China and the United States — A Clash of Monetary Cultures

My frugality is largely due to my education in China as a child. In China’s elementary schools I was always told that saving money and not wasting resources is a virtue. Chinese children are also given cash as gifts on birthdays and new year’s and encouraged to save it. So most Chinese children are taught about the value of money at a young age. The experience is in sharp contrast to the education I received when I moved to the United States at the age of nine. At that time, my parents were graduate students and they did not have the means to purchase a lot of toys and clothing for me. I was actually teased for not having brandname clothing and shoes. When you are a child and you’re ridiculed that way, of course you would go home to your parents and ask for the things you do not have. Looking back, now I realize that American children are taught at a very young age to want things, and quite often things they don’t actually need such as plastic dinosaurs and talking dolls. Gifts are rarely just cash in America, it has to be something that has be wrapped up and then ripped open again. Giving cash as a gift in America is even seen as offensive sometimes (my fubby, for example, thinks that opening a big box is just more fun). As a result, most American children do not really learn about the value of money until they step into true adulthood, and by then, many have already contracted a habit of spending money they may not even have.

The present day China is very different from the China of my childhood. American culture is extremely popular and has invaded every province, city, and township. A few months ago my mother and I strolled on Shanghai’s famous Nanjing Street and tried to find an eatery with Shanghai style dimsum. We walked for blocks and blocks and saw signs for two Starbucks, a McDonalds, and a KFC, but no prominent Shanghaiese cuisine. The shopping district had extremely upscale malls where they sold clothing for hundreds to thousands of dollars. Almost every American name brand was present and sold for slightly more than the US retail price. It seems that Chinese people are now also big spenders. What is different from America is that most Chinese people still use cash. Some of the larger retailers do accept credit cards, but the credit card adoption rate is very small. What is more surprising is that mortgages are also not very common. Since the Chinese government once again allowed home ownership, people have been purchasing homes left and right with mostly cash saved in the years when the government provided housing. So even though Chinese consumers are spending much more money now, they buy what they can afford. Hopefully this monetary culture that advocates saving will not change that much as mortgages and credit cards become more popular in China.

The difference in the monetary habits between Americans and the Chinese creates some of the friction between the two governments. For example, the United States is always pushing China to float its currency, the Yuan in an attempt to get the Chinese to spend more on US goods. The Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson
said, “China needs to increase its domestic consumption“. The Chinese government is taking a regulated approach and letting the Yuan go up against the dollar slowly. The US government doesn’t seem to care that if the Yuan goes up, Americans will also have to spend more on Chinese goods. So much of the items that we use everyday is made in China that a sudden and abrupt change in the Yuan would disrupt the lives of almost every American. There are people who argue that if Chinese goods suddenly became expensive, maybe Americans will consume more American manufactured goods and create more American jobs. The bottomline is that Chinese labor will still be cheaper than American labor because they have 1.3 billion people and many are willing to do the manufacturing jobs. Furthermore, a lot of large corporations already have significant manufacturing infrastructure in place in China, and they probably would not move their operations to the United States. Ultimately, American consumers will still have to spend more if the Yuan is reevaluated 40% higher like the article suggests. I suppose the mindset of the U.S. government is that Americans can always borrow more money to spend?

Why should you care about China and its monetary policies if you’re not Chinese? Try reading this book: A Year Without “Made in China”: One Family’s True Life Adventure in the Global Economy by Sara Bongiomi.

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