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Strategies & Market Trends : China Warehouse- More Than Crockery -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RealMuLan who wrote (4390)	2/13/2005 8:56:17 PM
From: RealMuLan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6370

In era of conspicuous consumption, China's rich wary of displaying wealth BEIJING: The week-long Lunar New Year holiday should be a grand opportunity for China's nouveaux riches to display their wealth, but a set of unique factors is preventing conspicuous consumption from taking off. Culture and even genetics are being cited by local observers as a reason why well-heeled Chinese keep a low profile, and on top comes the constant threat of the taxman and the criminal underworld. "If there has been a widely reported celebrity kidnapping, our customers might be a bit concerned for a while," said a manager at an outlet for German luxury car maker BMW in Beijing. "After a while, they forget." The kidnapping of famous TV actor Wu Ruofu as he left a Beijing bar one evening last year attracted widespread attention, even if Wu escaped unharmed and three perpetrators were later sentenced to death. Wu was far from the only wealthy Chinese targeted by kidnappers, according to statistics from the ministry of public security. The ministry said it recorded 3,863 kidnappings last year, one quarter of which remained unsolved, describing entrepreneurs, celebrities or their children as typical targets. Kidnappings may just be the most violent expression of a more widespread culture of jealousy permeating Chinese society. Especially in the early reform period, Chinese were afraid to show off their wealth, according to David Zweig, a China expert at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. "They would get vandalism, they would get beaten up. They felt uncomfortable in an egalitarian society," he said. "There's some opposition to people getting rich. People believe they get rich not because of hard work, but because they have used their connections." After 25 years of roaring market economics, the attitude has changed somewhat, reflected in the consumer fest that unfolds in big Chinese cities throughout each Lunar New Year. "Chinese New Year is the peak selling time across the country -- whether in small electronics or oranges or Louis Vuitton bags," said Peter Black, director of consumption forecasting at research agency Jigsaw International. Even so, a multitude of potential pitfalls remain for China's top income brackets. Criminals and envious neighbors are not the only menace that the nation's millionaires must take into account before they decide if driving that super-expensive car or wearing that French-tailored outfit is really worth it. The government has deeply ambivalent views of the opulent classes, as campaigns to protect the rich intermingle with drives to ensure they do not get off the hook too easily. Periodic waves of investigations are launched into the personal fortunes of wealthy citizens for tax purposes, as movie actress Liu Xiaoqing found out to her chagrin when spending a year in jail on fraud suspicions in 2002 and 2003. "On the one hand, the authorities don't want to dampen enthusiasm for becoming rich," said Stan Rosen, a political scientist at University of Southern California. "But on the other hand, they have to be aware that there is a lot of animosity among people who don't make money." Local observers have scoured their country's long history for clues about special Chinese attitudes towards huge wealth, and have come up with surprising results. The nation's rich do not ever want to show off their wealth, the observers now claim, citing the very long-term impact of ancient philosopher Confucius. "Confucius' doctrine of the Golden Mean promotes a humble, calm way of life," an anonymous commentator wrote on state-run Xinhua news agency's website. "Thus formed the Chinese people's unique psychological quality of disliking self-publicity." This culturally determined unwillingness to display wealth is so ingrained that it has become part of the average Chinese person's DNA, the commentator claimed. "The accumulation of such quantitative changes eventually leads to qualitative changes, or gene mutation," the commentator wrote. "When the mutated genes were inherited, the disinclination towards wealth exposure was passed on." That may be so, but mutated genes are not easily observable in some of the luxury stores in China's big cities. "Nothing is being kept too secret here," said a sales clerk at a Beijing Giorgio Armani outlet. "In this city, it's not unusual for people to spend 10,000 or 20,000 yuan (1,200 or 2,400 dollars) on a thing they like." - AFP channelnewsasia.com