Challenging Consumerism: Consumption in an Economy of Scarcity

The idea that China was experiencing an economy of scarcity was one of the main elements that differentiated the Chinese debate on consumption from its counterpart in the industrialized West. All contemporary variations of Western liberal capitalism held as their core principle the notion that consumerism—the unlimited expansion of consumption beyond daily needs—was essential for a healthy market economy characterized by prosperity and growth. The Chinese debate, however, questioned this assumption by asking whether this unregulated consumption of luxury goods should be allowed only after a country had solved its poverty problem and had overcome economic scarcity and poverty.

A 1927 editorial in the Protestant missionary paper Tongwenbao (The correspondent), for example, pointed out that superfluous and leisure-related consumption was a sign of prosperity in the United States, where the economy was already developed. In China, however, “society's luxury [was] equal to squandering.” The Chinese loved luxury, the author argued, but consumed on debt rather than spend their extra income. Because they were not as hardworking as, for example, the Germans, they were destined to sink further into debt. Germany, in fact, was poor, but its people were famously hardworking and thus able to produce more than they consumed. Because China's general consumption continued to expand while its production lagged behind, the author concluded: “I don't know how we can survive!” (Hao Ran Reference Ran1927, 15). Although the anti-consumerist tone of this article could arguably be ascribed to the influence of Protestant ethics, it placed its argument in both a social-science framework and a markedly nationalist perspective, deploying it in support of the commonly embraced notion of China's economic scarcity and lagging industrial production. A nation should not consume more than it produced. The opposite trend—producing more than consuming—was seen as an important characteristic of strong modern nations. This article also touched on the idea, widely popular at the time, that China's economic problems were deepened by the intrinsic backwardness of the Chinese people—that is, a lack of enlightenment in terms of work ethic and nationalist responsibility. This notion of the Chinese people's “backwardness” constituted an important theme of the debate on nation building since the New Culture Movement (1910s–1920s), which focused on the regeneration of the Chinese individual as the most important strategy for national survival. In this context, as Hao Ran pointed out, the creation of a modern and civically conscious “economic man” was a prerequisite to China's development. It was, after all, the labor of such enlightened workers that, in Hao Ran's eyes, ensured Germany's success, the most stunning economic recovery in the post-World War I years.

The idea that the imbalance between lagging production and luxury consumption posed a serious danger to the nation can be traced back to a wider economic sentiment popularized in the early twentieth century. An anonymous editorial in a 1907 issue of the daily paper Shenbao, for example, declared the following: “[C]onsumption and production support each other. It is not possible to emphasize one over the other. If they are balanced, personal savings and government treasury can be steadier than Tai Mountain. If they are not balanced, there can be danger . . . peeling the skin and sucking the marrow [of the nation]” (Shenbao 1907). This notion was not confined to editorialists and religious observers but was widely shared by economists across political lines. The U.S.-trained economist Zhu Shikang—who complemented his academic career with stints in the economic administration of the Nationalist government—also considered issues of consumption crucial for China's economic development. Combining a Veblenian critique with an anti-imperialist perspective, Zhu criticized the extravagant consumption and imitation of Western standards of living seen in China's treaty ports:

Zhu's firm opposition to this elitist and urban middle-class (“those who hold a diploma in their hands”) mode of consumption was rooted in his concern for the general standards of living of the Chinese peasant population. “Rural villages,” he bemoaned, “are in economic ruin to the point that people are starving throughout the countryside. They eat tree bark and grass roots to fill their bellies” (Zhu Reference Shikang1933, 4).

Zhu Shikang believed that at the roots of the problem was the Chinese economy's lack of a rational relationship between production and consumption, with consumption focusing on imports and failing to stimulate domestic production. Zhu criticized those economists who focused only on issues of production. A number of Chinese economists—including those at both the Nankai Institute of Economics and the Department of Economics at Beijing's Yanjing University—in fact, believed that any discussion of consumption was premature until production had developed adequately. For this reason they preferred to focus their work almost exclusively on improving industrial and agricultural output. Disagreeing with their point of view and stressing the close relationship between production and consumption, Zhu wrote:

Zhu thus argued for the reshaping of China's mode of consumption, by rationally “interconnecting” it with production in ways that supported the development of basic industries while fulfilling the basic needs of the population at large.

This strategy of rationalization of production and consumption was outlined in detail by prominent economist Wang Shiying, a leader of the Economic Cooperation Movement (經濟合作運動 jingji hezuo yundong), who tackled the issue in a 1930 article. Claiming direct inspiration from Charles Gide's ideas on cooperative societies and loosely evoking the central argument of R. H. Tawney's The Acquisitive Society, Wang argued against the wasteful nature of consumerism, which, he explained, left control of the production process in the producers' hands, allowing capitalists and middlemen to decide what was to be produced. This system created much waste, because production did not necessarily reflect people's needs, and a great deal of money was spent on advertising, which tried to convince people to buy items they could actually do without. If, instead, consumers controlled and managed production, Wang explained, “we can then produce goods that fit needs!” After all, “production is the means. Consumption is the objective. . . . [G]oods are produced for the sake of consumption. They are not produced for the sake of production” (Wang Reference Shiying1930, 80, 81). Wang's model turned upside down the idea of a growth economy and the role that consumption played within it. In a growth economy, where supposedly basic needs had already been met, consumerism served as the means for expanding production beyond daily-need goods, opening up the unlimited possibilities of luxury consumption. Working from the perspective of China's poverty problem, Wang instead wanted to ensure that China's productive resources would be directed toward the fulfillment of the people's basic needs rather than “wasteful” luxury goods that catered to a privileged minority. Wang believed that this target could be reached by eliminating the very core of the consumerist apparatus (merchant-middlemen and marketing) and directly coordinating the people's needs with industrial production. As he explained in a 1934 article in Hezuo yuekan (Cooperation monthly), this tighter integration could be achieved through the formation of consumer cooperative societies that would take over the merchants' function, get involved in production decision making, and better serve the needs of the people (Wang Reference Shiying1934, 4, 5; 1930, 80, 81).

Most participants in the debate on consumerism, therefore, adhered to the prevailing belief that luxury consumption was hurtful to China's economy of scarcity, in which production was still lagging behind. Not only were consumption habits to be reshaped, but also the consumerist apparatus was to be replaced by a system of goods distribution that would facilitate the production of daily-need goods and prevent that of “wasteful” goods. These writings also show the complexity of the economic debate in Republican China, which went beyond the divide between the productivists, or those who believed that China's poverty problem was the result of lagging agricultural and industrial production (and who generally gravitated toward the Nationalist Party), and the distributionists, or those who believed that unfair distribution was the real culprit (mostly represented by the political Left). Although the idea of economic scarcity echoed the main argument of the productivists, the debate on consumption often bridged this ideological divide. Both parties agreed that consumerism created distribution problems. Productivist intellectuals, such as Zhu, integrated the criticism of luxury consumption into their plans for increasing production. Leftist-leaning commentators, such as Wang, subscribed to the same anti-consumerist critique and supported greater integration between production and consumption, although their final goal was the empowerment of the consumer vis-à-vis the capitalist market system (see, e.g., Chao Reference Ran1920).

These critiques of consumerism were generally combined with tropes of frugality and productivity as moral traits, set against the amoral nature of luxury consumption, as illustrated by Hao Ran's comparison between unenlightened, lazy Chinese consumers and industrious Germans and Zhu Shikang's condemnation of the middle class's fondness for dance halls and dog races and distaste for hard work (Hao Ran Reference Ran1927; Zhu Reference Shikang1933). These commentators presented production as an important modern virtue and luxury consumption as a moral weakness, pressing the case for the transformation of the economic habits of the Chinese. Writing in 1936 in the Qingnian yuekan (The youth monthly), editorialist Shou Nan, for example, described modern urban consumption as a personal moral failure: “The average person, in pursuing the satisfaction of all kinds of desires, acts rashly and without control, to the point that immoral extravagance penetrates our customs, disdaining moral frugality” (Shou Reference Nan1936, 2). The general background of economic scarcity, therefore, hindered the transformation of the discourse on consumption and morality experienced in the industrialized West, where industrial abundance came to justify luxury. Although the Republican debate had moved beyond the Confucian rhetoric of frugal morality—at least temporarily, until the New Life Movement reintroduced it—and embraced a social-science approach, morality remained closely related to the notion of frugality, in opposition to the “amoral” nature of luxury consumption.

As illustrated by Xie Peiqiong's (Reference Peiqiong1916) piece quoted earlier, “the way of frugality” also came to be presented as a native Chinese moral trait, a bulwark against Western decadence. Many intellectuals agreed with Zhu Shikang's argument that the urban elites' imitation of a Western lifestyle created a major problem for China's economy. Echoing an argument popular among countries that confronted Western influence in their search for a locally rooted development model, Chinese anti-consumerism intellectuals identified the cities as the site of negative Western influence. It was there that old local social and consumption practices met with Western consumerism, creating a dangerous hybrid—a hybridity also common in Japan, where it was labeled “double style of life” (二重生活, nijūseikatsu). An anonymous editorial in the popular magazine Yiban (The common people), for example, complained that Chinese luxury was rooted in the extravagant habit of having two of everything. Chinese would own Chinese-style clothes but could not do without one or two additional Western-style sets. Even celebrations often led to double expenditures. Because of the use of both the Chinese lunar calendar and the Gregorian calendar, Chinese people celebrated the New Year twice. Some people held two styles of wedding ceremonies, Chinese and Western, or, if they smoked a pipe, would have both a traditional Chinese one and an imported Western one. The anonymous editorialist concluded: “This is the foundation of extravagance in China” (Yiban 1928).

It was in this context that movements to support frugal habits began to appear in the early Republican period. Frugality, for example, was an important aspect of the student culture at Beijing University on the eve of the May Fourth Movement. Such organizations as the Frugal Study Society (tongxue jianxuehui) and the Student Savings Bank (xuesheng chuxu yinhang) sought to encourage thrift (Lanza Reference Lanza2010, 61–66; Weston Reference Weston2004, 135). Frugality also was an essential part of the emerging new disciplines of home economics and women's education, in which “[e]conomic understanding, including budgeting, accounting, management, and . . . ‘efficiency’ were tied directly to the moral concept of frugality” (Schneider Reference Schneider2011, 105). In general, students and women were privileged targets of frugality campaigns, since they were associated, respectively, with the new generation of enlightened Chinese citizens and household managers in charge of most of the family's consumption. Intellectuals, however, also embraced the idea of frugality. Cai Yuanpei, the chancellor of Beijing University, for example, was an enthusiastic promoter of austerity in his crusade against corruption and the “failure of China's attempt at Western-style constitutional government.” In this context, frugality was deployed as a critique of capitalist consumerism and of the general corruption in China's political and economic life (Cai Reference Zimin1916; Lanza Reference Lanza2010, 64; Weston Reference Weston2004, 145). The Nationalist Party (國民黨 Guomindang) also attempted to control consumption. The National Goods Movement (國貨運動 guohuo yundong), if successful, would have greatly limited conspicuous consumption by placing fashionable imported goods—the main staple of urban extravagance—beyond the reach of consumers (Dikötter Reference Dikötter2007; Gerth Reference Gerth2003). The movement, in fact, would have facilitated the redirection of consumption along the lines advocated by Zhu.

In the context of this general critique of Western-style consumerism and the promotion of frugality as a mode of consumption that would both be in step with China's economic conditions and preserve its national identity, questions arose about what kind of standards of living China should develop in its modernization effort. These questions directly addressed the contradiction between the generally accepted notion that high standards of living were an expression of modernity and the conviction that China could not participate in consumerist “fables of abundance.”

Defining Standards of Living for a Modern China: Progress, Utility, and Nation Building

In the early twentieth century, the view prevailed that standards of living were linked to the natural progression of human development and that increased consumption was an inevitable product of civilization. Poverty or a standard of living at subsistence level came to signify backwardness and thus to be perceived as a liability in the social-Darwinian struggle among nations. In Japan, for example, the notion of “cultured living” (bunka seikatsu)—an enlightened lifestyle marked by higher standards of living and increased happiness—was closely associated with modernization (Garon Reference Garon and Minichiello1998, 322).

Chinese intellectuals also shared this liberal understanding of economic and social modernity. In a 1916 editorial, “Civilization and Luxury” (Wenming yu shechi), the prominent educator and future minister of education Cai Yuanpei—at that time just returned to China from studying in Europe and on his way to becoming the chancellor of Beijing University—addressed directly the relationship between the progress of civilization and standards of living. Cai opened this piece by pointing out that modernity had brought about big changes in everyday life; objects used by people daily, while simple and coarse in antiquity, were now complex and refined. The poverty and frugality of earlier times had been replaced by the general prosperity brought about by progress (Cai Reference Zimin1916, 3).

This evolutionary understanding of consumption also became a central tenet of Guomindang ideology, since Sun Yat-sen enshrined it in his fourth lecture on the Principle of the People's Livelihood (民生主義 minsheng zhuyi). Here Sun argued that “in the evolution of human civilization we can distinguish three stages of standard of living.” The first stage was characterized by the attempt to satisfy basic needs. The second stage was that of achieving comfort. Finally, the third stage saw humanity pursuing luxury. China, however, was still in the first stage, since the “four hundred million throughout the nation” lacked the bare necessities of life (Sun [Reference Yat-sen, Yat-sen and Huang1924] 2006, 655, 656). China's consumption and standard of living at subsistence level, therefore, placed the country in a premodern stage of evolution.

Those intellectuals who had embraced Marxist theories also asserted the evolutionary nature of standards of living and consumption. Li Jianhua—professor of labor law at Fudan University in Shanghai and, after 1949, a cadre in both the labor and academic administrations of the People's Republic of China (Xu Reference You chun1991, 316)—opened a 1931 editorial by proclaiming that “the standards for luxury are not set” but evolve with the progress of the times. What we now consider coarse could have been luxurious in the ancient days of Xia and Yu, the legendary founders of Chinese civilization. Yu's “house of reeds and earth,” while today taken as an example of his frugality, might have actually been palatial at a time when people lived “in caves and in the wild.” Li, therefore, like Cai, thought that over the course of millennia, humankind had experienced significant improvements in standards of living and that these changes reflected the level of progress achieved by a society (Li Reference Jianhua1931, 1–2).

Within this framework of evolutionary standards of living, the Western notion of consumerism as a signifier of modernity was embraced in China's treaty-port culture, where an impressive consumerist apparatus—from department stores and movie theaters to sophisticated marketing techniques—was fast developing (Cochran Reference Cochran1999, Reference Cochran2006). It was here that most of the traits of consumerist modernity could be detected. In these urban centers, consumer goods assumed a decisive cultural meaning signifying the duty of the citizen to bring home “modern” goods in order to “join in a universal march toward” progress (Dikötter Reference Dikötter2007, 2). Advertising in the treaty ports employed a “modernist vocabulary” that aimed to “market a scientific commodity as both superseding old practices and as an evolutionary vehicle for social progress” (Barlow Reference Barlow and Eve Weinbaum2008, 304, 305). As a life of “material respectability” became one of the main attractions of modernity, a modern and progressive lifestyle became inconceivable without the acquisition of a series of new goods that could improve health and hygiene, make household chores easier, and contribute to the family's general comfort and happiness (Yeh Reference Yeh2007, 8).

Chinese intellectuals and officials, however, approaching the issue of consumption from a nation-building point of view, perceived the treaty ports' style of consumption as out of step with China's lagging position on the developmental ladder. As Zhu argued in 1933, “China's most dangerous problem rests on the disparity between its modes of production and consumption. Although we have a pre-eighteenth-century level of development in manufacturing, we have developed a lifestyle based on twentieth-century expectations of consumption” (Zhu Reference Shikang1933, 4). This point was driven home by a commentator using the name of Ming Gao. Writing in 1933 in the Shangren gonglun (The merchant's public opinion), he lamented: “Japan has a twentieth-century production but a nineteenth-century consumption. China's problem is that it has a nineteenth-century production but a twentieth-century consumption” (Ming Gao Reference Gao1933, 8).

Most commentators, therefore, did not oppose higher levels of consumption per se. They actually embraced the idea of materialist progress, as long as society moved forward equitably in purchasing power and consumption habits. It was when it exceeded the pace of societal development that consumption turned into extravagance and negative consumerism. Writing in the Shehui xuebao (The journal of social studies), for example, Marxist Li Jianhua chastised “inappropriate, unnecessary, and hedonistic consumption [that went] beyond the average level of life in the society of its time and place” (Li Reference Jianhua1931, 1–2). Li's idea echoed Liang Qichao's argument that “if consumption is high but the people are suitably prosperous, balance their expenses with what they earn, and don't spend their capital, then they can still respect the principle of frugality and saving” (as quoted in Lai Reference Jiancheng2006, 240). Higher standards of living and consumption above subsistence, therefore, did not necessarily result in imprudent or amoral behavior, as long as they did not lead to unnecessary strain on the individual's or family's finances and kept pace with the progress of society at large.

It was because of the gap between China's level of development and its style of consumption that luxury in China was often perceived not as a sign of civilization, but only as an empty imitation of it. As the renowned Christian scholar and journalist Fan Bihui (Fan Zimei) explained, writing in the YMCA journal Gongtong (Together), many Chinese believed that because luxury increased as civilization progressed, the mere exhibition of luxury habits was, per se, a sign of progress. This was not so, he stated; although in the United States and Europe luxury was indeed rooted in evolutionary progress, in China it was only a borrowed habit aimed at hiding the real poverty of the country (Fan Reference Bihui1934, 16–17).

The elitist nature of China's new consumption trends also contributed to their rejection. Consumerism appeared to remain limited to the urban elite rather than following the Western pattern of extending “beyond the upper class” and involving a larger section of the population as a reflection of overall higher levels of prosperity (Stearns Reference Stearns2006, 3). Instead of signifying widespread progress among the Chinese population at large, treaty-port consumerism continued to be perceived as the privilege of a few, against a background of lagging development and scarcity. These anti-imperialist and anti-elitist perceptions of urban consumerism thus reversed the urban narrative of modernization and called on the modern urban household to abandon its modern luxury. “Each family,” declared an editorialist using the name Shen Yu and writing in Dianzheng zhoukan (Telecommunication weekly)—a periodical sponsored by the Guomindang elder and chairman of the Reconstruction Committee (建設委員會 jianshe weiyuanhui) Jiang Renjie—“does not need to install appliances, each person does not need to make social visits, and women do not need useless clothes” (Shen Yu Reference Yu1928, 3).

Caught between competing narratives of consumption as a sign of modernity, on the one hand, and as an elitist expression of negative imperialist influence out of pace with China's level of progress, on the other, finding a satisfactory definition of consumption levels and living standards that could be modern while also appropriate to China's dire circumstances became an important topic of debate. In this context, the notion of public utility emerged as an acceptable characteristic of a modern style of consumption for China. According to many commentators, current consumerist trends not only failed to reflect China's developmental stage but also failed to contribute to the public good, a redeeming feature of luxury consumption. Li Jianhua supported this argument by placing it in a historical-materialist narrative. According to Li, the rise of a small wealthy elite had led to the emergence of a leisure class (有閑階級 youxian jieji), which began to engage in a life of conspicuous leisure (顯然的閑空 xianrande xiankong) and conspicuous consumption (顯然的消費 xianrande xiaofei) (Li Reference Jianhua1931, 2–3). In ancient times, Li argued, this kind of consumption was justified by a need for increasingly complicated and splendid rituals to boost this class's position of leadership. As the trappings of power, therefore, it had political utility. However, because the upper class continued to live in leisure even in modern times, consuming goods produced by the lower class, “this kind of consumption became simply an expression of the abundance of wealth of the leisure class. Therefore, it came to have no utility. It was simply a kind of luxury (奢侈 shechi)!” This was the pattern, Li concluded, followed by consumption in contemporary China, where it was a sign, not of progress, but of a persistent form of traditional exploitation and corruption (Li Reference Jianhua1931, 4).

This theme of public utility also was developed by the prominent educator Yu Ziyi, who, in Reference Ziyi1925, commented that consumption had increasingly become a means for the rich and powerful to establish their status and therefore had no social utility. Yu complained, for example, about warlords' and government officials' use of cars. One would think that they were off to some important meeting, but they were actually going to visit friends and play cards. “In reality, their time is not worth a penny. . . . [I]t is [just] waste. However, it seems that if they don't have a car, they appear to be poor, and if the car does not go fast, they lose personal prestige.” These people, Yu continued, were wasting the possibilities offered by important scientific and technological discoveries. They turned new inventions intended to improve life and make it more efficient into tools for boosting personal prestige. “The objective of those who manufacture cars is to save time and increase efficiency” and not for people to “put on airs” (Yu Reference Ziyi1925, 78). Modern consumption, in Yu's eyes, needed to be the expression of the new scientific efficiency that came with progress and be aimed at benefiting society at large—not just a decadent pastime of the urban elites. Hao Ran, editorializing in the Protestant Tongwenbao, agreed with Yu and Li, comparing “society's luxury . . . to the act of squandering” because in China luxury expenditures were not done for “the good of public interest” (Hao Ran Reference Ran1927).

These late 1920s and 1930s writers echoed earlier themes of the relationship between consumption and utility. In his 1916 editorial titled “Civilization and Luxury,” for example, Cai Yuanpei differentiated between two kinds of luxury: one that contributed to civilization and one that just wasted resources. At a national level, Cai deemed the comfort and ease of modern travel a positive aspect of modern consumption. The same was the case with new libraries and schools, which made knowledge available to the people and enabled the improvement of the human spirit. Although such infrastructures were built at great expense, they were not to be considered luxurious, because the results they generated were far greater than the money spent to construct them (Cai Reference Zimin1916). For Cai public utility remained an important issue even when discussing personal consumption. He differentiated between consumption balanced by adequate contribution to the public good and wasteful egotistical luxury. If an individual spent more than the average person and did not counterbalance his expenditures with an adequate amount of socially useful output, Cai wrote, he was indulging in extravagant luxury (Cai Reference Zimin1916).

The stress on the public utility of consumption paved the way to the perception that individual frugality—curbing consumption that was not civically or nationalistically useful—was an important duty of the citizen and a crucial virtue in the new public morality of modern China, a morality characterized by the pursuit of nationalist and developmental goals. In the 1930s, however, an important shift occurred. While in 1916 Cai placed “public utility” in the context of nation building and of the subordination of the individual's consumption habits to this greater goal, he still envisioned it as contributing to the development of a “cultured living,” marked by a general improvement of society's educational opportunities and general comfort. By the mid-1930s, the idea that nation building rested on state-led industrialization and military buildup became prevalent, displacing liberal interpretations such as Cai's. This new interpretation of nation building and of the role frugality played in it especially resonated among Nationalist leaders and was to find full realization in the New Life Movement.

Frugal Modernity: The New Life Movement

The New Life Movement was launched officially in February 1934 in Nanchang, the provincial capital of Jiangxi, and as a tool for strengthening the military effort during Jiang Jieshi's fifth anti-communist campaign, the New Life Movement became an integral part of the military strategies adopted in this area (Ferlanti Reference Ferlanti2010; Zhang Reference Li1985). At least in its early stages, the movement was the special brainchild of Jiang and his longtime secretary and associate Chen Lifu and reflected both leaders' view of a wider Confucian revitalization of society. The New Life Movement, therefore, did not just support war objectives but also appropriated notions of Confucian virtue and personal morality in an attempt to reshape social habits nationwide. In this context, it placed anti-consumerist frugality at the center of the Nationalists' plan for socioeconomic modernity, nation building, and the construction of a national identity. Summarizing this basic New Life Movement principle, Jiang stated: “[P]lain and simple are two important guidelines of the New Life Movement. They are also the basis for implementing hard work and frugality. The opposite of plain and simple is extravagance and waste, which definitively hinder nation building” (Jiang Reference Jieshi1984c, 210).

Although the intellectual framework of the New Life Movement was rooted in earlier debates on consumption and frugality, it introduced new elements that reflected anti-liberal trends developing worldwide at that time. It especially reflected the globalizing fascist movement and its anti-communist concern for social stability and the regimentation of economic resources. The issue of social order had been a particular concern with Nationalist leaders and intellectuals. Writing in 1928 in the Nationalists' publication Dianzheng zhoukan, commentator Shen Yu, for example, expressed deep concern about this issue. Distressed by the present-day corruption of society, which manifested itself in widespread extravagant consumption, Shen borrowed the Song dynasty historian Sima Guang's lamentation on the excesses of his time to convey his dissatisfaction:

For Shen Yu, during his era Chinese society had reached an even greater degree of extravagance and waste than that observed by Sima Guang and posed a serious threat to social order because it reflected a lack of restraint and a moral weakness in the Chinese population (Shen Reference Yu1928, 1). The problem, Shen explained, lay in the fact that people were never content with their status. Influenced by the general extravagance of contemporary society, they aspired to ascend the socioeconomic ladder by any means necessary, even if those means were amoral and caused misery for many others (Shen Reference Yu1928). Only the reestablishment of frugal habits could eradicate this feeling of discontent and curb the rampant corruption that afflicted Chinese society.

In addition to the growing popularity of the idea that curbing consumption would help stabilize society, a new interpretation of Sun Yat-sen's principle of “people's livelihood” (民生 minsheng)—an important trope for Nationalist political legitimacy—paved the way for the authoritarian view of frugality as a means for economic mobilization that came to be embodied by the New Life Movement. This new conceptualization reversed Sun's vision of people's livelihood. Sun had identified progress with improvement in the material life of the people and considered the state primarily responsible for fulfilling this goal. In his four lectures on the Principle of the People's Livelihood (民生主義 minsheng zhuyi), for example, Sun envisioned the state playing an active role in providing the four basic necessities of the people—clothing, food, housing, and transportation (衣食住行 yi shi zhu xing). He delineated a system in which state factories “would manufacture the clothing needed by the people,” thus ensuring that one basic necessity of livelihood would be met (Sun [Reference Yat-sen, Yat-sen and Huang1924] 2006, 670). Sun also argued for similar state intervention in the satisfaction of the other three basic needs, making raising standards of living the primary objective of China's modernization effort.

The New Life Movement reversed Sun's view that livelihood was a primary responsibility of the state and an area in which the state's resources needed to be invested. Jiang Jieshi reinterpreted Sun's trope of the four material needs of the people—clothing, food, housing, and transportation. He argued that xing (行) not only represented Sun's idea of development of the transportation infrastructure of the new modern Chinese nation but also signified “moral” (義 yi) and “honest” (廉 lian) behavior (Jiang Reference Jieshi1984a). As Jiang explained in his “Outline for the New Life Movement” (Xinshenghuo yundong gangyao), “xing is the movement of walking, but it can also be behavior,” and this meaning, he argued, guided all four elements of the formula (Jiang Reference Jieshi1984a, 161, 169).

By placing personal behavior at the center of the formula for standards of living, Jiang and Chen strengthened the link between material and spiritual modernity. Personal behavior became an important modernizing force that could revolutionize everyday life by changing people's actions as they related to their basic material needs (Jiang Reference Jieshi1984a, 155). In this context, the New Life Movement transformed Sun's trope of yi shi zhu xing from a description of people's daily basic economic needs and the parameters for improving livelihood into a matter of personal attitude toward material life, an important building block for a system of mass mobilization of economic resources (Jiang Reference Jieshi1984b; 1984c, 203).

To bring about this transformation, Jiang and Chen evoked the four traditional Confucian virtues of li, yi, lian, and chi (禮義廉恥 rites/manners, righteousness, honesty, and sense of shame) and deployed them to define, albeit in a seemingly contradictory way, proper modern behavior. “The New Life Movement,” Jiang wrote, “advocates the regulation of life [through the application of] ‘li, yi, lian, chi.’” The consistent practice of these virtues would gradually transform the daily habits of the people and encourage the development of moral habits in the pursuit of basic material needs. These virtues, Jiang reasoned, would become the core rules in “acting toward people, handling affairs, carrying oneself, and dealing with goods” (Jiang Reference Jieshi1984a, 158–59). More specifically, Jiang explained, the way things are obtained should be “honest” (廉 lian). The way the quality of things is chosen should be “righteous” (義 yi), befitting, Jiang explained, a person's era, status, and place. Everyone should regulate his food, housing, clothing, and behavior according to his age, environment, and rank and follow the basic principles of “not vulgar but not excessive; not grand but not stingy.” In addition, Jiang continued, “consumption” of goods should follow “rites” (禮 li), which, in this case, Jiang took to mean “properly managed (理 li),” by virtue of adhering to the principle of “neat and clean, plain and simple” (Jiang Reference Jieshi1984a, 162–63, 167). Consumption, therefore, was always to be guided by the basic principle of frugality but was also shaped by social status and determined by consideration of age and rank—thus ensuring social order. In this context, moral consumption behavior “that fit the current age” became the measure of economic modernity, shifting focus away from general higher levels of material standards of living (Jiang Reference Jieshi1984a, 155).

To support his point of view about stressing the importance of the moral dimension of life over its material aspect, Jiang cited a famous saying by the Song dynasty neo-Confucian philosopher Cheng Yi: “Losing moral integrity is a big matter; dying of hunger is a small matter” (Jiang Reference Jieshi1984a, 163). Jiang used Cheng Yi's statement, however, not to describe the moral standards of ideal government officials, as Cheng Yi had intended it, but to demand sacrifices from the people in support of the state. In other words, as historian Arif Dirlik argues, whereas Confucian thought “had placed moral responsibility with the ruler . . . New Life ideology placed the burden [of moral responsibility] on the population” (Dirlik Reference Dirlik1975, 971).

The New Life Movement's priority for a nationalist mode of consumption reflected not only Jiang's own understanding of nation building in terms of a German-style military-oriented industrialization, but also emerging trends of autarky and planned economy that, in the 1930s, led to similar changes in the perception of consumption elsewhere, especially among fascist countries such as Italy (De Felice and Ledeen Reference De Felice and Arthur Ledeen1976, 69). In 1932, for example, the Italian government launched new regulations establishing the Ente Nationale della Moda (National Organization for Fashion), which was to oversee the implementation of new standards in clothing, especially for women, promoting consumption of national products and a fascist vision of a native and simple, modern style for the Italian woman (Paulicelli Reference Paulicelli2004, 20–21, 45).

In 1937, aware that the model of frugal nation building was becoming a worldwide trend, Jiang remarked:

He thus used the international environment to legitimize his condemnation of consumption beyond the frugal lifestyle as anti-nationalist in nature (Jiang Reference Jieshi1984c, 210).

The New Life Movement appeared to offer a solution to the question that had generated the earlier debate on consumption: what kind of “modern” living standards China should pursue in order to be in step with its level of economic development and avoid wasting precious and scarce resources, while, at the same time, achieving its nation-building goals and preserving some measure of native identity. In this sense, the New Life Movement can be seen as the last step in the process of gradual development of anti-consumerist trends that dated back to the early decades of the twentieth century. The New Life Movement, however, overturned the liberal understanding of modernity based on the development of societal economy and rising standards of living that had been the point of reference of the earlier debate. Although it prioritized nation building, the early debate, in fact, was marked by attempts to find a balance between these liberal themes and China's lagging industrialization and poverty. Attempts to depart from the liberal market and rationalize the relationship between production and consumption, for example, had focused on the ultimate goals of improving the people's standard of living by eliminating poverty and, in general, of channeling resources into the production of daily-need goods. The New Life Movement, instead, confined consumption to a marginal role and merged early anti-consumerist themes into a new view of frugality that went against basic notions of economic liberalism. They in fact were deployed not only as a tool for upholding a conservative form of social hierarchy, but also for carrying out mass mobilization geared to channeling resources away from the social economy and into military state building and limiting the role of the market in the drive for economic growth.

The evolution of the discourse on frugality in Japan followed a pattern very similar to that in China. In the 1930s in Japan as well the idea of frugality became a tool for the mobilization of economic resources. These similarities suggest that the increasing sense of crisis that emerged in the interwar years deeply affected the East Asian region, strengthening interventionist and anti-liberal interpretations of livelihood and consumption. This sense of crisis was a product of a changed international environment, marked by the deterioration of international trade and the spreading of the effects of the Great Depression.Footnote ³ It, however, also resonated with domestic circumstances. On the one hand, Japan was embarking on its imperial expansion, which it perceived to be essential to its economic survival. On the other hand, China increasingly feared Japanese imperialism and national annihilation. This atmosphere of life-or-death crisis and the sense that immediate national goals transcended the needs of the individual helped the New Life Movement and the 1930s frugality campaigns in Japan to bring into society a system of economic mass mobilization that had characterized the war effort in many countries during World War I (Garon Reference Garon and Minichiello1998).