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Association for Consumer Research ASSOCIATION FOR CONSUMER RESEARCH Labovitz School of Business & Economics, University of Minnesota Duluth, 11 E. Superior Street, Suite 210, Duluth, MN 55802 "Let's Go Online": a Contextual Review of the Consumption of Internet in Mainland China Eric Li, University of Utah, U.S.A. The Internet has accelerated China’s transformation into a modern society by helping its people become more enlightened and empowered. Online games, chatrooms, instant message communications, online stores and auctions, forums, blogs, and bulletin boards, are creating a new culture and a new horizon for communication and consumption. This study reviews the consumption of the Internet in mainland China from a socio-cultural perspective. It explores how Chinese “netizens” construct their new individual and collective identities in the cyberspace. The study also discusses the issues related to the re-negotiation of traditional Chinese culture, and the freedom and equality in the Internet in China. Impacts of the Internet are discussed in the last part of the paper. [to cite]: Eric Li (2006) ,""Let's Go Online": a Contextual Review of the Consumption of Internet in Mainland China", in AP - Asia- Pacific Advances in Consumer Research Volume 7, eds. Margaret Craig Lees, Teresa Davis, and Gary Gregory, Sydney, Australia : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 317-324. [url]: http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/13053/volumes/ap07/AP-07 [copyright notice]: This work is copyrighted by The Association for Consumer Research. For permission to copy or use this work in whole or in part, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at http://www.copyright.com/. ‘LET’S GO ONLINE’: A CONTEXTUAL REVIEW OF THE CONSUMPTION OF INTERNET IN MAINLAND CHINA Eric P.H. Li University of Utah ABSTRACT no longer a monolithic or placeless “cyberspace”; rather, it The Internet has accelerated China’s transformation is numerous new technologies, used by diverse people, in into a modern society by helping its people become more diverse real-world locations. Internet consumption in China enlightened and empowered. Online games, chatrooms, may be seen as a kind of socio-cultural reformation process. instant message communications, online stores and The adoption of Internet and the construction of cyber auctions, forums, blogs, and bulletin boards, are creating a culture are critical events in this rapid growing information new culture and a new horizon for communication and society. The aim of this paper is to study the changing consumption. This study reviews the consumption of the behavioral patterns involving consumption of the Internet in Internet in mainland China from a socio-cultural mainland China, with particular reference to socio- perspective. It explores how Chinese “netisens” construct economic change. The construction of new “net” identities, their new individual and collective identities in the places for “freedom” and “equality”, and the re-negotiation cyberspace. The study also discusses issues related to the of traditional Chinese beliefs and values on the Internet will negotiation of traditional Chinese culture, and the freedom be discussed. Three research propositions will be proposed and equality in the Internet. Impacts raised by the Internet as future research opportunities. The impacts of the Internet are discussed in the last part of the paper. will be discussed in the last part of this article. INTRODUCTION SOCIO-ECONOMIC CHANGE IN CHINA “I was excited about the prospect of introducing the The economic reforms initiated by the Chinese Internet to China because it would create an open platform government some 25 years ago created rapid economic, where six billion people on earth could suddenly share the social, and culture changes. The growing integration of the same central nervous system, allowing them to world market, and the influences of globalisation and communicate with each other” technological innovations all have had a great impact on – Dr. Charles Chao Yang Zhang, founder of changing Chinese life spheres – most visible among today’s SOHU.com Inc. (2004, 145) younger generation in the modern urban conglomerations (Giese 2004, 20). The launch of the “Open-door Policy” in The rapid socioeconomic changes of the 1977 increased the interaction and communication between previous two decades have created a new phenomenon in mainland China and the rest of the world. The introduction mainland China: a huge active community of Internet users. of the “One-child Policy” created a “4-2-1 syndrome”, During this process, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) meaning four grandparents and two parents pampering one had to give way to new social and political actors, even if it child, (Su 1994; Jing 2000). The rapid growth of the still claims absolute political power. The rise of the market economy led to current conditions in which an urban economy, increasing exposure to the “Western” world, middle class Chinese family can afford more luxury goods advances in technology, and the rising influence of China in like fashions, high-end home furniture, cars, home the global market, have constructed a dual society in electronics, and various kinds of entertainments. With the contemporary China, simultaneously dominated by both the growth in use of information technologies in the world state and the market. market, increasing demands on computer and The Internet, which was introduced to mainland telecommunication products have been noticed in China. China during the early 1980s, has become a “necessity” for Most Chinese seem to want to take their places in the most urban Chinese in the past decade. One of the main “information society” in order to obtain more information, reasons that the Internet was not popular in China until knowledge and freedom in cyberspace. recently was the scarcity of Chinese language content on the Internet (Kennedy 2000; Rayburn and Conrad 2004). INTERNET USAGE IN CHINA The situation is changing now, it was projected that the The Chinese government has paid much attention to Chinese language would become the second most popular developing new consumer technology along with the language, after English, on the Internet by the year 2005 economy. During the last decade, information and (Rayburn and Conrad 2004, 471). According to a survey communication technology in China has been developing conducted by the China Internet Network Information enormously fast. The magazine Computer World states that Center (2005), there were 103 million13 Internet users in China will be the biggest information technology market in mainland China. Further, China is expected to have 57 the world by 2010 as it continues to grow in various sectors million broadband subscribers by the end of 2007 (Li, Kirkup, and Hodgson 2001, 417). The increasing (Electronic News 2005). The rapid emergence of the number of Internet and telecommunication users in Internet in China is an unexpected and unaccountable Mainland China has created a new “information” era. Paper process because the Internet presents a whole range of magazines and newspaper are being replaced by online challenges, ambiguities, and contradictions, not only to the versions, consumer photographs are more commonly existing political, technological, and economic presented in the digital format than hardcopies, email and infrastructure of the society, but also to our understanding instant messages have replaced handwritten letters and of the adoption and use of the media, old and new, in all documents. As in the West, new communication and societies (Zhu and He 2002, 489). information sharing methods have been introduced to the According to Miller and Slater (2000), the Internet, is Internet, like blogs, online dairies, bit-torrent downloads, online forums, e-tailing, and so on. As telecommunication has contributed to the creation 13 The 95% confidence intervals for the estimate were of peer-to-peer private spaces for communication, the 96.78 million to 109.22 million (CNNIC 2005). 317 Internet in China has created multiple symbolic spaces for acting as a process for building a collective identity public communication and discourse, thus bridging (Calhoun 1991; Melucci 1995; Nip 2004). Online games individuals and groups independent of space and time are one of the most popular Internet activities in China, (Giese 2004, 22). With the introduction of inexpensive particularly for the teenagers and young adults. These hardware, most Chinese people, and especially those living online games create a new “third place” (Oldenburg 2001) in the urban districts, can afford the limited cost of for the “netisens”, where they are able to step through the accessing to Internet, and becoming new members of the looking glass and live in the virtual world (Turkle 1995, 1). “information society”. Among users in major cities (such as Online games like SimLife, SimCity, and SimAnt provide a Beijing in the north and Guangzhou in the south), going platform for the “netisens” to build up their virtual online has become the second most popular leisure activity communities in the hyperreal world. A high degree of after watching television (Zhu and He 2002; Zhu and Wang specialization can be seen as the “netisens” are able to 2005, 50). The Internet is used primarily as an interpersonal construct their individual identities in the games. At the communication medium (email and peer-to-peer and group same time, a high degree of collectivism can also be interaction) and secondly as an information medium observed. The players, like the people
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