China’s New Culture of Cool: Understanding the world’s fastest-growing market

3. The New Faces of Young China

We’ve summed up young China’s motivations in four simple principles—individuality, new experiences, social connection, and contribution to China’s success—but we’re not suggesting that the new Chinese consumer class is as homogenous or as easily influenced as the American consumer of the 1950’s and 1960’s. In fact, predicting the consumer habits of China’s early adopters is particularly challenging right now because this generation is diverse and highly experimental.

With those caveats in mind, we introduce four composite characters—two young men, Wang Liang and Li Hua Min, and two young women, Ding Li and Chen Hong—who collectively represent the hundreds of young trendsetting Chinese we’ve met, observed, and interviewed ...