Trickling Down: Consuming Foreign Products and Lifestyles in China

摘要

1.What are Chinese attitudes towards foreign products'? 2.How does globalization affect the Chinese sense of identity? 3.Is global trickle down theory applicable to Chinese society? The material in this article derives from the data that I collected between 2009 and 2014 in Beijing and Xuzhou.My analysis draws on qualitative interviews with 50 middle class respondents in Beijing and 30 middle class respondents in Xuzhou,to learn about their experiences and attitudes towards Western products and lifestyles,supplemented by participant observations of their purchasing behavior.Further evidence is derived from an analysis of newspaper articles and academic scholarship relevant to the study.To recruit respondents,I firstly used personal social networks in Beijing and Xuzhou.Then,I established contacts with respondents through snowball sampling,which began with a few people and spread out to encompass a wide range of respondents.These included a variety of jobs and ages,with 38 males,slightly less than the number of female respondents.Most of the interviews were conducted at informants'of fices or cafeterias.All the interviews were conducted in Chinese and ranged from one to two hours in length.The interviews were audio recorded,transcribed,and subsequently translated into English.Besides using a prepared list of questions during the interviews,there were also some spontaneously questions following from my informants'answers.