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| Chinese ad for Tyson chicken, featuring Chinese actor Huang Xiaoming Picture courtesy of Branding in Asia |
In
her piece Selling Civilization, Mona
Domosh discusses the concept of commercial imperialism, that is the influence
of commercial products in the expansion of American colonialist ideals and
agendas. Looking at twentieth century examples, Domosh demonstrates the ways in
which, by creating a worldwide market for US products, American businesses were
able to establish global networks of capital that closely mirrored the colonial
networks for previous centuries.[1] This messy sense of
imperialism inevitably creates new contours and complications in our interpretation
of the power dynamics at play on the global scale. And though Domosh’s analysis
is a historical one, looking at the early twentieth century, one can take her
wider concept of commercial imperialism and apply it to the way capital flows
in our neoliberal, globalized economy.
Being the major component that it is
in animal feed, soy commonly finds itself, though distributed globally, coming
down to the everyday consumer in the form of meat. As demand for meat expands,
then it follows that demand for soy will as well. What is interesting is that
in this global demand for meat, there seems to be a direct connection between
the economic growth of a country and its meat consumption levels. In Eastern
countries, due to a growing sense of economic viability in a majority of them,
one can see an increase in the consumption of meat and meat-based products,
with its consumption being tied to notions of economic progress a-la
Europeanization.[2]
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| A graph depicting meat consumption trends in China Picture courtesy of USDA |
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| Another graph, depicting soybean importation trends Notice the correlation Picture courtesy of USDA |
In China, meat consumption has rose
drastically as the country has established itself on the global economic
playing field, with levels of pork consumption increased by 8% from 1989 to
1993. In China, this rise in meat consumption has not only economic vectors,
but cultural ones as well, with the mass-consumption of meats being associated
with affluence in the country.[3] So much so does this
connection between social class and meat consumption in China exist, that
health problems related of meat overconsumption (such as obesity) are now seen
in China as an affliction of the rich. However, as meats become cheaper as the
nation develops, it is likely that these issues will come to affect China’s
poor as well, in similar patterns that we see it affect poor in the US.[4]
And Who Benefits?
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| Commodifying prosperity Picture courtesy of McDonalds |
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| A prosperity meal-deal of sorts Picture courtesy of McDonalds |
With this association between meat and
progress, we find corporate food chains reaping the greatest profit. In her
photo essay on Abidjan, Jordanna Matlon notes that a common fixture in Abidjan
culture is the popular display of US cultural symbols, such as dollar signs and
basketballs.[5]
A similar display of American cultural icons can be seen in Chinese fast food
advertisements. Often selling ideas rather than the product itself,[6] fast food industries use
the connection in China between meat and wealth (and, subsequently, meat and
progress) to sell the idea that by buying into their industry, China’s
consumers are actually buying into the country’s quick economic progress. A
most poignant example of this would be China’s McDonalds’s Prosperity Burger market campaign from 2013, in which they
advertised that the burger, which contained double the meat of a regular
burger, as a means for the consumer to celebrate “prosperous times” and
“abundance.”[7]
Abundance of what, exactly, isn’t stated in the ad, and neither is the reason
as to why the times are prosperous. Understanding the connection between meat
and the country’s economic progress, though, its easy to infer that the
prosperity being talked about is that of the country’s corporate class. By
buying this burger, then, one can symbolically buy a point of entry into
China’s emerging upper-class.
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