The consumer revolution in urban China

After decades of egalitarian, restricted consumption, residents of China's cities are surrounded by a level of material comfort and commercial hype previously unimagined.

This treatment of consumer revolution in China explores the interspersonal consequences of rapid commercialization.In the early 1980s, Beijing's communist leadership advocated decollectivization, foreign trade, and private entrepreneurship fo jump-start a stagnant economy, while explicitly rejecting any notion that economic reforms would promote political change.

However, by the early 1990s the reforms in the marketplace not only produced double-digit growth but also enabled ordinary citizens to nurture dreams and social networks that challenged official discourse and conventions through millions of daily commercial transactions.