Ullekh N P, ET Bureau May 5, 2013, 05.32AM IST
("With the title [Anxious Wealth] I wanted to convey the sense that although Chinas new rich have benefited financially in the post-Mao years, their position in Chinese society is highly precarious in many ways)Rochester University professor John Osburg spent several years learning Chinese in Beijing before he took up a job as a local TV host to get up, close and personal with China's reclusive new rich. His new book, Anxious Wealth: Money, Morality, and Social Networks Among China's New Elite, captures the precarious nature of the lives of those people. In an interview with ET, Osburg talks about China's "beauty economy", communist control and troubles brewing in that country.
How extensive was your research for your book, "Anxious Wealth"? How do you describe the experience of writing it?
Prior to formally starting my research, I spent four years studying Chinese in graduate school (including three summers of intensive language training in Beijing). Then I spent more than three years in Chengdu conducting fieldwork. That length of time was necessary for me to develop relationships of trust with my research informants. Starting out I was faced with the problem of how to access a relatively secretive, elite group of people. The solution for me was a job I took as the co-host of a local television show. The show profiled several local businesses and real estate developments. Through my work at the show, I was able to meet several wealthy entrepreneurs who then introduced me to their friends and associates. Once I had a core group of informants I quit my job at the show and started full-time research supported by several grants I received. This was about halfway through my time in Chengdu.
Writing proved relatively easy as I had so much data to draw from and a lot of memorable stories which served as the launching off point for my discussion of other issues.
You talk about China's new affluent class and the "masculinisation" of private business in that country. Are there historical similarities that came to your mind while handling stories of such massive inequalities over income and gender?
There are many similarities between what's happened in China in over the past few decades and what's happened in post-socialist Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. There are also many ways in which China's nouveau riche fit into the classic model of nouveau riche at other moments in history--profound status anxiety, bad reputation, political precariousness, etc. But what makes the rise of profound economic and gender inequality in the post-Mao period so interesting is that it follows the Maoist period in which the entire political and ideological apparatus was committed to addressing the exact forms of inequality that have arisen in the post-Mao period. There's a saying that captures this irony, "We shed blood, sweat, and tears for 30 years only to return to the old society." It rhymes in Chinese--Xinxinkuku sanshinian, zuihou huidao jiefang qian.
Did you coin the expression, "beauty economy"? How bad is commericialisation of women in communist China of today?
I didn't coin the term. I think it was coined by Chinese journalists. It refers to the use of young, attractive women in sales and all sorts of commercial promotions. This is a phenomenon you find in most capitalist countries so China is not unique in this regard. What really struck me was the ubiquity of financial terms and concepts in discussions of romantic, marital, and sexual relationships in China and the ways in which the commercial exploitation of women tended to overlap with the commodification of women more broadly as mistresses, sex workers, etc. For example, some of my interviewees referred to a woman serving as a mistress for several years in order to acquire capital for a business as a strategy of "primitive accumulation". Other interviewees referred to women's youth as beauty as forms of capital and resources that should be utilised before they went to waste. While some found this abhorrent, many others saw nothing wrong with this commercialisation, including many participants in the "beauty economy" themselves.
Do you see the current predicament as negative fallout of gaige kaifang (economic reforms launched in 1980 by Deng Xiaoping)? What are the similarities between China under the communist party and Russia under Putin?
I see it more as the stalling of gaige kaifang. At the start of gaige kaifang many thought that reforms would continue along the logic of greater openness and loosening of state control. While you've seen a profound retreat of the state in certain domains, state control has intensified in others. In the 90s the state sector of the economy was viewed as backward and moribund. Young people all wanted to go into business. Now the majority of recent college graduates want to work for the government for the security and perks they provide. As many have pointed out, China doesn't appear to be "in transition" to liberal democracy and free market capitalism but rather merely honing and perfecting its current version of authoritarian capitalism.
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-05-05/news/39042565_1_chengdu-china-chinese-journalists