Brand New China - Advertising Media and Commercial Culture

(An Excerpt)

Commercial advertising returned to the People's Republic of China in 1979. What was once a young, unstable sector has mutated, in big strides since then, into an industry with a total billing of USD$15 billion in 2004, a 17.2% growth from the previous year, making up 0.93% of China's GDP and an impressive 2.9% of the country's tertiary sector (Guang Xuan, 2005, 15). The sheer size and scale of the Middle Kingdom lies behind its growth miracle. As of 2004, there were 76,210 ad agencies, 13,105 corporate in-house advertising units, and 9,425 advertising media. A total number of personnel employed soared from 700,000 in 2001 to 913,832 in 2004 (ibid.).

It was commonly known that commercial advertising in China was nipped in the bud during Mao's era. Many regard the rampant consumer culture today a total mockery of the Communist revolution and stress on the "discontinuity" of Mao's China and reform China. It is easy to exaggerate that perception, however, and thus dismissing the deeper connections between those two periods. Channel strategies like Wahaha's "spider warfare"--"countryside surrounding the city"--lie at the very heart of marketing with Chinese characteristics (Chapter 3); corporate branding of star enterprises like Lenovo and Haier relied heavily on the disciplining power of corporatized Mao-speak and the Chairman's famed ideology of the "permanent revolution" (Chapter 4). Those business models have flourished and prepared ambitious Chinese super brands to go global, reminding us of the stubbornness of the history of Chinese socialism. Those who overlook its roots and underestimate its flexibility will find the China market hard to crack.

Brand New China brings us to a close encounter with that market: its idiosyncrasies like the above, as well as characteristics of its ascendancy in parallel to what we saw happening in post-affluent Western societies. Complete with an analysis of the bobos fever and the single-child generation in pursuit of "safe cool," this book takes a critical look at contemporary Chinese advertising and examines branded phenomena in China--from product brands to corporate brands--how they were done and what kind of challenges they posed to international advertising and to cultural and business globalization. What is the "new China" like in the wake of its accession to the WTO? Opinions are sharply divided, with some predicting the "demise of the authoritarian state" while others consider the Chinese accession a global self-promotion hardly putting a dent on the state's capacity to control (Keane and Donald et al., 2002, 208). With few exceptions like Zhao Yuezhi's longer view on China's integration into global capitalism (Zhao, 2003), critical literature on the WTO challenge tends to reinforce the Cold-War mentality by treating the globalizing China either as the communist "other" or as a foe involuntarily losing it identity to become one of "us." Post-2001 China, this book illustrates, is under the heavy influence of the ideology of global partnership while struggling not to become a mirror image of the United States. "Country branding" is more challenging than ever, and the emerging brand new China eludes ideological preconceptions.