In present-day China, state-sponsored consumer organizations serve as the primary channel for citizens seeking redress for injustices encountered in the marketplace, the only arbiters who can engage the state and the market on issues of “fairness.” Although these organizations and the legal framework for the protection of consumer rights that justifies their existence were designed by party-state bureaucrats primarily as a means of self-preservation, they have laid the institutional and legal groundwork for a new activism grounded in the belief that empowered citizen-consumers can challenge state and market actors who infringe upon their consumer rights. This research will show how Chinese citizens are creating new political identities and changing prevailing ideals and practices of citizenship through consumer activism. As a participant observer in a Chinese consumer organization, the Co-Principal Investigator [that's me] will investigate contested conceptions of consumerism and citizenship at a critical moment in state-society relations to see if efforts by the Chinese state to buttress its authority will arm people with the tools to challenge that very authority.
The intellectual merit of this project derives from the creative approach it takes towards understanding the changing relationship of ordinary Chinese to their government. Research on contemporary China influenced by theories of development which highlight the importance of a civic sphere has frequently concluded that a lack of non-state civic associations coupled with pervasive corruption and insecurity in the marketplace makes for a fragile state-citizen relationship which could undermine future economic growth. Such predictions ignore the possibility that state-sponsored institutions and officially promulgated ideologies calling for the protection of consumers could become tools used by citizens to engage with state and market actors, leading to a transformed civil sphere. This research will examine whether this transformation is occurring within consumer protection institutions, providing a new perspective on development and social change in one-party states. The relationship of consumerism to political activism is also central to this research, which will ask whether the discourse of consumer rights impedes civic engagement or presents possibilities for empowerment. By exploring the ways in which individual citizens articulate their consumer rights and how the state seeks to channel this discourse, this project will challenge the argument that consumption negates class and worker identities and neutralizes political engagement.
The broader impacts of the project lie with its contribution towards answering a question central to understanding contemporary China: is it possible to have a prosperous consumer society without representative democracy? Product scandals in China have garnered a great deal of media interest but almost no scholarly attention. Images of disgruntled and angry citizens in the international media do not speak to how individual consumers are taking advantage of state resources to protect their families from dangerous products. If consumer identities have become central to what it means to be a citizen in present-day China then shifts in structural relationships between citizens, markets, and the state will be captured and embedded in the language of consumer protection, which foregrounds ideas of safety and fairness. This research also has vital ramifications for the safety of consumers around the world. Chinese consumers are the largest market for Chinese-produced goods, including the fakes and counterfeits, unsafe toys, and tainted foodstuffs that have entered numerous overseas markets. If Chinese citizens can utilize consumer protection organizations to make political demands for a stronger domestic regulatory regime, they will transform the global marketplace for the betterment of all of its consumers.
