Anxious Wealth: Money and Morality Among China's New Rich

247 Pages·2013·11.31 MB·English

by  John Osburg

ANXIOUS WEALTH

A N X I O U S W E A LT H
MONEY AND MORALITY AMONG CHINA’S NEW RICH
J O H N O S B U R G
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS ❚ S TANFORD, CALIFORNIA
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
©2013 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Osburg, John, author.
Anxious wealth : money and morality among China’s new rich / John Osburg.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8047-8353-8 (alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8047-8354-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Rich people—China—Chengdu. 2. Businessmen—China—Chengdu. 3. Elite (Social
sciences)—China—Chengdu. 4. Social networks—China—Chengdu. 5. Sex role—China—
Chengdu. 6. Entrepreneurship—Sex differences—China—Chengdu. 7. Chengdu (China)—
Social life and customs. 8. Chengdu (China)—Moral conditions. I. Title.
HC428.C453O57 2013
174.0951'38—dc23
2012035314
ISBN 978-0-8047-8535-8 (electronic)
Typeset by Bruce Lundquist in 10/14 Minion
CONTENTS
List of Figures vii
Acknowledgments ix
1. Introduction 1
2. “Entertaining Is My Job”: Masculinity, Sexuality,
and Alliances Among Chengdu’s Entrepreneurs 37
3. “Relationships Are the Law”: Elite Networks
and Corruption in Contemporary China 76
4. From Fruit Plates to License Plates: Consumption,
Status, and Recognition Among Chengdu’s Elite 113
5. Women Entrepreneurs and the “Beauty Economy”:
Sexuality, Morality, and Wealth 143
6. Conclusion: Elite Networks and Public Morality 183
Notes 193
Glossary 211
Bibliography 215
Index 227

FIGURES
1.1 Chengduers playing cards and mahjong outside a teahouse. 18
1.2 View to the south from a luxury high-rise in Chengdu. 21
2.1 A high-end teahouse and seafood restaurant. 45
2.2 A mid-tier but pretentiously named karaoke (KTV) nightclub. 46
2.3 A private room (baofang) in a KTV. 49
4.1 The “European” wing of a high-end foot-massage parlor
(xijiaofang). 141
4.2 The “Chinese” wing of the same establishment shown in
Figure 4.1. 141
5.1 “Miss Internationals” being introduced to the audience
at the opening ceremony of a luxury housing development. 159
5.2 Dancers performing for the same event shown in Figure 5.1. 159

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank the many mentors, colleagues, and friends who made the
completion of this book possible. First thanks are due to Susan Gal and Judith
Farquhar for their intellectual guidance and moral support. Prasenjit Duara,
John Kelly, and Danilyn Rutherford provided invaluable comments and sug-
gestions and played key roles in my development as a scholar.
Several institutions also made this book possible. My field research was sup-
ported by a fellowship from the Social Science Research Council, with funds
provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation,
and a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Education. The
writing of the earliest version of this book was made possible by generous sup-
port from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation and by a Mark Hanna Watkins
Post-Field Fellowship at the University of Chicago. I am grateful to these insti-
tutions for all of their financial support. Thanks go as well to my colleagues at
the Center for Gender Studies at the University of Chicago for their insightful
comments on my work and for providing me with an all-important office in
which to write the initial draft. Julie Chu, Jason Ingersoll, Teresa Kuan, and Lili
Lai all provided valuable feedback on the earliest versions of the manuscript.
Anne Ch’ien, the superhuman administrator of Chicago’s Anthropology De-
partment, deserves my eternal gratitude for the assistance and guidance she
provided throughout my graduate school career.
I was fortunate to spend a year as a post-doctoral fellow at Stanford Uni-
versity’s Center for East Asian Studies. Versions of chapters from this book
were presented at workshops and colloquia there. Thanks go to the helpful
feedback I received from attendees of these presentations and, in particular,
to Paul Festa, Matthew Korhman, Jean Oi, and Andrew Walder for their valu-
able comments on my work. I am also grateful for the feedback I received from
my colleagues at the College of William and Mary, especially Brad Weiss and
Jonathan Glasser, who read and commented on drafts of sections of the book.