This is China! BLOG

Is China Cool Yet?

A recent Financial Times commentary asks the question, “Is China now cool?” The article poses the observation:

“This is not as flippant as it may sound, but an important issue for business, technology and even geopolitics. China has repeatedly shown it can make cheap and reliable products. But a Cool China would be a place with a sense of style and home-grown brands young people the world over would want to emulate, and it would be a freewheeling place where innovation flourished.”

A recent trip I took to Beijing a couple days back (about which I’ll be posting an article in the days to come), left me with the unequivocal answer, “No, China is not cool yet.” That is, if Beijing is meant to be the flag bearer of a Cool China. Indeed, once you cut through the curtains of pollution and navigate through the stagnant seas of traffic Beijing is a great and toxic concrete jungle.

“You cannot escape the restless ambition and sense of renewal in China these days, from the uber-fashionable modern-art galleries and grunge music scene in Beijing to the dizzying statistics about university graduates and patent approvals. Yet somehow the end result never quite matches the hype.”

There are pockets of Cool in China, of course: art scenes, music scenes, even some business venues; but, maybe because I’ve been living down South these past five years and am so near Shanghai, I tend to attach associations with “cool” to Shanghai. Shanghai has always struck me as less restrained and more “international” than Beijing, despite Beijing being the country’s capital. Guangzhou, though, is just nuts, and has few redeeming qualities unless you like eating snake and civet cat.

“In a way, Beijing’s new icons tell a similar story. The buildings are not the fruits of home-grown creativity: they are designed by foreign architects and their function is often expressing state power. As Mr Koolhaas’s critics love to point out, his CCTV tower will house an organisation whose output is sometimes little more than party propaganda.”

The article’s observation reaches to the heart of the discussion about how a country can be Cool. A government cannot impose Cool on a population or society anymore than it can democracy (as some countries in recent modern history have attempted to). A government can organize manufacturing production; it can direct propaganda; it can even fund research in specific directions. But it cannot by fiat foster an environment that incubates Cool.

“From the environment to education, so much of what happens in China over the next couple of decades will depend on how quickly the Communist party lets go its tight grip and allows society to breathe. The same goes for innovation, culture and the birth of Chinese cool.”