through apposite case studies including the use of New Confucianism in the market context, the commodification of Lei Feng, the new Chinese tourist as a diplomatic tool in consumption, the popularity of Shanzhai (fake product) culture, and the conspicuous consumption of China's new middle class. - Provides innovative interdisciplinary research, useful to cultural studies, sociology, Chinese studies, and politics - Examines changes in consumerism from multiple perspectives - Allows both micro and macro insights into consumerism in China by providing specific case studies, while placing these within the context of geo-politics and grand theory

What forces shaped the twentieth-century world? Capitalism and communism are usually seen as engaged in a fight-to-the-death during the Cold War. With the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party aimed to end capitalism. Karl Gerth argues that despite the socialist rhetoric of class warfare and egalitarianism, Communist Party policies actually developed a variety of capitalism and expanded consumerism. This negated the goals of the Communist Revolution across the Mao era (1949–1976) down to the present. Through topics related to state attempts to manage what people began to desire - wristwatches and bicycles, films and fashion, leisure travel and Mao badges - Gerth challenges fundamental assumptions about capitalism, communism, and countries conventionally labeled as socialist. In so doing, his provocative history of China suggests how larger forces related to the desire for mass-produced consumer goods reshaped the twentieth-century world and remade people's lives.

The danwei (workunit) has been the fundamental social and spatial unit of urban China under socialism. With particular focus on the link between spatial forms and social organization, this book traces the origins and development of this critical institution up to the present day.

This book explores young people’s experiences of, and views on, dating, gender, sexuality, sexual hegemony and violence within dating relationships. Based on interviews and focus groups conducted in Beijing over a decade, and focusing especially on dating violence, the book reveals provides insights into a wide range of issues of gender and sexuality in contemporary China. It shows how young Chinese people’s attitudes and behaviors are changing as urban China develops rapidly, and how their experience of dating violence and meaning-making are affected by age, gender, location and class.