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Splurging overseas erodes moral fiber
By Wan Lixin |
January 11, 2013, Friday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
WE are in the midst of an unusually cold winter. We have seen so little sunshine lately that I no longer need to be concerned when I last watered the potted plants at home.
Everything seems to have shifted to low gear, except for those rushing from home to home on their motorbikes with carts full of packages - I mean the delivery men, predominantly migrants in the prime of their life. The hustle and bustle of these delivery men are a relatively new ornament in the urban landscape.
The easy availability of migrant workers - sometimes euphemized as "demographic dividend" - has created a revolution probably unique to urban China: online shopping.
Some urbanites are now in the habit of ordering virtually everything online - from big-ticket items like air-conditioners and refrigerators, to daily necessities like oil, rice, salt, and sauces. A few clicks are all that takes.
It remains a mystery to me how these online vendors manage to have things sent to your home at prices markedly lower than if you buy these items at traditional stores.
A few weeks ago I ordered 2,500 yuan (US$401) worth of books online from Amazon.cn at an average 60 percent discount. The company had these items delivered to my home separately in 12 parcels, at no extra charges. I found one book slightly soiled, and with a few clicks, I ordered a replacement, and in less than four hours, on a rainy afternoon, another delivery man knocked at my home with the replacement.
Bliss is it in this dawn to be alive, but to be wired is very heaven!
So I found it bewildering to learn that some privileged Chinese, instead of enjoying this amenity, are traveling far and wide outside the country to burn their money.
An article titled "Implications of voracious Chinese shopping sprees overseas" (Beijing News, January 7) points to the loss of Chinese wealth caused by these new rich snapping up real estate, luxury watches, and branded handbags in America and Europe.
"Make money in China - and then spend it overseas - has become the new paradigm for China's newly minted rich, at a time when slowed growth and the need for economic restructuring badly needs the new rich to spend at home to boost domestic demand," the article observed.
Citing a Washington Post report, the paper disclosed that last year Chinese tourists spent US$85 billion overseas, 76 percent higher than in 2011.
Surprisingly, though such shopping sprees cannot but be welcome palliatives in debt-ridden Europe, or in he US which remains on the brink of a cliff, big-spending Chinese are viewed with thinly veiled disdain by those assumed to be thankful for these splurges.
Some high-end shops in Europe have gone so far as to pronounce Chinese customers persona non grata. In a recent commentary, Xinhua pointed out, "Unfortunately, a number of Western businesses took the windfall for granted and failed to reward Chinese shoppers with warm treatment and basic respect."
On the face of it, this complaint is well-grounded. But notwithstanding my natural sympathies towards our maltreated nouveaux riches compatriots, I do know that respect is best earned, not extorted. And while I do not know how their conduct should incur such enmity in alien lands, I do know how they are perceived at home, which may be a hint of how they may behave elsewhere.
Nothing but money
Well, the mention of upstarts immediately brings to mind the unflattering image of coalmine bosses and real estate developers, because no officials like to advertise their wealth these days. To overwork a cliche, some of them belong to a class so destitute that they possess nothing but money.
Being reckless, they stand to gain by fully exploiting regulatory loopholes, by making full use of the power-money nexus, and by giving or taking bribes.
In the Confucian canon, The Great Learning, it is observed that "wealth, gotten by improper ways, will take its departure by the same."
As some of the upstarts have amassed their wealth illegally, they feel somewhat constrained to flaunt their ill-gotten gains at home, though all rich people have a natural instinct to set themselves apart. That explains why in the freedom of alien lands, some Chinese upstarts prefer to indulge in conspicuous consumption with their easy money.
Some are in the mistaken belief that in materialistic Western societies wealth is necessarily a source of honor, and the way to make wealth visible is to spend it wastefully. Their lack of familiarity with Western history makes it impossible for them to realize that such blatant acts of consumption are not consistent even with the quintessential spirit of capitalism.
In Max Weber's "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" (1905), he observed, "The campaign against the temptations of the flesh, and the dependence on external things, was ... not a struggle against the rational acquisition, but against the irrational use of wealth."
This irrational use was exemplified by the outward forms of luxury that their code condemned as "idolatry of the flesh." Strangely, the excesses of these suspect elements of our society are increasingly seen innocuously in an economic light, as a net loss in our GDP, while their contribution to the decay of moral fiber, the gaping income disparity and myriad other problems becomes largely irrelevant.
Devoid of moral judgment, these big spenders naturally become the new role models, and their behavior is the cue for those less endowed to emulate their wasteful lifestyle because consumption power becomes the salient feature of social power and prosperity.
The modern citizens are those ready to take on debt, rather than those ready to save. The closest thing to paradise we can imagine is a state in which everybody is willing to spend, ideally on borrowed money.
It's high time we go beyond mere economics in diagnosing the health of our national consciousness.
Everything seems to have shifted to low gear, except for those rushing from home to home on their motorbikes with carts full of packages - I mean the delivery men, predominantly migrants in the prime of their life. The hustle and bustle of these delivery men are a relatively new ornament in the urban landscape.
The easy availability of migrant workers - sometimes euphemized as "demographic dividend" - has created a revolution probably unique to urban China: online shopping.
Some urbanites are now in the habit of ordering virtually everything online - from big-ticket items like air-conditioners and refrigerators, to daily necessities like oil, rice, salt, and sauces. A few clicks are all that takes.
It remains a mystery to me how these online vendors manage to have things sent to your home at prices markedly lower than if you buy these items at traditional stores.
A few weeks ago I ordered 2,500 yuan (US$401) worth of books online from Amazon.cn at an average 60 percent discount. The company had these items delivered to my home separately in 12 parcels, at no extra charges. I found one book slightly soiled, and with a few clicks, I ordered a replacement, and in less than four hours, on a rainy afternoon, another delivery man knocked at my home with the replacement.
Bliss is it in this dawn to be alive, but to be wired is very heaven!
So I found it bewildering to learn that some privileged Chinese, instead of enjoying this amenity, are traveling far and wide outside the country to burn their money.
An article titled "Implications of voracious Chinese shopping sprees overseas" (Beijing News, January 7) points to the loss of Chinese wealth caused by these new rich snapping up real estate, luxury watches, and branded handbags in America and Europe.
"Make money in China - and then spend it overseas - has become the new paradigm for China's newly minted rich, at a time when slowed growth and the need for economic restructuring badly needs the new rich to spend at home to boost domestic demand," the article observed.
Citing a Washington Post report, the paper disclosed that last year Chinese tourists spent US$85 billion overseas, 76 percent higher than in 2011.
Surprisingly, though such shopping sprees cannot but be welcome palliatives in debt-ridden Europe, or in he US which remains on the brink of a cliff, big-spending Chinese are viewed with thinly veiled disdain by those assumed to be thankful for these splurges.
Some high-end shops in Europe have gone so far as to pronounce Chinese customers persona non grata. In a recent commentary, Xinhua pointed out, "Unfortunately, a number of Western businesses took the windfall for granted and failed to reward Chinese shoppers with warm treatment and basic respect."
On the face of it, this complaint is well-grounded. But notwithstanding my natural sympathies towards our maltreated nouveaux riches compatriots, I do know that respect is best earned, not extorted. And while I do not know how their conduct should incur such enmity in alien lands, I do know how they are perceived at home, which may be a hint of how they may behave elsewhere.
Nothing but money
Well, the mention of upstarts immediately brings to mind the unflattering image of coalmine bosses and real estate developers, because no officials like to advertise their wealth these days. To overwork a cliche, some of them belong to a class so destitute that they possess nothing but money.
Being reckless, they stand to gain by fully exploiting regulatory loopholes, by making full use of the power-money nexus, and by giving or taking bribes.
In the Confucian canon, The Great Learning, it is observed that "wealth, gotten by improper ways, will take its departure by the same."
As some of the upstarts have amassed their wealth illegally, they feel somewhat constrained to flaunt their ill-gotten gains at home, though all rich people have a natural instinct to set themselves apart. That explains why in the freedom of alien lands, some Chinese upstarts prefer to indulge in conspicuous consumption with their easy money.
Some are in the mistaken belief that in materialistic Western societies wealth is necessarily a source of honor, and the way to make wealth visible is to spend it wastefully. Their lack of familiarity with Western history makes it impossible for them to realize that such blatant acts of consumption are not consistent even with the quintessential spirit of capitalism.
In Max Weber's "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" (1905), he observed, "The campaign against the temptations of the flesh, and the dependence on external things, was ... not a struggle against the rational acquisition, but against the irrational use of wealth."
This irrational use was exemplified by the outward forms of luxury that their code condemned as "idolatry of the flesh." Strangely, the excesses of these suspect elements of our society are increasingly seen innocuously in an economic light, as a net loss in our GDP, while their contribution to the decay of moral fiber, the gaping income disparity and myriad other problems becomes largely irrelevant.
Devoid of moral judgment, these big spenders naturally become the new role models, and their behavior is the cue for those less endowed to emulate their wasteful lifestyle because consumption power becomes the salient feature of social power and prosperity.
The modern citizens are those ready to take on debt, rather than those ready to save. The closest thing to paradise we can imagine is a state in which everybody is willing to spend, ideally on borrowed money.
It's high time we go beyond mere economics in diagnosing the health of our national consciousness.
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