42 China The Economist June 11th 2022
of the scheme. The brihas presented them
with enough of a challenge. Its association
with debt problems and its obvious politi
cal aim of boosting Mr Xi’s prestige and
China’s diplomatic clout are among several
drawbacks that have deterred most West
ern governments from signing up.
The gdimay be less focused than the
brion building costly infrastructure, and
more seemingly in tune with the Sustain
able Development Goals, which the West
has endorsed, too. But it also carries much
political baggage. State media describe it in
ways that suggest it is part of a struggle: an
attempt to push back against Western no
tions of development, which emphasise
enhancing human rights as well as secur
ing economic progress. Depends on your meaning
China talks up human rights, too, but its
definition of the term is idiosyncratic. It
says that economic advancement is itself a
human right and that getting richer is a
precondition for enjoying other human
rights. It calls for “peoplecentred” devel
opment, by which it means a kind that fo
cuses on people’s material needs. When
China’s ambassador to the un, Zhang Jun,
said in January that the gdiwas sure to
make an “important contribution to the in
ternational humanrights cause”, he did
not mean that China would promote free
speech or the right to vote.
In the West, China’s efforts to promote
the gdiwill not be helped by its link with
another project, the Global Security Initia
tive. Mr Xi presented this in April at the
Boao Forum for Asia, a gathering in China
of foreign and Chinese businesspeople, ac
ademics and officials. Chinese media call
the schemes Mr Xi’s “two big initiatives” of
recent months. The latest one was clearly a
response to the war in Ukraine. Mr Xi told
the delegates that security was a “precon
dition” for development. He said it should
involve respecting countries’ sovereignty,
but in a dig at natohe also said countries
should take others’ “legitimate security
concerns” seriously and reject any “cold
war mentality”—a veiled reference to the
West’s defence alliances and its pressure
on China over human rights.
China may have hoped that its choice of
an anodyne name for the gdi—one sound
ing like it was thought up by a sleepy un
bureaucrat—would help to blunt criticism.
With the bri, naming had proved a pro
blem. To Western ears, “One Belt, One
Road”, as it was originally called, sounded
inflexible: a Chinacentric view of how the
world’s infrastructure should be built. Ap
parently to help allay such concerns, the
English name was changed in 2015. In Chi
nese, it remained the same.
But Chinese commentators describe
the gdiin ways that make it sound as much
a demonstration of China’s global statureas an attempt to improve people’s lives. In
a party journal, a senior official from the
People’s Daily, the party’s main mouth
piece, said the initiative was a “rejection of
selfcentredness”, but added: “It is China’s
choice for improving global governance.”
The initiative, the author wrote, was pass
ing on “China’s outstanding traditional
culture”. The article also linked the gdito
China’s political ideology, saying it was us
ing “the basic principles of Marxism” to
“interpret the times, lead the times, and
answer the problems of China and the
times”. Red Flag Manuscript, another offi
cial journal, said the gdiwas upholding
the party’s “original mission”: a reference
to one of Mr Xi’s catchphrases about the
party’s role as a leader of economic and so
cial development.
To many poor countries, desperate for
help after being hammered by covid, such
ideological tinges may not matter much.
Richard Gowan of International Crisis
Group, a thinktank, says such countries
may regard China as helpfully “filling a
space”fromwhichWesterndonorswillre
treatastheyfocusonthecrisisinUkraine.
For itspart, Chinamay have seenpoorcountries’ anger over the West’s failure to
do more to deliver covid vaccines to them
as “an opening” for its gdipush, says Sarah
Cliffe of New York University’s Centre on
International Cooperation.
That little is so far known about what
China plans to do with its gdimay not mat
ter either. The briinitially caused much
puzzlement in the West, before emerging
as China’s biggest ever building spree
abroad. The gdiis unlikely to involve any
thing like as much money as the bri—not
least given the parlous state of China’s
economy as the country struggles to crush
covid. But its close link with Mr Xi means
that bureaucrats will scrabble in the com
ing months to flesh out the idea.
Competition with the West will spur
them on. Yu Jie of Chatham House, a think
tank in London, sees the scheme in part as
a response to the West’s efforts to chal
lenge the briwith its own infrastructure
building schemes such as the Build Back
Better World plan announced by the g7 in
June last year. Chinese officials say that by
proposingthegdi, MrXiisgivingdevelop
ingcountriesmoreofa sayintheiraffairs.
Thebattlelinesarebeingdrawn.nConsumerspendingLocked down and pent up
I
n april2020, just after China’s first wave
of covid19 had passed, Hermès opened a
new 511squaremetre shop selling luxury
bags, scarves and jewellery in Guangzhou,
the capital of Guangdong province. The
store described itself as “minimalist”. The
response to its opening was anything but.
Shoppers spent at least 19m yuan ($2.7m)
on the first day, according to Women’s Wear
Daily. One customer (the last to leave) post
ed online a photo of herself filling the boot
of her car with shopping bags. She could
not remember if she had spent 930,000
yuan or 960,000.
The Guangzhou store’s big day is a
widely cited example of “revenge spend
ing” in the wake of a lockdown. The term
refers to the tendency of consumers to
splash out after a period of enforced absti
nence—overspending in an attempt to “get
even”, hedonically if not financially. As
Shanghai emerged from its long lockdown
on June 1st, queues formed outside an even
bigger Hermès store in China’s financial
hub. That raised hopes that shops in the ci
ty could benefit from pentup demand.
There is no universally accepted defini
tion of revenge consumption. It can referto what people buy (expensive indulgenc
es), why they buy it (to alleviate feelings of
boredom, depression or helplessness), or
how much of it they buy. In principle,
spending must not only get back to normal
but exceed it. Indeed, to exact full revenge,
the excess spending after lockdown shouldH ONG KONG
It will take time for China’s consumers to recover from lockdownWhen a cut is not a cut