Wed, April 20, 2011

When there's no easy answer to a student's question, Karl Gerth sometimes employs a time-tested rhetorical trick: answering with a question of his own.

In a career studying China, the Oxford University historian has often had to resort to similar devices.

In researching his book on Chinese consumerism,"As China Goes, So Goes the World: How the Chinese Consumer is Transforming Everything," it became evident that finding clear-cut answers to the country's problems would be next to impossible, Dr. Gerth said at Georgia State University on April 18.

During a discussion with Georgia State President Mark Becker, who has a son working in China and has lost count of the times he has traveled there himself, Dr. Gerth often resorted to option C when asked an A-or-B question.

It wasn't a defense mechanism - the professor of modern Chinese history displayed a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of each issue presented - it's just that the country is simply swirling with changes and crammed with contradictions.

Does it make sense for luxury brands to be in a country where intellectual-property protection is spotty and a middle class, though nearly as large as the U.S. population by some accounts, is dwarfed by a peasantry of more than 700 million?

Can the Chinese government allow its currency to appreciate and put more cash in the pockets of its people without throwing a wrench into its export-dependent jobs engine?

Is China's severe pollution merely a stage of development that each emerging economy has to endure, or will environmental damage be too severe to fix once the country has the will to reverse it?

Dr. Gerth answered these questions and more with an ease born of hard-earned expertise, presenting the yin and yang of each issue, which may be the only responsible way to approach the country that gave us "state capitalism," a mix of heavy-handed government control with free markets.

He joked that his failure to take dogmatic positions made him a terrible talk radio guest but a good academic. There was one issue, however, on which he was willing to put a stake in the ground: China's people are becoming more wealthy and worldly, and the impact of fulfilling their wants and needs is reverberating throughout the global economy.

On Bond Street, the main fashion street in London, vendors now have to take Chinese currency, the renminbi, or risk losing substantial business, Dr. Gerth said. Already, many countries have begun to change immigration laws to make it easier for Chinese tourists, who buy more than on tourist trips than visitors from any other country, he said.

"You can see, then, why politicians, whether they're in Taipei or they're in Paris, are going to be trying to figure out how to accommodate (Chinese tourists)," he said.

Many places within China also illustrate the rise of its consumers, whether the shopping malls of Shanghai or the technology and manufacturing hub of Shenzhen, a city of more than 10 million that rose from little more than a fishing village 30 years ago.

Dr. Gerth has observed these changes first hand. He visited two towns in Yunnan province after more than 20 years away. They were "completely unrecognizable," having morphed from backpacker outposts in the back of the "Lonely Planet" guidebook to popular honeymoon spots for Chinese newlyweds.

In a nearby small town, he asked the innkeeper whether he had heard of McDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken or Coca-Cola.

Pointing at the television, the innkeeper said that he had, but he wasn't all that interested. His daughter was a different story. He had persuaded her to move six hours away to a boarding school in the provincial capital just by promising that he would finally take her to KFC.

"If that isn't the power of branding to shape your consciousness, I don't know what is, even in the remote regions of China," Dr. Gerth said.

For more on Dr. Gerth's book, see Dr. Becker's brief review here or read more on the GlobalAtlanta Bookshelf.

Related Countries: China
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