"Chinese people should consume Chinese products!"
This slogan was the catchphrase of a movement in early
twentieth-century China that sought to link consumption and
nationalism by instilling a concept of China as a modern "nation"
with its own "national products." From fashions in clothing to food
additives, from museums to department stores, from product fairs to
advertising, this movement influenced all aspects of China's
burgeoning consumer culture. Anti-imperialist boycotts,
commemorations of national humiliations, exhibitions of Chinese
products, the vilification of treasonous consumers, and the
promotion of Chinese captains of industry helped enforce
nationalistic consumption and spread the message--patriotic Chinese
bought goods made of Chinese materials by Chinese workers in
factories owned and run by Chinese.
In "China Made," Karl Gerth argues that two key forces shaping
the modern world--nationalism and consumerism--developed in tandem
in China. Early in the twentieth century, nationalism branded every
commodity as either "Chinese" or "foreign," and consumer culture
became the place where the notion of nationality was articulated,
institutionalized, and practiced. Based on Chinese, Japanese, and
English-language archives, magazines, newspapers, and books, this
first exploration of the historical ties between nationalism and
consumerism reinterprets fundamental aspects of modern Chinese
history and suggests ways of discerning such ties in all modern
nations.
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