Humble Comrades: Anti-Corruption and the Dual Moralities of Private Consumption and Public Presentation Among the Chinese Rich

Xi Jinping’s anti-extravagance/corruption campaign launched in late 2012 has turned the daily realities of Chinese officials and business people instantaneously. While those officials investigated for corruption were removed from office in the efforts to “clean up” the communist party, the widespread and culturally ingrained gift-giving and consumption practices with the business community have also acquired new meanings of illegitimacy in the public perception. Despite these new interpretation given to old practices, such official renunciation of extravagance, has not in reality replaced the private logics of consumption that have taken off to provide the language of self-worth demonstration and invidious distinction for the Chinese elite. Instead, consumption as a means to building guanxi as well as demonstrating self-worth has been repackaged by the Chinese elites through a navigation between the two contradictory worlds of official politics and consumption.

In this paper, we utilize ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with 34 Chinese business elites in Guangdong, as well as the framework of “moral economy” to document the affluent Chinese’s daily negotiation between the worlds of new political representation and private consumption and the collective transformation in the forms of conspicuous consumption. We particularly document the emergent contradictory logics that lead to simultaneous justification of current conspicuous consumption and gift exchange culture but also its curtailment. The Chinese tradition of “li shang wang lai” is upheld and justified as needed to maintain business status: it is continued to be viewed as proper behavior based on reciprocity. Yet, these behaviors are taking place, often in more stealth “underground” settings. In addition, consumption of less ostentatious luxury goods, goods emphasizing “Chinese-ness” or associated with Chinese culture has been rejuvenated, against the background of the anti-extravagance campaign. These documentations together suggest the contextual nature of consumption and its change and reformulation on the one hand through politically-fueled “moral discourses,” yet the resilience of the consumption logics that have taken place over the past decades on the other hand that have married traditional notions of status display, exchange, and reciprocity with organized commercial developments.