8/10/2019 China Information 2009 Latham 346 7

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/china-information-2009-latham-346-7 1/3

 http://cin.sagepub.com/ China Information

 http://cin.sagepub.com/content/23/2/346.citation

The online version of this article can be found at: 

DOI: 10.1177/0920203X090230020515 2009 23: 346China Information 

Kevin Latham411 pp., with index. ISBN: 978-0-674-02680-3 (hc). Price: US$28.95

Commercial Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. xiii +Book Review: Jing WANG, Brand New China: Advertising, Media and

 

Published by:

 http://www.sagepublications.com

 can be found at:China Information Additional services and information for

http://cin.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts:

http://cin.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions: 

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints: 

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:

What is This? 

- Jun 19, 2009Version of Record>>

at UNSAM on November 4, 2014cin.sagepub.comDownloaded from  at UNSAM on November 4, 2014cin.sagepub.comDownloaded from 

8/10/2019 China Information 2009 Latham 346 7

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/china-information-2009-latham-346-7 2/3

 Jing WANG,   Brand New China: Advertising, Media and Commercial Culture.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. xiii + 411 pp., with index. ISBN: 978-

0-674-02680-3 (hc). Price: US$28.95.

Brand New China is a unique volume in many ways. For one thing, it tack-

les in detail the changing landscape of advertising in China with particular

attention to an industry perspective that derives from first-hand working

experience. There is surprisingly little literature on advertising in China

and this book usefully addresses that lack. Yet this is not just a book on

advertising in China. Jing Wang rightly seeks to complicate the topic of 

advertising by pointing to some of the ways in which to understand adver-

tising, you first have to understand China’s media landscape more gener-

ally as well as something of China’s diverse and rapidly evolving popular

cultural scenes. The author also examines relationships often oversimpli-

fied in writing of all sorts on Chinese media: the relationship between

“state-controlled media” and audiences, between the market and the state,

between commercialism and creativity, individualism or youth culture, to

name but a few. This position is best elaborated in the concluding chapter

of the volume. For all of this, this volume is very welcome and of fers some

much-needed insights into the complex world of Chinese media production

and consumption.

However, that said, the volume also falls victim to its own ambition and

does not always deliver on the promises it purports to offer. For example, the

book appears to be aimed at two usually distinct audiences: media, cultural,

and China Studies scholars on the one hand and advertisers, marketers, and

business people with an interest in China on the other. For sure there are

potentially fruitful collaborations to be formulated between these two groups,

but this volume, on the whole, fails to achieve such ends. The volume there-fore seems to display a rather schizophrenic character that is likely to appeal

to one readership at one moment, while possibly losing the attention of the

other, only to reverse this appeal a moment later—particularly in the earlier

chapters of the book. Indeed, in one chapter, Jing Wang even acknowledges

this by suggesting business readers might be advised to skip the last section

and move on directly to the next chapter. In the earlier chapters the balance

lies perhaps more with the business readership, while the later chapters deal

with issues and debates more likely of interest to social scientists.

 C h  i    n a I    nf     or m a  t   i     onXXI    I    I      (   2    )   

346

 at UNSAM on November 4, 2014cin.sagepub.comDownloaded from 

8/10/2019 China Information 2009 Latham 346 7

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/china-information-2009-latham-346-7 3/3

The introduction suffers from this split personality while also pointing to

another annoying tendency of the volume to appear at times to have its own

product placement sponsors (e.g., Ogilivy & Mather, Haier, and others) who are

rewarded with what sometimes seems to be less than neutral treatment. The

second chapter offers a detailed account of key advertising campaigns, for

some interesting in themselves these are perhaps, but there is the risk of losing

the attention of more scholarly oriented readers for whom the point only

becomes clear at the end of the chapter. The following chapter offers even less

for the academic reader and at times is prone to reinstating some of the

dichotomies the volume claims to be seeking to undermine.

From there on, some meatier scholarly issues—such as Chinese techno-

nationalism (ch. 4), the complexity of understanding class in contemporary

China (ch. 5), or the necessity for a sociological understanding of pop music

(ch. 6)—start to emerge, even if they are at times more pointed at than seriously

engaged with. An example of the latter instance is the more substantive discus-

sion of class and “tribes” in chapter six, where, even if some of the conclusions

and emphasis are debatable, there is a more informed theoretical treatment of 

the issues relating to China’s increasingly complexly stratified society. Chapter

seven offers a useful and relatively up-to-date account of key issues and develop-

ments in Chinese television and their relationship to advertising in particular.

Like many books, this one does not entirely deliver on some of its promises.

For instance, the valorization of a “hands-on” ethnographic approach offer-

ing insights into consumer behaviour is often elided with statistically driven

industry conceptualizations of what certain consumer groups might be like.

The practical ethnographic take on the advertising industry itself also often

slips into a rather uncritical and unproblematized recounting of industry

dogma. The author also tends to slip slightly contrarily between sweeping

generalizations (e.g., about the one-child family youth generation) and callsfor greater attention to the complexities of social stratification, local differ-

ence, and institutional and market structures. Yet, despite these shortcom-

ings, this is most certainly a worthwhile and needed volume. It offers some

important insights into contemporary Chinese popular culture and con-

sumerism, some rare detail on the workings of the Chinese advertising indus-

try, and valuable indicators of where future research might lead.

KEVIN LATHAM, Social Anthropology, School of Oriental and African Studies,

London, UK 

B   o ok  R  e v i     e w s 

347

 at UNSAM on November 4, 2014cin.sagepub.comDownloaded from