Posted on 06/26/2005 5:56:11 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
www.chinaview.cn 2005-06-25 22:55:44
BEIJING, June 25 (Xinhuanet) -- Shen Yiran has no idea on how her monthly income was gone, if her mother didn't ask her to write down on a notebook each penny she spent.
Working in a public relations company in Beijing, Shen earns a decent monthly income of around 6,000 yuan (726 US dollars) after paying the income tax. She has worked for five years and has no family burden. However, she has no savings at all.
Each month, Shen, 27, spends more than 1,000 yuan (121 dollars) on taking taxes, another 1,000 yuan on attending get-together parties with friends. And she lavishes the rest money on brand-name cosmetics, fashion clothes and shoes.
She is always looking forward to the coming of the pay day, as she cannot make ends meet, with piles of bills awaiting to be paid at the end of each month.
Shen is just one of the Chinese youths, who dare to spend "tomorrow's money" on luxury goods in the name of living a "qualitylife". They are so-called "Yueguangzu" in Chinese, meaning that they spend all they earned each month without saving a penny.
A survey on luxury-goods consumption which covered 1,289 internet surfers in Shanghai, Jiangxi and Zhejiang provinces showed that 68.8 percent of the respondents said they are willing to buy brand-name goods, and 56.7 percent said they had the experience to save money for buying such sort of products.
The respondents' average annual per capita expenditure on extravagant goods stood at 22,063 yuan (2,268 US dollars), said the survey.
Another survey claimed that the number of big-spenders in China now accounts for 13 percent of the country's total population, with majority of them aging below 40.
Sun Shijin, a professor of the psychological research center with the Shanghai-based Fudan University, said,"The lifestyle of the Yueguangzu shows that they have confidence in the future."
An investigation targeting urban youths revealed that 57 percent of the respondents "dare to consume with tomorrow's money",and only 48 percent said "they don't want to be troubled by debt issue."
Xiao Yu, a software engineer in a Shanghai-based company, bought a digital camera, a notepad PC and other luxury-goods through online shopping and installment, despite that he has worked for only two years since graduated from the college.
"All these things are what I want to buy in the future. Why shouldn't I enjoy them in advance through credit consumption?" he said.
Professor Sun said,"Generally speaking, the Yueguangzus are well-educated and have a decent job. They are eager to be acceptedand respected by the society."
So they like to put on a 10,000-yuan (around 1,200 US dollars) suit, use brand-name suitcases, high-quality cosmetics and jewelryto make themselves look differently and successfully, even if theyhad to borrow money from banks, he said.
Some Chinese youths buy luxury goods just for show-off as they are afraid of losing face or feeling embarrassed if friends or colleagues have this sort of luxury-goods.
A survey on urban citizens' family debt conducted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences showed that family debt ratio has reached 122 percent and 155 percent in Beijing and Shanghai respectively. And the ratio stood at 90 percent in some medium-sized cities, such as Hangzhou, Shenzhen and Qingdao.
While in the United States, the average personal debt ratio was only 115 percent in 2003, according to a latest report of the Beijing-based China Youth Daily.
"The phenomenon of luxury-goods consumption is closely related to a nation's social and economic development," said professor Sun.
With the rapid development of market economy and improving income, China has entered a consumption era and it's natural for people to seek after material things and pleasure, he noted.
"It's a natural process of the social development," he said.
However, Huang Ping, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, held that it's abnormal for a nation to have too many "yueguangzu" and debt-ridden people because debt problem, just like unemployment, has great impact on a person, the family, as well as on the whole society.
"Seeking after a sort of lifestyle that is unattainable is neither good to a person's health and psychology, nor to the sustainable development of the society," Huang said.
Gimmo Etro, president of Italy's Etro, said most of the Chineseconsumers of luxury products are people aged between 20 and 50.
In his view, people who can afford luxury products should earn at least 20,000 yuan (2,415 dollars) to 30,000 yuan (3,623 dollars)each month, not the kind of youths who lavish all they earn just in order to buy a small brand-name product.
"In my personal view, I don't hope that young people buy luxurygoods just for show-off. They should have plan based on their own economic conditions," Etro said.
Some Chinese experts also believed that it's inappropriate to encourage people to consumer luxury goods as China's current per capita GDP is only 1,000 US dollars, although in Shanghai the GDP has already reached 6,000 dollars.
"The gap between the rich and poor is still a big social problem in China," said Xin Xiangyang, deputy director of the Beijing Social and Economic Development Research Institute.
The advocacy for consuming luxury goods will produce negative effect on the society and cause disharmony, he said.
Huang Yong, 35, manager of a science and technology company, was once also a luxury-goods fan.
Now Huang, with an annual income of tens of thousands of yuan, is no longer eager to buy such goods.
With the development of economy, the happiness brought by consumption is decreasing, he said, suggesting that instructions should be given to the young people to help them build up a reasonable consumption concept.
The establishment of a perfect credit consumption system is also helpful to promoting the healthy social and economic development, Huang said. Enditem
and acquire wimmin
You are asking the right questions. I'll give you that.
Yup the Americanization of China continues!
However to earn 6,000yuan a month is doing quite well in China and typically is not the norm if you are talking about everyone. If you are talking highly educated and working for a foreign firm its about right... could be at least.
The average worker out of the city or in inland cities don't even come close to 6000 rmb.
True though there are people (Chinese people) making bank in China. A lot more than $6000 rmb a month...
But they are not the majority by any stretch.
At 6000 rmb a month they might fall into the top 2%-4% of income earners...
As for the expat community there my old boss (not a local Chinese) was pulling in $25,000 US per month....
By and large, only in some large cities with heavy foreign investment are people raking in this kind of dough. Its 'pockets' of excellence if you want to call it that. Suzhou, Beijing, Shanghai, and down South around Guangzhou they are doing well.
Then you have the other 1.15 billion people to count.
The US Embassy in Beijing released an economic report a while back showing stats that China's tappable market for US firms is about just over 1/3 the size of California's economy.
Once that happens we'll send MTV and rap music. 5000 years of civilization flushed in a single generation.
On a serious note, every visitor from China I entertain loves to go shopping. They hit the malls and buy a suitcase full of Levi's and brand name sneakers. They love chain restaurants. The younger owns try to be western as they view it from their limited access to pirated DVD's. I've heard Friends is a populate DVD. Some even speak the slang of Friends.
The Chinese government is a different story. I think they are edging toword losing control. Chinese people are getting a taste of freedom. They are traveling to the US and Europe more and more.
Yes it does work, Reagan force the USSR to spend itself into defeat.
How old are these visitors? Are they college educated? I ask because the Chinese grad students I hang out with are for the most part frugal in their accommodations and lifestyle (in some cases out of habit, in other cases because they're sending money back home to family members with medical problems). I'll grant that friends from Beijing or (especially) Shanghai are likely to be the exceptions to this rule.
Isn't the Chinese Yuan undervalued by China by some 27%?
I suspect if they allowed it to flourish at the rate it's worth, there wouldn't be much debt to worry about.
Then again, the implications of allowing the Yuan to be traded at the actual value would raise the cost of Chinese goods in America to eventually raise by that amount in price, so it'd hurt them eventually. Imagine the screams of the America consumer as the cost of cheaply made Chinese goods suddenly raise by that amount overnight...
It will be interesting to see how President Bush follows through with his demands that the Chinese stop devaluing their currency. There is all sorts of talk of trade tariffs and other economic sanctions. Then again, for any of this to actually occur, the basic assumption would be that most of the Republican congress and Senate are vertebrates.
that could be the plan after all, except that they didnt think the chinese would stonewall on them.
For communists, they certainly have capitalism down, don't they? :)
This reminds me of an old Chinese proverb:
1st Generation: Peasant. Works hard, lives modestly, saves money, buys land.
2nd Generation: Lives well, spends the money.
3rd Generation: Lives well, takes out loans against the land, loses the land.
4th Generation: Peasant.
Hmmm, then when do they get their Sherman Anti-trust Act to ensure that the robber barrons stay less powerful than the government? That happened in the US just after the turn of the century.
Comrades! The Americanization of China is nearly complete! We have ingrained in their younger generation our wanton consummerism! Now, on to our next phase of World Domination! /sarcasm ;)
Forced abortions have created a population of spoiled boys who are also only children.
The Chinese pyramid of power rests on a precarious base. Christian prosyletizing and church building would go a long way towards preventing Chinese hegemony.
They are ususally between the mid-20's and early 30's. They buy Levi's because of the cost. A $26 pair of jeans from Sears can be over $100 there. The married guys always come with a wife supplied list. Cosmetics, clothes, and shoes seem to be at the top.
As for education, They all seem to have at least a BS. I would be surprised if a lesser educated worker could leave the China. We had a party for them awhile back. They all had their pictures taken hold shotguns and rifles. They are actually a fun group.
It's the government I have issues with. It's would be different if a free country was attempting to buy us out. A communist country doing the same thing gives me the whillies. They have no problem with making their own people suffer on a massive level to achieve their goals.
The younger owns try to be western as they view it from their limited access to pirated DVD's.
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"Hmmm, then when do they get their Sherman Anti-trust Act to ensure that the robber barrons stay less powerful than the government? That happened in the US just after the turn of the century."
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Probably never.
Snow???
OH!
You mean that white stuff that lightly covered the 2" of ice from the sleet storms.
How 'grateful' was she?
;^)
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