A global poll of attitudes toward wealth has found what many domestic critics allege already: Chinese today are just too materialistic.
The survey was conducted by the French market research company Ipsos in September and polled more than 16,000 adults in 20 countries.
Chinese respondents topped the list in measuring success by their possessions, coming in more than double the global average, according to the results published last week. Seventy-one percent of Chinese respondents
agreed with the statement “I measure my success by the things I own,” far higher than respondents from its East Asian neighbors South Korea, at 45 percent, and Japan, 22 percent. Respondents from developed
economies generally disagreed with the statement. Just over 20 percent of Americans and Canadians agreed and only 7 percent of Swedes.
Chinese were also the most likely to agree with the statement “I feel under a lot of pressure to be successful and make money.” Sixty-eight percent of Chinese surveyed agreed with this statement, followed by South Africa and Russia, both at 66 percent, and India with 60 percent. Americans scored evenly with the global average, with 46 percent agreeing.
Despite being more optimistic about their country’s outlook than respondents from many other countries, Chinese ranked below the global average in terms of optimism about their personal future.
The results of the poll have become the subject of much discussion online, with a First Financial Daily article, reposted on news portal Sina, drawing over 23,000 comments by noon Friday.
The most “up voted” comment, from a user in Liaoning Province, said, “A country without faith, worshiping money and power, is not at all surprising!”
Other commenters appeared to see nothing amiss with the findings.
A poster from Anhui Province commented that money is “all-powerful” and that having it confers “honor, women and power.”
“In China, money can achieve many things that it can’t in other countries,” said another user, from Zhejiang Province. “So it seems that so-called capitalism or socialism is just an empty slogan. The social ideology is even more practical than in capitalist nations.”
Although large parts of the country remain poor, China now has a flourishing middle class and there are few major cities that do not boast a luxury shopping district or two. According to the research firm Euromonitor International, in 2012 China overtook France to become the world’s third-largest market for luxury goods.
For those who have argued that Chinese society has become obsessed with money, the poll’s results should come as no surprise. Some Chinese have no hesitation about making conspicuous displays of their wealth — drawing a mixture of anger, ridicule and jealousy online. Increasing Internet usage in China has only made the wealth gap more visible, and photos of “tuhao,” a term of derision coined to mock garish consumerism, spread quickly through Chinese social media.
The poll results should, however, be carefully weighed. Ipsos said that results from China “are not reflective of the general population” because the country’s Internet penetration rate is less than 60 percent. However, as in other countries that fall below that threshold, including India, Russia and Brazil, the participants in the survey are deemed to be “primary engaged citizens” with education, income and connectivity levels comparable to those in more developed countries, the company said.
The report’s findings are the first in a series in the company’s Global Trends Survey that measure people’s values, views of government and the world. The company plans to release more results in 2014.
Frank Ye contributed research.