China's Super Consumers: What 1 Billion Customers Want and How to Sell it to Them

Chapter 1From Feudalism to Fendi

China is often talked about and understood in the media, in boardrooms, at consultancies (present company included), and at design houses through the use of mind-blowing statistics, superlatives, and clichés. Some of them are true, some embellished, some misunderstood, and some are just misleading.

Getting past the hype, hyperbole, and superlatives, we need to ask and answer some real questions. When did China start to consume en masse? Who's winning? Who's losing? What role do foreign companies have in the boom? What role do domestic Chinese companies play? What can the world learn from China? What can China learn from the world? Is it a zero-sum game? What do we really know and understand about super consumerism in China? Where are its cultural and historic roots? What patterns of China's long economic history are being repeated or amplified? What patterns are brand new?

Also, when did Westerners first realize the potential importance of Chinese consumers? When did they start dreaming of selling their best wares to the largest population on Earth? Prior to the past 30 years, did any of them crack the market and succeed?

Let's start with two incontrovertible facts. First, China is really big and really old. As such, the nation's sense of itself is both intense and deeply embedded. Western firms that overfocus on the country's twentieth century political history—that see the behaviors of Chinese people as a response to or backlash against communism—are ...