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China dream: a lifestyle movement with sustainability at its heart | Guardian Sustainable Business | …
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China dream: a lifestyle movement with sustainability at its heart An ambitious project offers a new model of prosperity and sustainable consumerism for world's second largest economy Peggy Liu for the Guardian Professional Network guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 13 June 2012 14.55 BST
The Chinese national flag in front of a building clouded in heavy smog in Beijing, China. Photograph: Diego Azubel/EPA
It is hard to imagine that China could one day lead the world in going green when you look at the smogfilled skies that are everyday reality there. The government knows that energy fuels the growth of nations, and that China's dependence on foreign energy imports creates a national security risk. People, both rich and poor, are worried about pollutioninduced cancers in villages and babies dying from consuming toxic milk. But China has ambitious targets in its 12th five yearplan to address energy, water, carbon emissions and forest coverage. But what it doesn't have is a plan for how to engage the rapidly growing middle class in sustainable consumuption of resources. The need to do so is clear. China's middle class will grow from 300 million today to 800 million by 2025 and the country could shift from 'made in China' status to 'consumed in China'. In Beijing the 2011 sales at one shopping mall reached $1bn. Qiu Baoxing, vice minister of housing and urban rural development, says: "We cannot continue to blindly follow the American dream. This is simply unsustainable for China and the world." For China, this is no time for incrementalism. It needs to steer the emerging middle class to greener pastures before they develop the unsustainable tastes and habits of the western middle classes. This is not just about buying energy efficient light bulbs or fuelefficient cars. We need to launch a social movement now that radically changes society's attitudes towards consumption by helping them develop a different vision of prosperity. www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/china-dream-sustainable-living-behaviour-change
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China dream: a lifestyle movement with sustainability at its heart | Guardian Sustainable Business | …
I lead a nonprofit JUCCCE that seeks to accelerate China's sustainable development. Together with partners around the world, we're promoting a new, aspirational lifestyle called the China dream. The China dream realigns success with a healthy and fulfilling way of life — living more, rather than just having more. It promotes a sustainable lifestyle, but is not explicitly green. It offers a compelling alternative to the American dream that enshrines conspicuous consumption. The movement is not a moral imperative campaign with rational arguments for energy savings; it offers a way of life that taps into consumers' desires and aspirations. Julian Borra, executive creative director for Saatchi & Saatchi S, calls this "the irresistible factor." To influence consumer behaviour, climate scientists, government, academia and NGOs should help ad agencies and storytellers develop a powerful message to show what's HOT, and what's NOT. If environmentalists used sex to sell sustainability the way automakers sell cars, people would be a lot greener by now. The first step for the China dream is to work with creatives to develop a visual lexicon for this new lifestyle. China is ripe for this imagery. The Cultural Revolution ripped up much of China's social fabric, and the Chinese have been soaking in foreign advertising images of luxury for the past two decades. If a new model of prosperity that is tied to personal success can be shown to Chinese citizens, they are more likely to accept it than more developed societies. In fact, it is a matter of national pride for China to define its own vision for its future. China's media landscape — with a few dominant mass media players and online platforms has massive reach and can ignite new concepts quickly. The recent rise of megabloggers play a key role in allowing us to mobilise people who aspire to champion the China dream. But no matter how powerful the imagery may become as an advocate for sustainable lifestyles, we cannot trust that consumers will make the green decision at the time of purchase. Studies show that consumers still need institutional guidance to make sustainable choices. China is unique because the government can help push behaviour change with local policies. Small policy nudges scaled across the country can have large effects; the banning of free plastic bags eliminated the use of 24 billion bags in the first three years. Here's where China's governance structure can help change real consumer behaviour. It's central government mandate can translate into local targets to go green. Mayors have the independence to swiftly experiment with policies. If these policies work, they get rolled out across the country and the cities get recognition. China presents an opportunity to mobilise consumers in ways never thought possible. If we miss it, corporations will miss the chance of creating a customer they want to sell to in what will be the largest consumer market in the world. In fact, it may be the only region today where brands and government can work hand–inhand to make real change on a large scale quickly. While China's unique situation can't be replicated in other countries, the exercise to rethink what is "prosperity" and what is "more" is similar to discussions around the world. The China dream offers a new model of prosperity that can spark sustainable consumerism in countries around the world. Peggy Liu is chair of JUCCCE, a recipient of the Hillary Step for climate change solutions, a TIME Magazine Hero of the Environment, and executive adviser to Marks & Spencer on sustainable retailing. This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. Become a GSB member to get more stories like this direct to your inbox
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RadicalThinking 14 June 2012 1:52AM Several thoughts spring to my mind: Good idea but indeed an ambitious one.
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So the Chinese gouvernement's tight control on many things has become China's best asset for the future!? Talk about positive spin. Do you imply western consumer are by now impermeable to a greener (and sexier) lifestyle ad campaign? Or do you suggest our libertarian democracies is not compatible with the necessary steps needed to efficiently influence western lifestyle? Maybe you mean that corporations will never agree to promote a more sustainable lifestyle by themselves (i.e. commit suicide)? Hence, it must be the Chinese because their plastic minds can still be influenced by their state's seemingly potential overall control of ad campaigns. Censorship of materialism and propaganda of health and happiness. I can see why a qualitative instead of a quantitative lifestyle would be good for China's 1.3 billion people to adopt, but I utterly fail to see why the same effort could not be done in the West and their billions of consumers. Unless, as you suggest, our western gouvernents are useless at influencing people's behaviour because their have surrendered their power to corporations. Dictatorship is our only hope. Now that's an interesting suggestion Mrs Peggy Liu. Annarage 14 June 2012 10:00AM
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Interesting...
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I was thinking about this and it does seem that our appetite for consumption. (Something encouraged wildly by our tv's,
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advertising, lifestyle magazines, everything.) Is a problem not only to the environment, but also to our social environment, the lack of connection we have with one another as people is breeding paranoia and hatred at a very base level, this perhaps more than anything else is what is contributing to what comes across as a degradation of our social values. I think part of this comes inherently from our desire to have 'high pay, high hours' when in fact, it is better to as you go up the ladder get ''high pay, less hours'' this is something I have known for years, but many others do not seem to recognise, they would rather continue consuming at high rates than actually gain more time to spend with their families. This also contributes towards the problems in employment we see, too few people have too many of our working hours The plan seems to be encourage activity and mindset that benefits both the ecology and the society... www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/china-dream-sustainable-living-behaviour-change
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China dream: a lifestyle movement with sustainability at its heart | Guardian Sustainable Business | …
Consume less, do more. Do things outside that do not require cars or electricity, and probably engage you more with your family and your neighbours. (Good for society, and the environment.) It does not surprise me that they mention on their website that California has had success with this kind of mentality, good weather makes the prospect of turning all the electrics off and going outside a more pleasing prospect, and really in the UK I think we spend a good amount of the good weather outside don't we? But too often that is used as a further excuse for consumption, BBQ's, paddling pools... But generally I can see a shift in mentality not so hard to execute, and considering the rise of prices across Europe perhaps now is a good time to move towards 'quality' over 'quantity'. peggyliu 15 June 2012 7:21AM
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Response to RadicalThinking, 14 June 2012 1:52AM
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Hi RadicalThinking,
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Thanks for reading my article. Full disclosure (1) I'm born and raised in the US. JUCCCE also works with US govt and thought leaders. (2) I work closely with many multinational consumer companies at the World Economic Forum who all agree that we need to figure out how to engage consumers around the world. Let's first agree that China is not perfect, but trying hard to improve. And let's agree that the Chinese system is right for China right now, but not suitable for other countries. This is not an article about whether you agree with the Chinese system. This article simply points out that we need a radically different approach to how we engage with consumers, in China or worldwide, on the issue of sustainability. We need to focus on social norms, and basic desires, rather than intellectual arguements. Secondly, we need to activate in parallel the pressures of soft power and policy nudges to have significant behavior change. Thirdly, China is a great regional testbed because soft power can be easily wielded (by social media, mass media), people are already used to behavior change on an annual basis so are more ready to accept a new lifestyle, and local policy nudges can be implemented/experimented more easily than in the West. People interested in sustainable consumer behavior need to find one testbed that we can gain traction in, in the short term, and ramp up quickly. This can inspire people around the world. I absolutely encourage you to get involved locally in efforts to do the same. UK is the home to many sustainable consumerism thought leaders. That's why I'm writing in The Guardian. Join in their efforts.
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China dream: a lifestyle movement with sustainability at its heart | Guardian Sustainable Business | …
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