The Power of the Purse: Chinese Women and Consumption

The Power of the Purse: Chinese Women and Consumption
Apr 09, 2012 By Micah Steffes , eChinacities.com

Call it the downfall of Chinese society or call it harmless materialism. If you like, you can call it a corrosive consumerism gnawing away at the root of an already decaying morality. But some call it the rise of the Chinese woman in her own society and in the world. Though it makes a person wonder – if a designer handbag is the Chinese analogue to the shoulder-padded powersuit of the high-flying 1980s urban female, what is the significance of this symbol in real terms? In other words, what is the power of a Chinese woman's purse?

A portrait of the consumer as a young woman

According to China Daily, in 2006, urban Chinese women spent 30% of their incomes on consumer goods. In just four years, in spite of a global economic crisis, that figure ballooned to 63%. Clothing topped the list of purchases over the four years surveyed, while their savings rate plunged over that time period from 55% to 24%. In the years since that savings rate has surely sunk further – this in a country with a reputation for penny-pinching.

What sensibility could possibly explain such willingness to spend such large swaths of one's hard-earned income on make-up, shoes and bags (especially given that just 2000 to 3000 RMB is starting salary for college grads in most cities)? You could dismiss it as foolish vanity, which was my original response. Or how about a more complex explanation: a naive lack of foresight, a childish sense of novelty, and an uncommon degree of insecurity, which when taken together make comparatively spoiled urban women all too readily exploitable by the flood of companies scrambling to seize the (almost mythical) opportunities presented by the Chinese market. Would we be short-changing urban Chinese women if we left it at that?

Perhaps. It's clear that to some degree or another all consumers the world over, “spoiled” or not, naively conflate material possession with a specific standard of living, one that comes with a kind of romance that we're all susceptible to. It's the dream we buy when we buy into advertisement, targeted as it is to our sense of lacking, presenting as it does an alternate future in which that lacking is accounted for by the enticingly concrete action of buying something.

In that sense, whether Chinese women's choices as consumers are sensible or childish is an unfair question. We're all buying based on some complex personal calculus that necessarily involves a degree of insecurity and projection. In the most general sense, the power of the purse is the same for all of us – to make ourselves more comfortable both materially and psychologically.

So how do urban Chinese women themselves think about their spending? A big indicator is the language of “living standard” and “quality of life” that women employ to explain their consumption. There is a striking certitude among especially younger women that material possession goes hand in hand with self-improvement. Ownership means enhancement, enhancement means advancement.

Then there's the undeniable aspect of novelty. But before you dismiss novelty as naiveté, consider that the ability to afford such purchases – even, (maybe especially) if affording means a degree of sacrifice – represents a new kind of agency. In that sense, consumption probably does involve a life enrichment that urban women can sense in a deep and gratifying way. Importantly and to my point, in addition to apparel and cosmetics, women primarily express a desire to spend on travel. According to the 2009 Annual Report on Chinese Women's State of Life three in four surveyed wished to spend their money on just that as they were heading into 2010, which was the second-highest expenditure (after clothing) on consumer goods according to the next year's report. Similar findings indicate that the process of allocating such a large percentage of income to consumer goods reflects not so much an image of a shallow consumer, but a consumer who desires to participate in the world and has grasped at consumption as a means to that end.

She who holds the purse strings

In a 2010 report, Mastercard Worldwide projected that the purchasing power of childless young Chinese women is likely to continue booming in a projected rise from $180 billion in 2005 to $260 billion by 2015. Similarly, female empty-nesters (women with grown children) can expect their total purchasing power to grow from $100 billion in 2005 to $150 billion by 2015. The numbers clearly matter to advertising and marketing firms – a rush to understand the Chinese female consumer has paralleled the growth of their wallets.

But what does it matter to anyone else? We're talking about the empowerment of a significant percentage of the world's population here and the fate of a nation whose economy is an ever-significant factor in global economic well-being. Here's the bottom line: in their newfound agency as consumers and the social value that is bestowed accordingly, Chinese women are doing something significant for themselves and for their nation.

There are several dimensions and possibilities encompassed by this kind of influence. For one, urban women helped China weather the storm of the global economic crisis not only by responding enthusiastically to the stimulus but by actually refusing to spend less. Some surveys indicated that urban Chinese women felt it was a duty of sorts to keep spending, signifying an empowering awareness of their own economic weight.

Consider also that if Chinese women continue growing into savvier consumers, their dual concern for price and brand (as compared to Chinese men whose spending habits translate more strongly into a tendency to consider brand in spite, if not in light of price) means that in demanding more, Chinese women will decide if China can eventually develop better domestic products that can compete within China and ultimately internationally. The modest success of the Shanghai-based cosmetic brand Herborist is an example of the possibilities. Ultimately, China will require many more such brands to support the domestically strong market they will need in the long run.

Cosmetics aside, Chinese women don't just shop for themselves, a fact not to be forgotten. They buy for baby, for mom and dad, in-laws and often for their partners. The Chinese economy depends on women performing this role and reliance of the family and the state on women and their purchasing decisions continues to confer a reciprocal degree of respect and power.

Women won't single-handedly land the Chinese economy in the safe zone. Nor am I saying that the combination of urban Chinese women's purchasing power with the value of their spending habits constitutes some kind of women's lib movement. Ultimately, what I mean to say is this: if rising tides do indeed lift all boats, urban women are at the helms.

A writerly conclusion

So back to my original question:

Q: What is the power of a Chinese woman's purse?
A: Whatever the power of what it contains.
Q: Well, what can you fit in a designer bag?
A: Ask any Chinese woman who has scrounged and saved month upon month or year upon year to afford one. “A good designer purse can hold girly products, face wipes, gadgets, a compact mirror and dreams,” she may answer. “Yes. If the clothes make the man, then the shoes, the dress, the makeup, the hair, the nose, the evening plans, the travel plans, the plans you make on that touch screen doo-dad, the one that fits so nicely in your designer bag – that's what makes the woman,” the mirror testifies. “Indeed, women hold up half the sky,” she confirms.
 

Related links
10 Status Symbols in Modern China
Three Books on Modern Women in Modern China
What are You, Five? Chinese Women and Sa Jiao

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Keywords: Chinese women spending Chinese women and consumption the rise of the Chinese woman living standards China cultural expectations Chinese women

1 Comments

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Mike有

"Q: What is the power of a Chinese woman's purse?
A: Whatever the power of what it contains."

My gosh that's weak.

Apr 09, 2012 11:13 Report Abuse