From Boiling Water to Starbucks, Beijing’s latest Cultural Revolution - The transformation of courtesy and propriety in Beijing since the 1978 open-door reforms, in the foreground

From Boiling Water to Starbucks, Beijing’s latest Cultural Revolution

The transformation of courtesy and propriety in Beijing since the 1978 open-‐door reforms, in the foreground of China’s societal change,

seen from the perspective of young and educated Beijingers.

By Massimo Ferrari

Submitted to Birkbeck in accordance with the requirements of the degree M.Sc in Development Studies and Social Anthropology, GEDS, Birkbeck, University of London. Author’s Declaration The work presented in this dissertation was carried out in the Department of Geography, Environment and Development Studies, Birkbeck College, and is entirely my own except where other authors have been referred to and acknowledged in the text. It has not previously been submitted for a degree in this or any other university. The views expressed in this dissertation are my own, and not those of the University. Signed Massimo Ferrari Name and date in block capitals MASSIMO FERRARI 15th OCTOBER 2014 Word Count: 14,998 ABSTRACT

Inspired by informal observation of changes in social behaviour and personal propriety in Beijing in the 1980s and 2010s, this research assesses the view of young and educated Beijingers of the dynamics behind these changes, hypothesising government action and socio-‐economic development as key factors. The data gathered shed light on the wider transformation that occurred in Beijing, deeming overly simplistic the assumed connection between economic development and civilisation and inviting a parallel between the magnitude of the transformation observed and its wide-‐ranging scope: as deep were changes in manners and propriety in Beijing as wide was the breadth of societal change. This reveals a refreshing version of modernity that helps relativising this concept, moving away from the isomorphism between modernity and westernisation.

Massimo Ferrari – From Boiling Water to Starbucks, Beijing’s Latest Cultural Revolution Page ii of 73

To my wife Alexandra, supportive from the very beginning.

Massimo Ferrari – From Boiling Water to Starbucks, Beijing’s Latest Cultural Revolution Page iii of 73

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This paper ends six tremendously enriching years at Birkbeck College, during

which I have been accompanied by the constant company and support of my good

friend Tony Cornacchione, whom I thank for the sustenance year on year.

A heartfelt thanks to the thirty Beijingers ‘flag-‐bearers of Chinese modernity’, who

enthusiastically accepted to help me with my research: Amy, Bill, Claire, Colin,

David, Dong Ping, Echo, Felicia, Helen, Jen, Joey, Julian, Julie, Libby, Lin, Yang Jiao-‐

Maggie (杨娇) and Yang Xiao Guai, (杨小乖), Megan, Nancy, Nicole, Quinn, Sa

Maria, Sonya, Sophia, Sophie, Temperance, Tommy, Vince, Wency, Yun and my

friend Yang, who unknowingly inspired this work by embodying the amazing

transformation of Beijingers and making it visible to me upon my return to the city

in 2011.

A special mention for my supervisor Dr. Penny Vera-‐Sanso, without whom this

paper simply would have never been finished.

Massimo Ferrari – Student Number: 12510395 Page 1 of 73

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS 1

TABLE OF ILLUSTRATIONS 2

INTRODUCTION 3

2. METHODOLOGY 7 2.1 METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH 7 2.2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 8 2.3 RESEARCH METHOD 8 2.4 DATA ANALYSIS 10 2.5 ETHICS 11 2.6 CONSTRAINTS AND STRENGTHS 12

3. LITERATURE REVIEW 13 3.1 CHINESE-‐NESS 13 3.2 WENMING (文明) 15 3.3 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 16 3.4 THE STATE-‐CONSTRUCTION OF NORMALCY 18 3.4.1 BIOPOLITICS 18 3.4.2 THE WENMING MOVEMENT 19 3.4 SOCIO-‐ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION AND RESPECTABILITY 20

4. CONTEXT AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION 22 4.1 BEIJING IN THE 1980S 22 4.2 BEIJING IN THE 2010S 24 4.3 CHINESE-‐NESS 26 4.4 SOCIAL VALUES TRANSFORMATION 27 4.5 SUMMARY OF FINDINGS 28

5. BIOPOLITICS AND THE ROLE OF THE STATE 32 5.2 KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION BY MEANS OF POSTERS AND CAMPAIGNS 33 5.2.1 WENMING THROUGH POSTERS AND BILLBOARDS 33 5.2.2 WENMING THROUGH AD-‐HOC CAMPAIGNS 38 5.3 KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION BY MEANS OF FORMAL EDUCATION 40 5.4 SUMMARY OF FINDINGS 45

6. CONSUMER SOCIETY AND RESPECTABILITY 46 6.1 SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR: COURTESY AND POLITENESS 47 6.2 PROPRIETY 50 6.3 CONSUMER HABITS, ATTIRE AND LEISURE HABITS 53 6.4 SUMMARY OF FINDINGS 57

Massimo Ferrari – From Boiling Water to Starbucks, Beijing’s Latest Cultural Revolution. Page 2 of 73

7. CONCLUSION 59

8. BIBLIOGRAPHY 63 8.1 BOOKS AND JOURNAL ARTICLES 63 8.2 BOOKS REVIEWS 66 8.3 ILLUSTRATIONS 66 8.4 NEWSPAPER ARTICLES 66

9. APPENDIX 69 9.1 GLOSSARY 69 9.2 RELEVANT HISTORICAL DATES 69 9.3 OTHER NOTABLE CIVILISATION CAMPAIGNS 70

TABLE OF ILLUSTRATIONS

TABLE 1 – TRANSFORMATION IN PRIVACY EXPECTATIONS ......................................... 26 TABLE 2 – TRANSFORMATION IN QUEUING BEHAVIOUR ............................................... 30 TABLE 3 – THE MINGONG (民工). ................................................................................................ 35 TABLE 4 – PROMOTING WENMING WITH BILLBOARDS ................................................... 36 TABLE 5 – PROMOTING WENMING HARNESSING THE BEIJING SPIRIT .................... 37 TABLE 6 – TRANSFORMATION IN COMMUNICATION STYLE ......................................... 42 TABLE 7 – PROMOTING WENMING THROUGH EDUCATION ........................................... 43 TABLE 8 – PROMOTING WENMING IN PUBLIC BATHROOMS ......................................... 53 TABLE 9 – TRANSFORMATION IN FASHION AND ACCESSORIES .................................. 57


“When you are on a mountain….

you do not see its true shape”

CHINESE SAYING

INTRODUCTION

The study of a foreign culture allows us to break free from the cage that constrains

our thought, it permits the expansion of our agency beyond the limits imposed by

the history and culture that – as theorised by Bourdieu (1980) – we embody.

Through the study carried out in this research I question assumptions of the

correspondence between modernity and westernisation. I do so using the accounts

of young and educated Beijingers on the evolution of interpersonal behaviour and

general propriety in Beijing from 1978 to the present, in the foreground of the

emergence-‐construction of the modern Chinese citizen.

In the past three and a half decades, starting with the open-‐door reforms of 1978,

Beijing and the whole of China underwent enormous changes in social behaviour.

The differences in courtesy and propriety of Beijingers in the 1980s and those of

today cannot go unnoticed even to the most casual observer and happened in line


with the economic and infrastructural development of the whole country. These

changes occurred throughout China, but are most apparent in metropolitan areas,

particularly in Beijing, the context of which is the focus of this research.

Thinking of changes in courtesy and propriety as a linear progress from an

uncivilised to a civilised state is reductive and simplistic, if not outright wrong. The

assumption that underpins this text is that politeness, manners, courtesy and

propriety are not universal indicators of ethical behaviour but are merely

expression of social conditions and therefore historically and socially contingent.

The conclusion that Beijingers have become more civilised through exposure to

Western values, or by attaining a higher degree of development should therefore

be put aside in favour of a more comprehensive analysis which looks at the

transformation of Chinese society and the consequent shift in the values upon

which it is based, leading to a change in social behaviour which manifested itself

through changes in politeness, courtesy and propriety but also in other dimensions

– i.e. leisure habits, fashion, attire and sexual conduct.

We are therefore facing a new flavour of modernity, a type of Chinese modernity of

which the participants to this research are flag-‐bearers, that carries elements of

the country’s cultural heritage as well as the marks of its exposure to Western

values and of its turbulent 20th century history.

This paper considers the following two hypotheses, and analyses them on the basis

of the responses received from the interviews, of direct observation and of

secondary sources:

1 – That the Chinese government reshaped normality, inducing notions of civilised

behaviour through the orchestration of civilisation campaigns and the harnessing


of education and the media for the promotion of spiritual propriety, a kind of

morally upright and civilised existence, linking these notions to nationalistic

principles as well as – in Beijing – to the unifying banner of the Beijing spirit.

2 – That the country’s economic development changed the way in which citizens

compete for social capital (Bourdieu 1986). Borrowing from Elias’ theory (2000),

and in part from Veblen’s theory of conspicuous consumption (Trigg 2012), this

view is founded on the social repercussions of the emergence of a class of citizens

with superior financial means and access to education.

Elias argues that civilised behaviour is a social construct, expression of the

competition for social capital (Bourdieu 1986): according to this view the

emerging classes in China sought to differentiate themselves from less advantaged

ones by adopting different customs and habits, including manners and politeness.

This generated in the lower classes a desire to associate themselves with the more

advantaged ones, thus producing a dynamic of emulation and differentiation

centred on the acquisition of social capital, fuelled by exposure to foreign influence

and the media, which in its progression generated ever more refined behaviour.

The postulates introduced here thus present the modern Chinese citizen –

personified by the body of participants to this research – as the product of a

politico-‐mediatic construction and of a socio-‐economic phenomenon.

From the perspective of this dichotomy of spontaneous emergence vs. construction

of a modern Chinese citizen, it is easier to understand the latter not as prey of a


conflict between traditional and western values, but rather as a representative of

Chinese modernity, embodied in the idea of New Confucianism (Yu 2008).

This attests the relativity of the concept of modernity, showing that modernity is a

not a point of arrival that Western civilisation has attained but it is a set of

historically contingent and socially constructed circumstances. From this relativist

standpoint, discussing Chinese modernity in positivist terms appears as

inappropriate as it is to talk of universal modernity: Chinese modernity too

commands to be regarded as a set of circumstances.

Consequently we can distinguish between modernity and westernisation, negating

attempts to analyse civilisation in universalistic terms. Breaking this dichotomy

exposes the fragility of arguments that China is behind or ahead of the West and

casts a shadow of relativity on the concept of modernity, helping, as Bourdieu

would argue (Bourdieu 1980), to expand the boundaries that encage our thought

and expanding the concept of modernity beyond the mere idea of Westernisation.

This introduction is followed by a literature review that visits the concepts of

Chinese-‐ness and wenming (Chinese civilisation), presents the relevant historical

context, and the literature concerning the above hypotheses. The remaining three

chapters cover respectively: the first presents a two-‐fold illustration of Beijing in

the 1980s and in the 2010s, then explores Chinese-‐ness and Beijing’s social

transformation, the second investigates state-‐driven reshaping of normality – i.e.

biopolitics – and the third covers socio-‐economic changes and the emergence of

social differentiation.


2. METHODOLOGY

The catalyst for this research was a one-‐month stay in Beijing in 2011 to study

Mandarin. Having visited China repeatedly in the 1980s and early 1990s I was

astonished by the changes in social behaviour, people’s attire and propriety

between the two periods and I decided to investigate more formally the causes of

this change.

2.1 METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH Due to the historical nature of the information treated and the culturally loaded

subject matter, I decided that a qualitative approach was most appropriate for this

endeavour.

For what concerns the ontology of this research, the concepts of courtesy, manners,

propriety, modernity, Chinese-‐ness, civilisation, social and ethical values represent

the backbone of the analysis and are considered socially constructed concepts. The

main argument is in fact to prove the relativity of the concept of modernity and is

based on the assumption of the cultural-‐historical contingency of the notion of

civilisation. Historical facts such as dates or specific deeds such as government

policy are considered objective data, but historical narratives or circumstances,

such as the state of civilisation in the 1980s are to be understood only as

expressions of the point of view of their sources, being these secondary sources,

the author’s notes or the respondents’ accounts.

The social constructivist ontological approach commands an interpretative

epistemological one, which reflects the essential purpose of this research: to

produce an account of the participants’ view of the Beijing’s social transformation


ultimately using the participants themselves as representatives of Chinese

modernity.

2.2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK The main argument of this essay is to show the relativity of the concept of

modernity by demonstrating its historically and geographically contingent nature.

In this respect the theoretical framework adopted is a post-‐modern one, implying

that there is no standpoint from which to claim objectivity on the concept.

The two hypothesis carried forward are supported by two distinct frameworks:

the chapter on the role of the state is explicitly relying on the Foucauldian theory

of knowledge generation by means of power (Foucault 1976), which explains how

knowledge (i.e. how an ideal citizen ought to behave) is constructed by means of

campaigns or through education (Foucault 1979).

The second chapter draws from Elias’s (2000) theory of the socio-‐genesis of

civilisation, and relies on Bourdieu’s conception of competition for social capital

(Bourdieu 1986), discussing how the locus of social capital changed with the

emergence of a new class of financially able citizens.

2.3 RESEARCH METHOD

The research in this paper was undertaken by means of thirty semi-‐structured

interviews and direct observation.


The interviews were carried out in Beijing in June and July 2014 and included two

pilot interviews during which key concepts were identified and the initial

interview structure shaped.

Observation took place over the same period and focused on social behaviour,

people’s attire, propriety and habits, as well as other aspects of daily life in

Beijing’s cafes, transport, and shopping malls. Observation extended to temporary

visitors from outside Beijing, providing valuable insights and opportunities for

triangulation.

1980s’ data – inspired by the author’s informal records – was collected from

secondary sources and from the respondents’ accounts.

The interviewees represented the core set of informants for this research: they

were recruited on a voluntary basis through posts on online classifieds websites

and through the author’s existing connections.

The focus was Beijing residents meeting the following criteria:

-‐ Citizens of the PRC (residents of China or temporarily residing abroad);

-‐ Age 20 to 45;

-‐ Higher education (junior college or higher degree);

-‐ Sufficient command of English to sustain the interview;

-‐ Raised and educated in an urban area of China.

The research has been deliberately limited to educated individuals, raised and

educated in urban areas to denote more clearly the gap between them and

previous generations. The English-‐speaking criterion has practical value for the

non-‐Chinese speaking researcher but is also intended as a further selective


element. The age range restriction aims to limit the sample of participants to the

generation raised in post-‐reform China, which is the interest of this research.

Variations in age, background and personal history helped to identify patterns.

The thirty interviewees were two-‐thirds females and one-‐third males. Most

interviews were carried out in person; one took place via Skype and a handful by

email. The length of the interview in its leanest form was approximately 45

minutes, but most extended into longer sessions of two or even three hours in

which several topics were touched including culture, religion and sexuality.

The backbone of the discussion was a set of predefined topics as follows:

-‐ Ethics, introduction and purpose;

-‐ Personal history;

-‐ Chinese-‐ness and civilisation;

-‐ Personal privacy and foreigners’ behaviour;

-‐ Consumer and leisure habits, appearance;

-‐ Interviewees’ view of interpersonal behaviour and propriety in the 1980s

and 2010s and the sources of their values;

-‐ Comments on two posters from the 1980s and from the 2010s.

2.4 DATA ANALYSIS Data analysis was carried out according to Glasser and Strauss’s principle of

‘grounded theorising’ outlined by Hammersley & Atkinson (1995: 205), according

to which theory is developed iteratively as part of the data gathering process and

data gathering itself is informed by theory.


This brought this study to evolving from being a study of courtesy and propriety to

the realisation of the co-‐existence of Western and Chinese values, eventually

ending discussing the notion of Chinese modernity.

Starting from concepts based on existing literature and the hypotheses formulated

– i.e. wenming, Chinese-‐ness – and their development with key informants as part of

the data gathering process, the analytical process involved a constant adaptation of

the interview structure, and the accompanying of the interview process with direct

observation.

As patterns were identified – i.e. the correspondence between the age of

respondents and their social aptitude – theories were refined and data

triangulation measures implemented.

2.5 ETHICS Interviews were carried out anonymously, in English, and were not recorded for

reason of convenience and privacy. Some interviewees were shy in dealing with a

foreigner and in being interviewed in a foreign language, so they benefitted from a

less formal setting, a few were understandably nervous about discussing with a

foreigner potentially sensitive topics such as politics.

In one case an interviewee declined to respond to a question regarding the

government role in promoting civilisation and in another the informant clearly

gave a stock answer praising the government for its role. These cases aside most

informants were very open and relaxed about all topics, including those that

involved government input and personal hygiene. They were objective and at


times critical of foreigners’ habits and openly and spontaneously brought up

sexuality, including their own.

The topic that mostly touched the sensitivity of the informants was the family, with

some informants’ bringing themselves to tears in a couple of occasions when

discussing family matters and the lack of affection they experienced.

2.6 CONSTRAINTS AND STRENGTHS The main limitation is the quality of the data: whilst expressing publicly views

related to government policy did not seem a concern, a foreign researcher

interviewing in English ought to have introduced an element of distortion between

what respondents said and what they were really thinking.

The rare opportunity for observation in the 1980s enjoyed by the researcher

represents both a strong point and a constraint: a wealth of pre-‐existing,

informally-‐gained knowledge can be enriching but also foster preconceived ideas

as memories would have been affected by the present.

The most significant strengths are the obvious advantage of the researcher’s full

immersion in the reality of 2014 Beijing, the interviewees’ genuine enthusiasm in

dealing with a foreign researcher and their engagement with the topic, which

provided opportunities for more in-‐depth questioning.


3. LITERATURE REVIEW

The literature for this research has been organised on five themes, the first three

provide background knowledge, and the other two cover respectively each of the

two hypotheses put forward.

Notions of Chinese-‐ness are dealt with first, investigating whether it is appropriate

to discuss of Chinese-‐ness as a distinct cultural tradition from Western tradition

(Pohl 2003, Fei 1947) or whether it is merely a construct (Said 2003, Shi 2003).

The section which follows treats civilisation, courtesy and politeness through the

accounts of Elias (2003) and Boutonnet (2011), exploring politeness in more detail

with Pan’s ‘Politeness in Chinese Face-‐to-‐Face Interaction’ (2000) and Pan and

Kadar’s ‘Politeness in Historical and Contemporary Chinese’ (2011), whilst the third

section provides historical background, focusing on social values in the 1980s

(Yan 2009).

The final two sections treat the two hypotheses of this paper. The first illustrates

the association of respectability to national values in Europe inferred by Mosse

(1986), considering a parallel with the Chinese context, and the second introducing

Elias’s sociogenesis of civilisation (Elias 2000), exploring the socio-‐economic

factors that have contributed to social transformation.

3.1 CHINESE-‐NESS

Discussing social values in China commands an investigation of the definition of

Chinese-‐ness, this requiring the validation of the dichotomy western vs. oriental. Is


Chinese-‐ness merely a construct, or it is appropriate to discuss of a distinct

cultural trend?

There are two schools of thought on this matter, and several intermediate

positions. On the one hand are those like Said (2003) – who argue that the Orient is

an ontological and epistemological category created by Western-‐based political,

academic and economic powers to make sense of themselves and to dominate and

subjugate other powers.

Shi (2003: 7) maintain this constructivist view, echoing – in reverse – Said’s by

postulating that Chinese-‐ness can be identified exploring the relationship East-‐

West – i.e. people make sense of themselves as Chinese in relation to their Others,

mainly the West.

These views are countered by Pohl (2003) who objectively identifies two distinct

cultural trends in the East-‐West dichotomy: the first of Christian heritage, founded

on progress and scientism and based on a secular combination of individualism

and rationalism and the second of Confucian origin, founded on a body of values

that has profoundly conditioned China and the East.

Between Pohl’s position and the constructivism of Shi and Said we find Waley-‐

Cohen’s (1999), who denies the monolithic nature of Chinese culture, but takes

Chinese-‐ness as the analytical assumption for her work.

Fei (1947) gives credit to Pohl’s postulate of two distinct traditions, claiming that

Western and Chinese societies are incommensurable; he describes Chinese society

as organised on the basis of overlapping networks of individuals, connected by

dyadic relationships, often in a relation of subordination to each other; conversely

Western society is depicted as based on organisations with clear boundaries, to


which individuals subscribe at their own will. The Chinese individual is at the

centre of her own network and finds realisation and acquires moral integrity and

self-‐fulfilment by meeting the obligations that are pertinent to each of the

relationships to which she is bound.

3.2 WENMING (文明)

The concept of wenming is crucial for the analysis carried out in this paper:

translated in English as civilisation, its meaning extends beyond courtesy and

propriety, with implications in literacy and ethical or social values. This reflects the

argument of this paper that changes in people’s behaviour and propriety have

happened as part of a deeper social transformation.

The parallel between civilisation and wenming is possible by observing the

positions of Elias (2000), who posits that the term civilisation incorporates notions

of politeness, manners and propriety and Boutonnet (2011) and Erbaugh (2008)

who indicate that wenming has implications that reach beyond manners and

hygiene, covering literacy, spiritual righteousness and culture.

Courtesy is part of the broader concept of wenming and is investigated by Pan

(2000) in the Chinese context, who argues its universality across cultures and its

dependency on power relations. In her argument she reduces culture to a

‘distributive’ role, arguing that the relationship between politeness and culture is

mediated by situational circumstances. This is confirmed by Pan and Kadar (2011:

121) with a revealing example that analyses two encounters taking place in

different state-‐run stores, one in 1990 and one in 1999. The differences between


the dialogues are startling, showing how cultural changes in the 1990s affected

interpersonal behaviour.

3.3 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Maoism, which dominated the first three decades of the People’s Republic, ended

in 1978, with Deng Xiaoping’s “reforms and openness” policy (gaige kaifang 改革

开放), which marked the beginning of the new era (1978-‐1989), a period in which

the revolutionary values of communist economy and collectivist society were

supplanted by economic liberalisation and cultural Westernisation (Shi 2003: 60).

The new era, inspired by the May 4th movement of the 1920s known as Chinese

Enlightenment, was characterised by the prevalence of Western theoretical

discourses in economy and culture and by a conflict between socialist government

and liberal intellectuals (Shi 2003: 61).

Yan contends that the opening policies of 1978 produced a crisis of values by

depriving people of the established collectivist ways to exercise morality by

fulfilling obligations towards the community – i.e. government-‐sponsored

initiatives that benefitted the community were abolished and communal

gatherings were prohibited.

Yan refers to this crisis as the value vacuum of the 1980s, in which – he argues –

having forcefully abandoned China’s Confucian value system during the first three

decades of communism, and having then turned individuals away from their

newly-‐acquired communist values – people turned inwards for self-‐realisation and


developed a greedy individualism that brought Yan to the point of defining the

post-‐Mao individual ‘uncivil’ (Yan 2003: 217).

In a review of Yan’s work, Chang (2003) openly criticises this position, arguing that

individualistic-‐egotistic tendencies are universal, and that the behaviour they

generate is culturally, geographically and temporally contingent.

The new era – Shi (2003: 63) points out – ends with the facts of Tiananmen in

1989, and is followed by the post-‐new era, a period characterised by a cultural

movement referred to as neo-‐conservativism which privileged the rediscovery of

traditional values and a return to the centrality of Chinese state, nation and

culture, thus abandoning the Western trend of the 1980s (Shi 2003).

Shi contends that whilst the new era witnessed a conflict between socialism and

liberal intellectuals, the post-‐new era was prey of a conflict between a growing

commercial culture (neo pragmatism), the intellectual liberals of the new era (neo-‐

Enlightenment) and the predominant cultural trend of neo-‐conservativism (Shi

2003: 63).

It is therefore logically possible – although not necessarily accurate – to fit Yan’s

notion of value vacuum (Yan 2003) within the historical reconstruction presented

by Shi (2003): the transition from the collectivism of pre-‐1978 to the neo-‐

conservativism of the 1990s could have left room for a liberal interlude in the

1980s understood by intellectuals but that – plausibly – may have found the

general population unprepared.


3.4 THE STATE-‐CONSTRUCTION OF NORMALCY

The correspondence between civilisation and wenming discussed above leads to a

parallel of the instrumental use of concepts of civilisation and respectability by

colonial powers in the 18th and 19th century in order construct the idea of

whiteness (Stoler 2000) with a number of government-‐led activities in modern

China.

3.4.1 BIOPOLITICS The idea of constructing normalcy from above is not unique to China or to the

Chinese Communist Party and is known as biopolitics (Foucault 1979), the politics

of life.

Mosse (1985) claims that the Enlightenment and the French Revolution produced

a discourse in which governments and elites implemented biopolitics by

associating respectability to national values transforming the body into an

instrument of control. Sexuality, aesthetic values, hygiene and general decorum

were given moral, scientific and nationalistic value and were used to define race

and to construct the idea of whiteness, marking the beginning of scientific racism

(Stoler 2000).

In the Chinese context, the use of campaigns to construct the ideal citizen occurred

throughout the 20th century (Fitzgerald 1996: 10, Ding 2006: 123), notably the

making of a republican citizen through the manipulation of social values that

marked the transition from the Chinese Empire to the Republic in the aftermath of

the 1911 revolution (Harrison 2000), and Chiang Kai-‐Shek’s New Life movement in


1934 that promoted morality through decorum, duty, integrity and sense of shame

(Chiang Kai-‐Shek 1934).

Similar initiatives took place in the Communist era, for instance Mao’s ‘Five Anti-‐‘

and ‘Three Anti-‐‘ campaigns aimed at eradicating corruption in 1952, or those to

improve hygienic conditions by eradicating pests (Murthy 1983: 4).

Fei’s postulate that morality and self-‐realisation are located within interpersonal

relationships (Fei 1947) leads to the conclusion that an authority (i.e. the state)

can exercise control on morality by redefining the nature of relationships, as in the

case of the instrumental use of nationalism.

3.4.2 THE WENMING MOVEMENT Deng launched the wenming movement alongside the open-‐door reforms

(Boutonnet 2011: 1). Initially called ‘Five Disciplines, Four Graces and Three

Loves’, targeting the five disciplines of decorum, manners, hygiene, order and

morals through the means of mind, language, behaviour and environment, whilst

loving the fatherland, socialism and the party (Murthy 1983: 1), this movement

aimed to provide an ideological framework that could cope with the absence of

religion and the progressive abandonment of communist morality, absences that

could have been disastrous for a society that was going to have its first dip into

market economy (Boutonnet 2011, Johnson 1996).

The idea of a spiritual civilisation (jingshen wenming 精神文明) to cultivate moral

behavior went alongside the one of material civilization (wuzhi wenming 物质文明

), which aimed at transforming Chinese society into a consumer society. The


policies to implement these were adjusted over a period of 17 years, marked by

three crucial dates. Firstly the official launch of the wenming movement in 1982,

with the realisation of the utopian nature of communism and the start of a new era

of communist-‐inspired socialism. This shift towards socialism was further

consolidated in 1986, with Deng’s explicit promotion of ethics of love for country,

people and labor, a move that subtly injected the key ingredients of nationalism.

The last decisive moment was in 1996, when PM Jiang Zemin sanctioned the

inseparable nature of wealth, democracy and civilisation, paving the way towards

Chinese modernity (Boutonnet 2011).

The wenming movement launched by Deng thus aimed at a level deeper than at

courtesy and propriety, it invaded the spheres of emotion and affection, aiming at

the construction an ideal of citizen in the constituent aspects of personal and social

life: personal hygiene, leisure choices and moral values.

3.4 SOCIO-‐ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION AND RESPECTABILITY

Understanding the origins and the evolution of the concept of civilisation in

Europe helps understanding similar processes in China. Elias (2000) traced the

origins of decorum, politeness and civilised behaviour back to medieval times,

showing how the emergence of a middle class in Europe played a crucial role in the

development of respectability, thus suggesting a parallel with China which

underwent a similar process.

Elias’s claim that civility changes in line with economic development is expanded

by Yan, who points out that the effects of consumerism are not confined to the


availability of goods but extend to differences in spending patterns, creating social

differentiation, and conditioning manners and politeness (Yan, 2009 cited in

Andersen Oyen 2013: 101).

The mutually reinforcing nature of the relationship between the communication

strategy of the Communist Party and popular culture is illustrated by Barne (1999:

10), as he shows how party communication techniques embraced Kong-‐Tai, a

cultural trend inspired by Hong Kong and Taiwanese culture that made its way

into China in the late 1980s transforming the way in which official institutions

communicated with the people.


4. CONTEXT AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION

The first two sections of this chapter provide observational accounts of Beijing in

the 1980s and in the 2010s, describing the city’s social transformation. The

remaining two sections are dedicated to the identification of Chinese-‐ness – a

fundamental assumption for this research – and to the exploration of the value

system change in China and Beijing, looking at the plausibility of the value vacuum

theory posited by Yan (2003), in the foreground of the historical reconstruction of

the cultural changes that was presented in the literature review.

This chapter aims to answer the following questions: can this research be based on

a solid and shared assumption of the essence of Chinese identity? Should the social

transformation that China and Beijing underwent be considered solely in terms of

interpersonal relationships or was there a deeper transformation in culture and

values?

4.1 BEIJING IN THE 1980s

Beijing in the 1980s showed evidence of the cleansing that the Communist

government had done of the pre-‐revolutionary elite courtesy. Social interaction did

not require courtesy and relations between anyone in authority and ordinary

citizens were characterised by subordination: office clerks, civil servants as well as

restaurant waiters from the advantage of their position would address the public

assertively and authoritatively (Erbaugh 2008: 622).


Participants described interaction between members of the public as tense with

frequent discussions; the public space represented a ground in which to compete

for physical space or goods, giving way to others was not common practice.

It was the time of kaishui, (开水), boiling water, the public commodity distributed

on trains, stations and public areas at irregular times that characterises these

years. Filling one’s own mug with kaishui to make impromptu tea was a chore

quintessential of social interaction: the frantic rush to the boiler room to secure a

mug of kaishui was exemplary and the white enameled mug being used provided

an example of the limited amount of personal possessions.

Further to this, crowded and undisciplined queues, endemic public spitting and

widespread littering plagued Beijing and China: the prevalent custom of spitting

bones on restaurant floors provides an indicator of how people related to the

public space.

This kind of public interaction was the consequence of Mao’s condemnation of

refined behavior as counter-‐revolutionary (Erbaugh 2008: 641) and of the policies

that had rendered space widely public by the collectivism of the Maoist era, which

removed notions of privacy and subjectivity extending its principles into the

personal sphere (Yan 2003). Accounts of participants confirmed what was

informally observed in 1986: public toilets without doors or common showers in

hotels, in which rooms were accessible without notice by floor attendants, were

markers of a reality in which personal intimacy was limited to gender segregation

in toilets and showers.


This pattern extended to the lack of diversity in the way people dressed and

arranged their hair, sporting a limited display of dress style and colours and a

uniform hairstyle.

Beijing and the rest of China thus represented a standardised society that had been

trained to share collective communist ideals and repress personal tendencies (Yan

2003).

In the mood of the re-‐awakening instilled by the open-‐door reforms of 1978 –

Chinese society was witnessing the aggressive thrust of individuals seeking to

emerge whilst competing for private space, profit and business opportunities (Shi

2003). Yan defined the product of this situation an ‘uncivil individual’ (Yan 2003:

217), arguing that the opening of the markets caused a competition for profit and

opportunities that was not adequately countered by a morality or religion, due to

the lack – Yan argues – of communist-‐induced obligations towards the community,

which had been removed with the open-‐door policies, and to the scarcity of values

of Confucian heritage, a cultural trait that the offsprings of the Cultural Revolution

could not uphold.

4.2 BEIJING IN THE 2010s

Beijing today is a transformed city: its buildings and infrastructure are the most

obvious aspect of this transformation, but an equally radical revolution occurred to

its people. Beijingers of the 21st century express their individuality and creativity

through their attire. The positions of authority of the 1980s have reduced

enormously, with relationships between service providers and beneficiaries

governed by mutual convenience and courtesy.


Nihao (你好), Xiexie (谢谢), Duibuqi (对不起), Zaijian (再见) and Qingwen (请问),

the Chinese equivalents of Hello, Thank You, Sorry, Goodbye and Excuse Me are

terms often used in general interaction between strangers (Erbaugh 2008), whilst

occurrences of queue jumping and public spitting are hard to find. Standards of

hygiene and privacy are undisputedly higher, with flushing western-‐toilets with

lockable cubicles having replaced the hole-‐on-‐the-‐floor ones of the 1980s, hardly

any littering, and hotels providing key-‐operated rooms according to global

standards of privacy. There is therefore an increased overall expectation of

personal privacy, which finds confirmation in the lack of eye contact between

strangers, as opposed to the diffuse habit of staring that was noticeable in the

1980s.

Society’s sophistication is also demonstrated by people’s attire, and by how they

spend their free time. The days of kaishui have long gone: ubiquitous Starbucks

branches in which people orderly consume their lattes courteously attended by

carefully attired baristas have replaced the steamy boiler rooms of the 1980s.

The two sketches of Beijing just offered describe a transformation that constitutes

the tenet supporting this research. In the remainder of this paper, using data

collected from informers we will analyse their view of the factors underlying this

change and compare them to the two hypotheses put forward. In order for this

investigation to start, the two sections which follow will lay the foundations,

covering the notion of Chinese-‐ness and the respondents’ experience of social

transformation – i.e. was it merely interpersonal relationships, privacy and

propriety or was it part of a larger transformation of society?


TABLE 1 – TRANSFORMATION IN PRIVACY EXPECTATIONS

1986 2014

Changes in expectation of privacy, most obviously illustrated by the comparison of public toilets in the 1980s and 2010s, best exemplify society’s transformation from a collectivist-‐based one to one governed by individuals’ subjectivity. Aside from the changes in cleanliness and the adoption of flushing, the elements to remark are the absence of doors in the 1980s denoting lack of privacy – and the widespread adoption of western-‐style toilets and the provision of toilet paper, evidence – notwithstanding dubious benefits in terms of hygiene – of the adoption of western customs (Photos by author).

4.3 CHINESE-‐NESS

The issue of Chinese identity is crucial to this research, the theories reviewed

earlier range from those considering Chinese-‐ness a construct (Said 2003, Shi

2003) to those who contend that East Asian cultural tradition is distinct from its

European counterpart due to its non-‐rational and unscientific Confucian heritage

(Pohl 2003).

The view emerging from the respondents provides an adequate analytical

assumption for this research and is characterised by two distinct positions.

Firstly it winks at the constructivism of Shi, as respondents made explicit their

Chinese-‐ness in relation to the foreign interviewer they were facing, and


mentioned other categories of outsiders such as African or Asian people,

particularly Japanese. They also implicitly remarked their distinction from

foreigners by most enthusiastically responding to the ice-‐breaking question on the

most annoying behaviour or custom of foreigners.

Secondly – in opposition to Shi’s postulate that in Mandarin language there is no

corresponding term to the English word ‘Chinese’ but rather a plethora of terms

based on different criteria that express identification along racial, cultural or

ethnic lines (Shi 2003: 20) – the respondents had a well-‐defined understanding of

Chinese identity, considering Chinese the residents of mainland China, including

Tibetans, Uyghurs and other minorities, and gave mixed responses about citizens

of Hong Kong and Taiwan. They also had a uniform view of Chinese culture: Han-‐

centric, based on the written Chinese language, and valuing family ties and

traditions.

4.4 SOCIAL VALUES TRANSFORMATION

Sun (2003) points out that the open-‐door policy and the gradual introduction of

market economy caused a general re-‐awakening of subjective consciousness, with

firms and individuals encouraged or forced by necessity to take creative initiative

in order to be competitive on the market. This awakening of subjective

consciousness was accompanied by a shift in values that implied a change from

general uniformity in which the state represented the only subject, to a general

cultural diversification in which individuals emerged as stand-‐alone subjects. This


had exponentially amplified effects on commercial, visual and material culture

(Sun 2003).

The respondents accredit the view that there was indeed a crisis of values in the

1980s, a crisis in which morality was neither upheld by the pre-‐communist

Confucian morals, nor by the values introduced with the collectivism of the Mao

era, thus giving free reins to the competitive spirit that the open-‐door reform had

brought to life (Sun 2003). Most of the people interviewed who were born in the

mid 1970s claimed to have received little affection from their parents: a 35-‐years

old reported that their parents where acting like soldiers with her, whilst another

shed tears during the interview complaining about the extreme materialism of her

parents and arguing that – even today – her parents’ main interest is money.

Several of the interviewees also indicated that in their parents’ days the use of

courtesy words was considered inappropriately courteous to the point of seeming

hypocritical, whilst their usage today doesn’t warrant the same intensity of feeling

as in the past, valuable substantiation of the radical change which Beijing and the

whole of China have undergone as a result of the open-‐door policy.

4.5 SUMMARY OF FINDINGS

This chapter provided sketches of Beijing in the 1980s and 2010s and a notion of

Chinese-‐ness shared among the respondents on which to base the analysis that

will follow in the next chapter.

The patterns identified from the informants’ data suggest that the 1980s were a

period of cultural and moral turmoil in China, a time in which a newly emerging


materialism collided with the remnants of Maoism rigidity and with the natural

inclination of parental care, showing how the respondents experienced the

contrast between that period and the present.

Informants’ data also provided interesting observations about the use of courtesy

words, showing that their more frequent use in the 2010s is not an indicator of

good disposition as much as it is a veneer of politeness, points that will be explored

further in the following chapters.


TABLE 2 – TRANSFORMATION IN QUEUING BEHAVIOUR

1986 2014

These images show contrasts in queuing behaviour in different conditions, temporal and contextual. The first group is temporal: the top left picture taken in Beijing downtown in 1986 shows the frantic rush to enter a bus. This behaviour contrasts with the top and bottom right images, taken in 2014, which show how orderly people behave in the same circumstances. The yellow uniform of a ‘queuing guardian’ can be seen on the right of the bottom photograph, testimony of the constant presence of authorities not only encourage but also to monitor civilised behaviour. Guardians of this kind are often elderly volunteers with no coercive power, and impersonate of the early 1990s’ rediscovery of traditional values, among which those of respect for the elderly.

The bottom left picture is also from 1986, only a mile away from where the top left image was taken. It shows the extremely orderly behaviour displayed by thousands of citizens who queue to pay homage to Chairman Mao’s body in the Tiananmen Square Mausoleum. A number of points worth noting emerge from this photograph: firstly the fact that people behave with discipline and respect out of their own values but are also monitored by authorities, the dualism of self-‐discipline and state-‐induced discipline is still present in today’s China. Secondly we note the correspondence between the presence of a subject and the respect for values: the legacy values of collectivism still present in 1986 foresaw the presence of only one subject: the state, personified in this image by the body of Mao Zedong, as


opposed to the consumer society of 2014, in which each individual represented a subject. We can see how the presence of a value-‐holding subject generates righteous conduct, whilst when there is no value-‐holding subject there is no respect for values: the subject in 1986 was present at the Mausoleum (the state impersonated by Mao’s body) and consequently there was order, but it was not present at the bus stop (the state was not visible), and consequently there was no order. It was again present (each individual was a subject) at the bus stand in 2014 and again there was order (Photos by author).


5. BIOPOLITICS AND THE ROLE OF THE STATE

In the previous chapter we established that the informants had a shared notion of

Chinese identity and provided their accounts on the transformation that took place

since the 1980s, concluding that changes in interpersonal behaviour were not

mere cosmetic alterations of courtesy and politeness but that in fact they were part

of a deeper social transformation.

In this chapter we will analyse informants’ responses on the contribution of the

Chinese state to this transformation.

To actualize the wenming movement the Chinese government used a two-‐fold

approach: firstly it cascaded the message down to the population, publicising it by

means of posters, signs, billboards, loudspeakers, or any medium suitable for the

circumstances. Further to this regular way of knowledge dissemination, there were

additional extraordinary ones, namely ad-‐hoc campaigns – initiated by the central

government or by local authorities – aimed at specific objectives, or sometimes

instrumentally linked to specific goals in order to maximise results, as for the

spitting ban enforced to curb the spread of SARS.

The second method used was to disseminate knowledge through one of the most

powerful media for the production of knowledge: education, exemplifying the

Foucauldian theory that power generates knowledge (Foucault 1976).

The two sections that follow investigate these two methods and the effects that

they had on informants.


5.2 KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION BY MEANS OF POSTERS AND CAMPAIGNS

5.2.1 WENMING THROUGH POSTERS AND BILLBOARDS The totality of the interviewees with one exception who declined to answer,

shrugged at the question of whether the posters promoting civilised behaviour

affixed throughout Beijing contributed to their civic sense, personal hygiene or

consumer habits.

They considered these campaigns irrelevant for people of their social extraction

and only suitable to form the civic sense of mingong (民工), rural immigrant

workers noticeable in town because of their rugged attire, who – in the

respondents’ eyes lacking education and civic awareness – need the government to

guide them and educate them.

A 34-‐year old PhD student defined poster campaigns mere stratagems used by the

government to ‘consolidate and render visible its power’. Another respondent, a 45-‐

year old schoolteacher stated that ‘if streets are clean it’s not because people read

the posters, but it’s because the government employs people to clean them’.

Whilst nobody explicitly declared their open aversion towards the posters, the

general view was therefore one of indifference, as ‘they promote things that people

already know’, as a 31-‐year old office clerk suggested.

The suggestion that posters were indeed targeting migrant peasant workers is

certainly plausible, as they represent the least integrated category among Beijing’s

population. As sustained by Deng, material development had to be accompanied by

development of morality, and turning these workers into wenming ren (文明人) or


civilised citizens, was therefore of paramount importance for the wenming

movement.

On the other hand, civilising through posters is unlikely to be an exercise that

solely targeted the mingong. These citizens would eventually integrate into

mainstream society and their evolution into average Beijingers would be likely to

require some degree of guidance: testimony to this fact are the large billboards,

sporting slogans in English and a glossy communication style more likely to appeal

to the better educated affixed in all areas of Beijing including the business district

of Chaoyang.

Whilst it is reasonable to agree with the informant who claimed that posters are

merely devices for authorities to re-‐affirm their presence, it is likely that –

notwithstanding the diffuse denial of their efficiency on the part of the

respondents – posters do actually contribute to shaping a sense of identity and,

with it, a sense of how a good Chinese, a good Beijinger, or a good dweller of the

Chaoyang district ought to behave. This delivers the government two distinct

objectives: firstly the raising of a sense of communal belonging – see nationhood,

demonstrated by the informants’ shared notion of Chinese-‐ness – and secondly the

constitution of an idea of normalcy through the alignment of the said sense of

nationhood to the notion of wenming. This process ultimately helps social

cohesion, granting to society – through the notion of spiritual civilisation – the

degree of stability necessary to accompany the material civilisation that was Deng’s

open-‐door policy goal (Brahm 2000, Boutonnet 2011).


TABLE 3 – THE MINGONG (民工).

Mingong (民工) are paesant workers (民工 combines a character from nongmin 农民 [peasant] and one from gongren!工人 [worker]). They are a visible presence in Beijing’s streets and subway as their attire and behavior is in notable contrast with that of Beijingers. Carrying bulky loads of makeshift luggage they negotiate their way through town, their modes and manners are subdued, as if they were in a foreign place, testimony to their lack of integration. They tend to sit away from ordinary passengers on subways and do not speak loudly. Their lack of familiarity with Beijing society and etiquette makes them prime targets of civilisation campaigns, respondents have argued. Left, a group on mingong carrying heavy luggage on Beijing subway, Right: a mingong sitting on his luggage on a subway carriage (Photos by author).


TABLE 4 – PROMOTING WENMING WITH BILLBOARDS

Billboards on streets, subway areas and other public places in Beijing are a stark reminder of the moral obligation to act as civilized citizens. Notable is the superimposition of national (or local, in the case of the Chaoyang district of the bottom images), moral and civic values, three categories that in Western thought are separate which in wenming ideology are compounded. Also to be noted the three different communication styles, the top left appealing to more traditional audiences, more likely elderly citizens, the top right image to more technology-‐aware and sophisticated audiences and the bottom two images, using cartoons in typical East Asian style, likely to appeal to the wider public. The graphic style variations and the use of English language suggest that the respondents’ views that posters campaigns are targeting mainly the mingong are perhaps underestimating the depth of their power.

A further point to note is the ‘Magnificent with me’ slogan, in the bottom two photographs, to confirm the 2010s authorities’ franchising of individual agency by empowering individuals (Photos by author).


TABLE 5 – PROMOTING WENMING HARNESSING THE BEIJING SPIRIT

Beijing has its own branded version of wenming, invoking the ‘BEIJING SPIRIT’. Similarly to how the wenming campaigns promote nationalism, morality and civilisation, Beijingers are reminded of the values of being a Bejiinger: patriotism, innovation, inclusiveness, and virtue. Their sense of local pride is stirred by the reminders of the wealth of culture and history that Beijing has to offer, visible in the bottom picture (Photos by author).


5.2.2 WENMING THROUGH AD-‐HOC CAMPAIGNS Further to the regular production of posters, the jingshen wenming movement also

included ad-‐hoc campaigns, run in particular circumstances or in correspondence

of events. Among these, the one that stands out the most is the civilisation

campaign run in preparation to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which involved nearly

one million civil servants and the printing of three million pamphlets (Demick

2008).

The National Survey Research Centre of the People’s University of China surveyed

the whole operation, which was monitored by means of a purposely-‐instituted

‘civic index’ of the population (Xinhua in China Daily 2007) that was regularly

made available to the public, showing constant improvement on the run-‐up to the

games.

The obvious explanation for this effort was that China was willing to impress a

foreign audience, but perhaps more than any other event the Olympics can help to

understand the true objective of jingshen wenming. It was not a mere exercise in

civilisation standards; it was a necessary move to retain internal stability in times

of change. The Olympics – further to being an opportunity to impress the world –

were an opportunity to impress the local population (Rabkin 2008) displaying

China’s grandiosity vis-‐à-‐vis the rest of the world, similarly wenming was also

targeting a domestic objective, fostering nationalism to retain internal cohesion

(Brahm 2000).

Analysing the respondents’ answer on matters of civilisation campaigns yields

similar results to those received about posters campaigns: campaigns were

broadly dismissed as exercises to tell people things that they already know.


This is in contrast with the survey data provided by the National Survey Research

Centre; even allowing for the partiality of the latter, three points stand out to

suggest that interviewees were perhaps overly dismissive of state campaigns.

Firstly, the correspondence between ideals of civility promoted by the government

and the characteristics of a certain class of citizens (Ronaldsen 2001: 154), which

suggests that the government’s message could reach all strata of society, not only

the mingong as claimed by informants.

Secondly, all the informers but a young 21-‐year old office clerk claimed that

ethical, moral and social values are universal. This can be explained in part by the

intrinsic desire on the part of the informants to show their alignment to other

cultures, by denying any supposed difference between China and the West, but it is

also evidence of an alignment of civilisation and behavioural standards between

China and the West that was clearly not present in the 1980s by the informants’

own admission.

Thirdly, the respondents’ scepticism on the efficacy of the campaigns can be

explained by considering that the informants themselves are the product of a

normalised society which – in order to let people express their individuality –

paradoxically had to resort to normative action to restrict the boundaries of the

permissible: in other words, authorities had stepped in to define normalcy in order

to support capitalism.

As Dean argues, liberalism is an ideology of exclusion: it marginalises those that do

not fit within certain normative standards, and consequently it is mainly

concerned with the governance of bodies, rather than with individual’s liberties

(Dean 1999: 122). This explains Deng’s strategy of accompanying material


civilisation with spiritual civilisation: economic liberalism was at play in China and

the authorities’ actions to promote jingshen wenming were biopolitical actions

aimed at the governance of bodies in order to retain social stability. The informers’

dismissive responses are a strong indicator of the authorities’ success since they

show that – responders themselves being products of the above-‐mentioned

normalisation – they have absorbed the government’s message.

5.3 KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION BY MEANS OF FORMAL EDUCATION

The principle of biopolitics can be applied to the second medium used by the

Chinese government’s in the construction of the 21st century citizen: the education

system (AFP 2011).

The starting hypothesis is that government ideals of civilisation were cascaded

into society harnessing primary and secondary education, in a prime example of

the Foucauldian principle of knowledge being generated by power (Foucault

1976).

The age range of respondents was between 20 and 45, a range that can clearly be

divided into three different bands: those who experienced their formative years in

the 1980s, those who did in the 1990s and those who did in the 2000s.

The first group were clearly less gifted with social skills; they showed deference

when dealing with authority even if this was represented merely by restaurant

waiters or by ticket vendors.

This category of interviewees clearly traced their values back to their families,

making no mention of education, sharply contrasting interviewees born in the


1990s, who were young teenagers in the 2000s. These young generations are

progressive in their attire, and are visibly comfortable when dealing with

authority. They positively traced their social and ethical values back to education,

to the media and – some of them – to their exposure to foreigners.

The intermediate group appears to be confirming this pattern, as they provided

mixed responses: those coming from well educated families predominantly

indicated them as their sources of values, whilst others were less clear in their

recollection. It seems plausible to claim that the latter represent the category that

were most traumatised by the value crisis of the 1980s.

The picture just drawn is clearly a simplification of an overly complex scene:

values and education in the 1980s varied between individuals, and so did socio-‐

economic and cultural circumstances. These limits notwithstanding, the clearly

marked difference recorded shows that cultural values and social skills of the

respondents are aligned to the temporal and spatial location in which they

experienced their formative years. A distinct pattern could be identified reflecting

three historical phases: the value crisis of the new era of the 1980s, the migrations

towards the cities of the 1990s, the social expansion and globalisation of the

2000s, leading to the conclusion that education, family and media played a role in

the shaping of new citizens according to the role these agents had in each of the

historical phases in question: family in 1980s, a combination of family and

education in the 1990s, and education and media in the 2000s, thus confirming the

growing role of the government in deploying biopolitics through education as part

of the implementation of wenming.


The success of biopolitics in shaping knowledge in order to pass a nationalistic

message through media manipulation was evidenced by a visually-‐based part of

the interview in which respondents were asked to comment on two posters, one in

typically pre-‐reform style and one of east Asian inspiration. Most of the

respondents were not able to discern the origins of the styles and only saw

substantial differences. The few identifying different styles considered both of

them Chinese without recognising the Maoist origins of the first, and the origins of

the second in Kong-‐Tai – an advertising style originated in Hong Kong and Taiwan

that was adopted by the party to better appeal to the public (Barme 1999).

TABLE 6 – TRANSFORMATION IN COMMUNICATION STYLE REVOLUTIONARY STYLE POSTER KONG-‐TAI STYLE POSTER

These two posters were used in the interviews to test whether respondents were able to indicate the foreign influence affecting of one of them. Clearly utilising different styles, the one on the left (www.chinaposters.net) advertises a soft drink and the one on the right (photo by author) a polite notice by the Beijing subway authorities. The former is in typical revolutionary style and the latter in a foreign East Asian style (Kong-‐tai). All respondents indicated that both styles were Chinese, showing the subtlety and effectiveness of the authorities’ adoption of a different communication style.


TABLE 7 – PROMOTING WENMING THROUGH EDUCATION

Youngest respondent adduced formal education as the source their civic and moral values, whilst less young generations thought to have acquired them from education. In the 1990s the government introduced civic education into formal education, emphasising traditional Confucian values and associating them to the moral duties of a good citizen. Beijing bookshops have specific sections dedicated to public morality (top left, photo by author), and education institutions use dedicated textbooks on the subject (top right, titled Virtue and Society) (Beijing Shi Yi Wu Jioo Yu 2014).


1 2

4 4

5 6

The above pictures are taken from the textbook ‘Virtue and Society’ displayed above (Beijing Shi Yi Wu Jioo Yu 2014) and refer to: (1) Encouraging students to behave orderly in public places (i.e. the school’s stairways); (2) Queuing discipline; (3) Respect for all people: integrating disabled people; (4) Thanking strangers: the child says ‘thank you’ to the sales lady; (5) Greeting strangers: the child does not behave properly by not greeting the cleaner; (6) Respect for the elderly: the child collects the newspaper for his grandfather.



This chapter presented an illustration of the marked scepticism on the part of the

respondents with regard to the government’s role in the construction of the

modern Chinese citizen.

Whilst to some extent it is plausible to think that interviewees did not consciously

adopt social values or direct their behaviour according to the government’s

message, a thorough analysis of their responses suggests that the effect of the

government input is more subtle: using biopolitics the Chinese government has

been able to superimpose the idea of a model citizen to a message of nationalism, a

practice that allowed the fostering of a sentiment of nationhood whilst shaping

society according to its own prescription.

The outcome of this process is what partially constitutes the ideal Chinese citizen

of the 21st century, of which the informants were prime examples.

Biopolitics is only the one of the two factors that – it is hypothesised here –

transformed Chinese society, the second factor being the emergence of a class of

citizens with higher purchase power, a phenomenon that interplayed with

biopolitics in a mutually conditioning relationship and that the next chapter will

discuss from the point of view of the respondents.


6. CONSUMER SOCIETY AND RESPECTABILITY

In the previous chapter we used data collected from interviews to explore and

assess the Chinese government’s implementation of biopolitics in the construction

of the ideal modern Chinese citizen.

During this process the government was not dealing with static subject matter:

Chinese society was no longer the static juggernaut that during the Mao era the

central government could utilise for social experimentation. The onset of

liberalism had introduced three variables that played a fundamental role in the

shaping of Chinese modernity: a new class of citizens, the media and exposure to

the outside world.

These variables had turned society into live matter, with consequences that

affected ethical values, language, interpersonal relations, propriety and hygiene,

people’s attire, sexuality, and a number of other factors: all contributing to a notion

of respectability informed by the concept of wenming (Boutonnet 2011).

In this chapter we will examine the respondents’ views on the dynamics that

caused this transformation. Inspired by Elias’ work on the sociogenesis of

civilisation (Elias 2000), we will examine how competition for social capital turned

Beijingers into flag-‐bearers of Chinese modernity.

The starting hypothesis is that economic and social development go hand in hand,

and that economic liberalism produced a new class of citizens, a class with higher

purchase power, whose refined behaviour acted as the catalyst for the social

transformation that occurred in Beijing. This change, amplified by the media and

impacted by exposure to foreign people and markets, reverberated across society

affecting expressions of public behaviour and propriety as well as – among others


– leisure habits, fashion and attire. These factors will be analysed in the sections

that follow, exploring – for each of them – the three mutually conditioning agents

of change mentioned above: Elias’s principle of emulation and distinction (2000),

exposure to foreign cultures or markets, and the media.

6.1 SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR: COURTESY AND POLITENESS

As already mentioned, the use of courtesy was not popular prior to economic

liberalisation. The bonds that define individuals’ inner circle of personal

connections did not require the use of courtesy words within the family context,

they were even considered offending excesses of courtesy (Erbaugh 2008). As for

the public milieu, exchanges between strangers were based on a hierarchical

conception of society, which dispensed social capital (Bourdieu 1986) through

subjection or dismissal.

Direct observation suggests that things have changed: courtesy words are now

being frequently used and public exchanges are governed by courtesy, with

various repercussions, such as customer service, giving way, and consideration for

others in public places.

As some of the responses received suggest – e.g. ‘I guess I say thank you because I

want more friends, […]I feel lonely’, or ‘When people say hello to me it makes me feel

important’, or ‘Everyone is so lonely on the subway, it is good when someone smiles

at you’ – courtesy is not necessarily an expression of innermost feeling but an

attempt to be accepted by others, attempts to fit into society in which

interpersonal relationships are increasingly important. This is in line with the


theory of the sociogenesis of civilisation in Europe (Elias 2000) introduced in the

literature review.

Thus, whilst 21st century Beijingers acquire social capital through social

integration by means of courtesy, back in the 1980s their counterparts were

striving for social capital through the adoption of the most appropriate behaviour

for the circumstances, which within their circle of connections required the

absence of reciprocal courtesy. The circumstances of the 1980s further

emphasised this behaviour, as indicated by a 35-‐year old documentarist who

lamented that her parents acted like soldiers with her. As for public exchanges, the

respondents’ position appears in contrast with that of existing literature (Erbaugh

2008) and with the informal observation carried out by the author. Whilst these

indicate that hierarchy was a determining factor in interpersonal relations in the

1980s, respondents claims that in the 1980s ‘there was more solidarity than in

2010s’. As the above-‐mentioned documentarist interviewee stated, ‘courtesy and

solidarity do not necessarily go hand in hand’.

This discrepancy aside, the point emerging from the above analysis is that market

economy transformed society and the locus of social capital, introducing the need

to be accepted not merely by those in the one’s inner circle but also by the wider

society, thus radically changing interpersonal relations and generating courteous

behaviour as can be seen today.

It seems thus reasonable to suggest that there has been a radical change in social

values between the two periods analysed: what was left of the traditional

hierarchical society and the value crisis of the 1980s have gradually been replaced

by values pertinent to a more normalised egalitarian society.


Data triangulation that sustains the above findings was possible through the

observation of temporary visitors from cities outside Beijing, whose social

behaviour was remarkably different and reminiscent of the one observable in the

1980s – i.e. talking loudly in crowed spaces, spitting, even on carpeted floors,

sporting unmistakable haircuts and dress style. This acts as counter-‐proof to the

hypothesis of a sociogenesis of politeness analogous to the one theorised by Elias

(2000): outside visitors, notwithstanding their obvious wealth, had not been part

of the process of refinement that people in Beijing had been exposed to and their

behaviour indicates that they were not sensitive to the same standards of social

conduct of Beijingers. This leads us to infer that the transformation in values has a

spatial dimension as well as a temporal one, as suggested the notable differences

between respondents raised in Beijing and those who migrated to Beijing earlier in

their lives.

Further to socio-‐economic factors and to the significant role played by biopolitics,

two more factors were at play in the transformation in object: foreign influence

and the media.

The importance of the media can be described as follows: on the one hand they

promoted behavioural models that were either imported from abroad or

deliberately induced by government action, on the other they accelerated

economic growth and – with it – social transformation (Shirk 2011). Further to

this, they also amplified social trends by recurrently broadcasting or publishing

ever-‐changing models from real life, thus perpetuating the process of change in a

mutually fostering relationship between mediatic, political and economic powers

(Hachten 2010).


Several interviewees considered the media an influential medium in their social

formation, and acknowledged their interest in Chinese and foreign movies, reality-‐

shows and current affairs TV programmes, thus suggesting that the media played a

major role in transforming social behaviour.

This helps understanding the impact of exposure to foreign cultures: although only

one interviewee – a 24-‐year old embassy worker – gave exposure to foreign

cultures notable significance, analysing foreign exposure in conjunction with the

role of the media leads to the opposite conclusion.

6.2 PROPRIETY

The long hand of biopolitics is felt more on issues of propriety and hygiene than on

issues of public behaviour, as it is notable through the numerous anti-‐spitting and

anti-‐littering campaigns and by the predominance of bill posters and notices

reminding people of basic norms of hygiene – i.e. to wash their hands, to urinate

inside and not outside urinals and to keep districts clean.

Biopolitics alone could not have obtained the startling change recorded in Beijing

however, as the failure to eradicate habits by numerous civilisation campaigns

testifies.

Several interviewees explained the difference in propriety and behaviour of

Beijingers from those of the 1980s with the ignorance and lack of awareness of

basic standards of hygiene of the 1980s, and some pointed out the resistance that

came from some heavily ingrained beliefs – i.e. that expelling bodily fluids and

gases is a healthy practice.


This poses the problem of explaining the difference between the supposed

ignorance of the 1980s and the supposedly enlightened behaviour of the 2010s, to

which we can apply the same rationale applied earlier to identify in which

historical phase respondents acquired their values.

Older respondents claimed to have received their hygiene education from their

families, whilst the youngest claimed to have received it from school, with the

intermediate group providing mixed responses.

The data gathered also invites a second parallel, since – as in the case of the

sociogenesis of politeness – the underlying reasons for changes in propriety

between the 1980s and the 2010s can be recognised in Elias’ reconstruction of

European standards of hygiene (Elias 2000).

The social acceptability of people who spit or emit bodily noises has greatly

diminished, as was also directly recorded through observation. Interestingly, a 21-‐

year old interviewee betrayed some of her waidiren (外地人, non-‐native Beijinger)

background, when – unusually for someone of her age in Beijing, as the

embarrassed glance of her companion suggested – emitted slurping noises when

having a soup.

Some of the respondents’ answers suggest that the media contributed to the

evolution in standards of personal care, providing models through programmes

and commercial advertising and fostering the adoption of foreign customs (e.g.

using tissues to blow one’s nose, using toilet paper, adopting western-‐style toilets).

A further point to take into consideration is the change in the city landscape that

accompanied economic development. Those in the older group of respondents,

pointed-‐out that in their early years they would not wash daily and would be using


dirty public toilets. This was – and in some parts of Beijing still is – the reality of

the hutong, old quarters of Beijing made solely of one-‐storey buildings with no

private facilities in which the use of baths and toilets meant walking across

courtyards in freezing weather and a near-‐complete lack of privacy. The reality of

Beijing has changed for them, and it has changed them too: now they live in high

storey buildings with modern sanitary facilities, and all declared that they would

find it difficult to share baths or toilets.

As Fang (2003) points out however, Beijing’s landscape and infrastructure

changed alongside the need for privacy of its citizens, bringing alienation to the

latter and depriving them of the harmonious life of the hutong in exchange for a

sense of privacy and modern standards of hygiene.

Alienation brought with it a less caring society, a society in which nearly half of the

urban population do not know their neighbours’ name (Fang 2003) (only six out of

thirty respondents were aware of their neighbours’ name) and in which self-‐

interest and privacy have taken the place of communal life. The multiple subjects

of market economy have emerged as individuals and as such they lost the

connections of the inner circle that Fei (1947) considers constitutive of each

individual and part of the fabric of Chinese society: they lost their hutong

neighbours.

The picture that emerges from this is reflected in the sense of loneliness that

transpired from several of the interviews, sometimes explicitly declared and

sometimes not, and finds a parallel once more in the statement of the 35-‐year old

documentarist mentioned earlier: ‘courtesy and solidarity do not necessarily go

hand in hand’. Similarly, ‘hygienic conditions and solidarity do not go hand in hand’:


economic liberalisation reshaped the city, delivering modern standards of hygiene

and sanitary facilities but also a less caring society, a society in which individuals,

uprooted from their native context, experience loneliness in anonymous modern

buildings. The value conflicts of the 1980s have been replaced by the capitalist-‐

inspired values of Chinese modernity, offering evidence of a deep transformation

of Beijing society within which can be identified – as merely a consequence –

changes in standards of hygiene and propriety.

TABLE 8 – PROMOTING WENMING IN PUBLIC BATHROOMS

Left: inviting users to flush toilet. Right: promoting civilisation by stepping closer to the urinal (Photos by author).

6.3 CONSUMER HABITS, ATTIRE AND LEISURE HABITS

Uncountable aspects of Beijing society could be examined beyond courtesy and

propriety: this section will focus on consumer habits, leisure choices and personal

appearance.


The literature review evidenced that consumerism creates social differentiation

(Yan, 2009 cited in Andersen Oyen 2013: 101), and, as Elias (2000) points out,

social differentiation further affects consumerism, as well as politeness.

Responses from interviews indicated that in the 1980s goods were locally

produced and subjectivity could be expressed only within the limits imposed by

the scarce variety on offer, whilst today the variety on offer is such that many

elected shopping as their favourite past time, suggesting that they purchase clothes

out of personal taste, in an effort to both fit-‐in and stand-‐out in society.

As for personal attire, two of the interviewees who had dyed their hair declared

that they wanted to look like foreigners, whilst some others found hair dyeing

vulgar and for a woman synonymous of excessive openness. Most girls declared

that they want to keep their skin clear – to the extent of carrying an umbrella to

prevent sun tanning – some to distinguish themselves from rural workers, others

to look more ‘western’, stark reminders of Elias’s view (2000) on the process of

emulation and distinction and of the persistence of traditional values. This position

and the opening to imported values due to the open-‐door policy, emerges as a

phenomenon that a 28-‐year old interviewee student of Anthropology referred to as

a conflict of values between East and West, and which – in this text – we consider

an all-‐embracing illustration of Chinese modernity.

Two leisure habits stand out from the data gathered during interviews: shopping

and cafes, markers of the transition to modernity, from the days when shopping

experiences were hampered by the monotonous range of items available, and the

conceiving of Starbucks was unthinkable in the years of kaishui, the years of

boiling water.


Respondents indicated that they go shopping because they want to ‘look good when

visiting their relatives’ and ‘want a comfortable home’. Observation of Beijingers in

Xidan shopping district and elsewhere, or enquiring about their weekend

activities, or observing action on social media platforms such as Wechat, it appears

that – further to the practical role of acquiring goods – shopping has gained a social

role, and is fostered by and fosters subjectivity even when done anonymously

behind the screen of a smartphone.

As for cafes, one interviewee answered in a way that reveals the full-‐length

transition from the days of kaishui… ‘I go to Starbucks because I like to watch

people’, implicitly declaring his subjectivity in a glaring demonstration of how far

things have changed from the days when subjectivity was physically emerging, out

of necessity, in the crowd at the boiler room entrance to obtain a mugful of boiling

water.

These accounts of consumption, attire and leisure indicate a changing attitude, and

the spontaneous emergence of a subjectivity that prior to the reforms had been

suffocated by government policy or by fear of displaying it (Ronaldsen 140), which

led to a newly acquired diversity. This diversity – just as for courtesy and propriety

– fits within a broad sense of normalcy and acceptability that is controlled by the

self-‐regulating mechanisms of society, informed by media, including advertising,

and in turn heavily conditioned by government action and policy and by foreign

markets and culture.

As in the case of courtesy and propriety, the same age-‐based categorisation which

characterised the education and hygiene analysis conducted earlier was noticeable

in the interviewees: the oldest group still displaying the marks of the 1980s in


their personal attire and clothing, whilst the youngest ones were wearing cutting

edge fashion items and alternative haircuts.

The impact of the new social structure, featuring the emergence of a privileged

class, combined with the role of the media and the influence of foreign exposure

generated changes in leisure habits, consumer trends, and general appearance,

producing a grammar of style, and a phenomenon of emulation and differentiation

which fuels consumerism and reshapes values thus also determining social

behaviour and personal care.

Occasional dips into the topic of sexuality during interviews gave the opportunity

to confirm the hypothesis of the co-‐existence of progressive and traditional values:

remarkably even among those that seem most progressive, many still abide to the

traditional custom of no sex before love (or even marriage). So whilst discussing

sexuality of even homosexuality was not considered as a taboo, some long-‐held

practices appeared to be still holding strong.


TABLE 9 – TRANSFORMATION IN FASHION AND ACCESSORIES BEIJING -‐ 1986 BEIJING – 2014

The stark contrast between fashion items and the way they are displayed in 1986 and 2014. Aside from the obvious differences in the items on display, it is worth noting the unpretentiousness and lack of composure of the 1986 model, a good representation of the lack of subjectivity to be found in pre-‐reform China, as well as the monotonous choice of colours of the shoes on display (Photos by author).


This chapter has provided an account – obtained analysing the responses provided

by informants and by means of direct observation – of the second key factor, other

than biopolitics, that contributed to the social transformation in Beijing.

Analysing in turn courtesy and propriety it emerged that society’s transformation

has changed the way in which individuals acquire social capital, thus producing the

phenomenon of ‘courteous behaviour’ and raising awareness of personal


propriety. Further to this, and in contrast with theories seeing the 1980s as a

period of selfish egotism, respondents indicated that society today is less caring

and sympathetic than it used to be, due to the change in the city’s infrastructure,

which replaced the communal life of the hutong with the more comfortable but

more anonymous life of modern buildings.

The final section of this chapter dealt with consumer and leisure habits and

personal attire, confirming earlier findings: a society in which differentiation and

subjectivity emerge replacing collectivism, thus confirming the broad argument of

a radical social transformation.


7. CONCLUSION

Founded on informal observation of a transformation in courtesy and propriety

between 1980s and 2010s, this research set out to explore this change from the

perspective of young and educated Beijingers.

The research focused on two hypotheses: firstly on how the Chinese government

constructed an ideal of wenming ren, civilised citizen.

Secondly on how economic liberalisation generated new spending patterns that in

turn created social differentiation and the emergence of consumer subjects, with

repercussions on interpersonal behaviour and propriety.

The argument put forward is that changes in social behaviour and propriety were

part of a transformation in values which affected social values, ethics and morality,

referring to its final output as Chinese modernity, of which the participants to this

research are the prime representatives.

The first hypothesis formulated is the role of the government in promoting

civilisation by means of posters, campaigns and through formal education.

Participants showed cynicism about posters and campaigns, pointing out the

futility of government action and indicating that it is mainly targeted at rural

immigrant workers.

The scepticism shown by respondents on the efficacy of posters and campaigns in

promoting civilisation should be taken lightly – it has been argued – as there are

plausible reasons to suggest that campaigns, as well as posters and billboards,

reach all strata of society and not just migrant workers as the informants sustain.

Firstly because migrant workers gradually integrate in society, making it

reasonable to argue that posters target all strata of society, as the variety of styles


used and locations also suggest. Secondly because messages in posters and

billboards clearly aim at fostering identity and through nationalism the

government legitimates its behavioural prescriptions. Thirdly because the

respondents are the embodied evidence that the government’s message is

working, as by their own admission things have improved since the 1980s.

With regards to education, young generations of respondents claimed that they

received their values from schools, whilst the older generation of respondents

claimed to have received it from their families. This showed a correspondence

between the respondents’ answers and the time when civic education was

introduced in schools (1990s), plausible indication of the government’s success in

pushing its message through education.

The second hypothesis analysed is the emergence of individuals as consumer

subjects, which fostered differentiation thus affecting courtesy and propriety. This

led the transition from a hierarchical society to an egalitarian one, with

consequences in the locus of social capital and the growing importance of

interpersonal relations, with a reverberating effect on politeness, personal

propriety and status, the latter obtained through consumer goods, leisure habits or

attire.

Changes in the city infrastructure were also examined, contending that they have

improved living conditions but produced alienation.

Participants confirmed the above hypothesis with one exception. They spoke about

shopping and cafes being among their favourite past times, they confirmed the

changes in courtesy, and the different standards in personal propriety and hygiene,

including their increased need for privacy.


They indicated media as vectors of behavioural models, and spoke of loneliness

driving both their need to fit-‐in do demonstrate their normality and their need to

stand-‐out to express their subjectivity.

Their accounts differ from those emerging from the literature as – contrasting

those claiming that the 1980s were a time of rampant egotism – they reported less

solidarity than in the past, claiming that courtesy is merely a superficial veneer of

manners but is less meaningful than the actual solidarity of the past. This

discrepancy is here attributed due to the participants’ sense of alienation or of

their lack of direct experience of the 1980s.

The respondents’ view is therefore pertinent not merely to the enunciated reasons

for the change in courtesy and propriety – i.e. government’s action and economic

development – but also to the argument that Beijing has undergone a deeper

societal change.

Through their views respondents demonstrated to be both products and

producers of this change, flag-‐bearing representatives of the new status of Chinese

modernity, adapted to the new social setting as subjects seeking social capital in

interpersonal relations through the use of courtesy and propriety. Their

embodiment of a shared sense of Chinese identity, their sense of alienation and

loneliness in their modern homes and in the city that lost – they claim – its human

dimension, the conflicting needs to fit-‐in and to stand-‐out, as their status of

‘normalised subjects’ requires. Their awareness and mild indifference towards the

past and towards the government’s activities; and also the embodiment – as

individuals, and in different degrees across generations – of China’s history,

carrying marks of Confucian tradition, of the Maoist era and of Western influence


in their thoughts, social behaviour, attire and sexuality turns participants into

prisms through which it is possible to see elements of the country’s past, but that

are nothing less than the incarnation of Chinese modernity.

From Boiling Water to Starbucks then, China delivered its own version of

modernity, a version that displays strains of Confucian, Communist and Western

values – but that is none other than an expression of a global reality of cultural and

social interconnection.

It seems therefore appropriate to talk of Chinese modernity as a unique set of

spatio-‐temporally delimited circumstances, a conclusion which helps breaking the

dichotomy westernisation-‐modernity, revealing the relativity of the latter and

demonstrating that in order to understand Western culture we ought to step out of

it and look for a comparison elsewhere.

As the old Chinese saying goes: “When you are on a mountain… you cannot see its

true shape”.


8. BIBLIOGRAPHY

8.1 BOOKS AND JOURNAL ARTICLES Andersen Oyen, S. (2000). ‘Food consumerism in today's China: towards a more experience oriented economy?’, In: H. Röcklinsberg, P. Sandin, (eds), The Ethics of Consumption: The Citizen, the Market, and the Law. Wageningen: Wageningen Academic Pub. Barme, G.R. (1999). CCPTM and ADCULT PRC. The China Journal, 41, pp.1-‐23. Bourdieu, P. (1980). The Logic of Practice. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1986). ‘The Forms of Capital’ In: J.G. Richardson, (ed), Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Capital. New York: Greenwood Press, pp. 241-‐58. Boutonnet, T. (2011). ‘'From Local Control to Globalised Citizenship: The Civilising Concept of Wenming in Official Chinese Rhetoric’, In: C. Neri, F. Villard, (eds), Global Fences: Literature, Limits, Borders. Lyon: Lyon 3 University Press. Dean, M. (1999), ‘Liberalism’, in Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society. London: Sage Publications. Ding, X.L. (2006), The Decline of Communism in China: Legitimacy Crisis 1977-‐1989. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Elias, N. (2000), The Civilizing Process. London: Blackwell. Erbaugh, M.S. (2008). China Expands Its Courtesy: Saying ‘Hello’ to Strangers. The Journal of Asian Studies, 67(2), pp.621-‐652. Fei, X. (1992), From the Soil. Berkeley: University of California Press. Fitzgerald, J. (1996), Awakening China. Politics, Culture, and Class in the Nationalist Revolution. Stanford: Stanford University Press.


Foucault, M. (1976). ‘Two Lectures. Lecture 2’, In: C. Gordon, (ed), Power-‐Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-‐1977. London: Harvester Press, 1980. pp.92-‐108. Foucault, M. (1979), Discipline and Punish. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Gupta, A. and Ferguson J. (1997). ‘Discipline and Practice: ‘The Field as Site, Method, and Location in Anthropology’, in Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science. London: University of California Press. Hachten, M. (2010). ‘Development and Theory of the Media’, In: J.F. Scotton, M. Hachten (eds), New Media New China. Chichester: Wiley-‐Blackwell, 2010. pp.19-‐27. Hammersley, M., Atkinson P. (2005), Ethnography, Principles in Practice. London: Routledge. Harrison, H. (2000), The Making of the Republican Citizen. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kai-‐shek, C., (1934), Essentials of The New Life Movement, Speech, 1934. (http://www.afe.easia.columbia.edu, Downloaded 21/03/2014) Lu, S.H. (2007), Chinese Modernity and Global Biopolitics. Honolulu: The University of Hawai’i Press. Mosse, G.L. (1985), ‘Introduction: Nationalism and Respectability’, in Nationalism and Sexuality: Middle-‐Class morality and sexual norms in Modern Europe. Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press.

Pan, Y. (2000), Politeness in Face-‐to-‐Face Interaction. Stamford (CT): Ablex Publishing. Pan, Y., Kadar, D.Z (2011), Politeness in Historical and Contemporary Chinese. London: Continuum. Pohl, K.H., (2003), Chinese and Western Values: Reflections on a Cross-‐Cultural Dialogue on Universal Ethics. (http://bic.cass.cn/english/infoShow/Arcitle_Show_Conference_Show.asp?ID=330&Title=&strNavigation=Home-‐%3EForum&BigClassID=4&SmallClassID=9, Downloaded 20/09/2014)


Ronaldsen, U.M.H. (2011), Leisure and Power in Urban China. New York: Routledge. Said, E.W. (2003). Orientalism. London: Penguin Shi, A. (2003), A Comparative Approach to Redefining Chinese-‐ness in the Era of Globalisation. New York: The Edwin Mellen Press. Shirk, S.L. (2011), Changing Media Changing China. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stoler, A. (2000). ‘Cultivating Bourgeois Bodies and Racial Selves’, In: C. Hall, (ed), Cultures of Empire. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 87-‐119. Sun, W., (2003), Remarks on the Transformation of Value System in China. (http://bic.cass.cn/english/infoShow/Arcitle_Show_Conference_Show.asp?ID=336&Title=&strNavigation=Home-‐%3EForum&BigClassID=4&SmallClassID=9, Downloaded 24/09/2014) Trigg, A. (2012) ‘Veblen, Bourdieu, and Conspicuous Consumption’. Journal of Economic Issues, 1 (Mar., 2001), pp.99-‐115. Tu, W.M., (1998), Transnational China Project Sponsored Commentary: "Asian Values and the Asian Crisis: A Confucian Humanist Perspective" (http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~tnchina/commentary/tu1098.html, Downloaded 20/09/2014) Waley-‐Cohen, J. (1999). The Sextants of Beijing. New York: W.W. Norton. Wolf, E.R. (1997). Europe and the People Without History. Berkeley: University of California Press. Yan, Y. (2003), Private Life Under Socialism: Love, Intimacy and Family Change in a Chinese Village, 1949-‐1999. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Yu, J.Y. (2008) ‘The “Manifesto” of New Confucianism and the Revival of Virtue Ethics’. Frontiers of Philosophy in China, 3 (Sep., 2008), pp.317-‐334.


8.2 BOOKS REVIEWS Gifts, Favours, and Banquets: The Art of Social Relationships in China by Mayfair Mei-‐Hui Yang. (1994), Review by Yanjie Bian. The China Quarterly, Vol. 142 (Jun., 1993), pp. 593-‐594. Gifts, Favors, and Banquets: The Art of Social Relationships in China by Mayfair Mei-‐Hui Yang. (1994), Review by Martin King Whyte. The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 56(3) (Aug., 1997), pp. 789-‐791. Politeness in Chinese Face-‐to-‐Face Interaction by Yuling Pan. (2000), Review by Ning Yu. Language in Society, Vol. 31(2) (Apr., 2002), pp. 303-‐306. Private Life Under Socialism: Love, Intimacy and Family Change in a Chinese Village, 1949-‐1999 by Yunxiang Yan. (2003), Review by Jui-‐shan Chang. American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 109(3) (Nov., 2003), pp. 783-‐785.

8.3 ILLUSTRATIONS All illustrations provided are from the author’s own collection except for photos numbered 2 to 8 on Table 7, which have been taken from the publication below. Beijing Shi Yi Wu Jioo Yu, (2014). Pin De Yu She Hui. Beijing: Capital Normal University Press.

8.4 NEWSPAPER ARTICLES [AFP], (2011) ‘China takes steps to improve national etiquette classes for schoolchildren’, The China Post, January 25. (http://www.chinapost.com.tw/life/offbeat/2011/01/25/288909/China-‐takes.htm, Downloaded 03/21/2014) Brahm, L.J., (2000) ‘Reformist Ideology, the real meaning of China’s ‘spiritual civilisation’’, Asiaweek.com, November 30. (http://edition.cnn.com/ASIANOW/asiaweek/97/0117/feat1.html, Downloaded 03/21/2014)


Demick, B., (2008) ‘Hiding a host of ills under the red carpet’, Los Angeles Times, July 21. (http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jul/21/world/fg-‐makeover21/2, Downloaded 03/21/2014) Fang, D., (2003) ‘Breakdown in communal life is the heavy price of progress’, South China Morning Post, September 22. (http://www.scmp.com/article/428726/breakdown-‐communal-‐life-‐heavy-‐price-‐progress, Downloaded 03/21/2014) Jackson, S., (2007) ‘China to eradicate queue-‐jumping’, BBC News Online, February 11. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-‐pacific/6351667.stm, Downloaded 03/21/2014) Magnier M., (2005) ‘China Changes Coarse’, Los Angeles Times, September 17. (http://articles.latimes.com/2005/sep/17/world/fg-‐manners17, Downloaded 03/21/2014) Rabkin, A., (2008) ‘Olympic Games all about China, Chinese’, SFGate, August 1. (http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Olympic-‐Games-‐all-‐about-‐China-‐Chinese-‐3274954.php, Downloaded 03/21/2014) [Unknown], (2003) ‘Spitting ban to combat Sars’, BBC News Online, May 11. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-‐pacific/3017621.stm, Downloaded 03/21/2014) [Unknown], (2007) ‘Olympic crackdown on China’s bad habits’, BBC News Online, August 26. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-‐pacific/3017621.stm, Downloaded 03/21/2014) [Unknown], (2008) ‘Police News’, Website of Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, April 29. (http://www.bjgaj.gov.cn/eng/contentAction.do?COLLCC=1909113159&methodname=getArticleContent&id=19090, Downloaded 03/21/2014) [Unknown], (2009) ‘A message from Confucius, New ways of projecting soft power’, The Economist, October 22. (http://www.economist.com/node/14678507, Downloaded 03/21/2014) [Unknown], (2011) ‘China sets classes in good manners for schoolchildren’, BBC News Online, January 24. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-‐asia-‐pacific-‐12269505,Downloaded 03/21/2014)


[Xinhua], (2007) ‘Drive to ‘civilize’ Beijingers progresses: survey’, China Daily, December 12. (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-‐12/20/content_6334530.htm, Downloaded 03/21/2014) [Xinhua], (2007) ‘Feature: China expects “Intangible legacy” from Beijing Olympics(2)’, People’s Daily Online, October 04. (http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90781/6276692.html, Downloaded 03/21/2014)


9. APPENDIX

9.1 GLOSSARY Chinese Term Approximate

English Correspondent

Description

Chaoyang (朝阳) Chaoyang District Business district of Beijing.

Gaige kaifang (改革开放)

Policy of ‘reforms and openness’.

The 1978 ‘open-‐door’ policies of economic liberalisation launched by Deng Xiaoping.

Jinshen Wenming (精神文明)

Spiritual Civilisation

Civilisation of the spirit, one of the two ‘civilisations’ that form part of the ideological framework initiated by Deng Xiao Ping as constitutive part of its open-‐door reform programme, promoting the morally and civilly righteous conduct.

Kaishui(开水) Boiling Water A symbol of the Mao era, boiling water was distributed in public places at irregular times and was used to make impromptu tea.

Kong-‐Tai Kong-‐Tai An advertising style imported from Hong Kong and Taiwan in the 1980s that was also adopted by Chinese authorities to better appeal to the population.

Mingong (民工) Peasant immigrant worker

Peasants that migrated to Beijing for work and greatly contributed to its growth from the 1990s onward.

Waidiren(外地人) Outsider A non-‐native of Beijing.

Wuzhi wenming (物质文明)

Material civilisation

Material development, the second of the two ‘civilisations’ that form part of the ‘two civilisations’ programme of Deng Xiao Ping, see Spiritual Civilisation for the other.

Wenming (文明) Civilisation An all-‐embracing term that incorporates moral, civic, intellectual righteousness that roughly but not accurately translates in English as civilisation.

9.2 RELEVANT HISTORICAL DATES Date Event 1911 Republic of China is founded, end of the Empire. 1949 The People’s Republic of China is founded and the Republic of China is moved to

Taiwan. 1978 Beginning of the open-‐door reform policy. 1982 Beginning of the ‘two civilisations’ programme. 1989 Events of Tiananmen Square. 2001 China enters WTO. 2008 Olympic Games held in Beijing.


9.3 OTHER NOTABLE CIVILISATION CAMPAIGNS Start Date Name Objective 1934 New Life Movement Promotion of life according to the virtues of

decorum, rightness, integrity, honesty. 1952 San fan (Three anti-‐) Removal of corruption, waste and bureaucracy

from the party. 1952 Wo fan (Five anti-‐) Against bribery, tax evasion, theft of state

property, cheating on government contracts and stealing economic information.

1986 Launch of charter of civilisation of the citizen of the capital (首都市民文明公约)

Publication of norms and standards aimed at regulating behavior, morality and political opinion.

2003 Anti-‐spitting ban Curb public spitting in Guangzhou to stop the spread of SARS.

2009 Shanghai pre-‐Expo 2010 campaigns

Numerous initiatives to promote civilisation ahead of Shanghai Expo 2010.

2006 Beijing Olympics civilisation campaign

Numerous initiatives to promote civilisation ahead of Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

Documents

From Boiling Water to Starbucks, Beijing’s latest Cultural Revolution - The transformation of courtesy and propriety in Beijing since the 1978 open-door reforms, in the foreground