THOMAS: Why are the Chinese so hungry for luxury goods?
TANG: The opening by Deng Xiaoping [to capitalism] created for the first time in 100 years a rising middle class, and this creates the competitive nature to be better than your neighbor. Ten or 15 years ago there were no dinner parties, no balls to go to, no events to wear a Prada shirt or a pair of Tiffany earrings to. Now this exists.
But why Western goods?
There is a saying in Chinese that something is particularly good when it has been soaked in foreign waters. The Chinese also have a slight complex that they are behind. They regard Western goods as having a superior standard–a certain cachet–and, of course, they are more difficult to get.
Aren’t some Western luxury brands actually made in China?
That’s the irony. If you bought a Ralph Lauren shirt, the likelihood is that actually it was made in Canton, shipped to America and then reshipped back into China.
How can the Chinese afford luxury goods?
Statistically speaking, with 1.4 billion people you are going to have a million or two who are going to be very rich somehow. It’s fueling the boom here in Hong Kong: 11 million people come from mainland China to Hong Kong every year. And what do they do? Shop.
Why don’t the Chinese embrace their own historic luxury instead of today’s popular Western brands?
Listen, they are children of communism. They don’t have a sense of history. Don’t forget, the branding of luxury has only happened in the last 15 years in the world. It’s not as if it’s peculiar for the Chinese to want it. The whole world wants it.
Why haven’t they come up with their own new luxury brands?
Isn’t it crazy that with [China’s] emergence, it should not have an international brand? When I started Shanghai Tang I thought the Chinese were going to come marching in and do the same. But they haven’t. I suppose because they are slightly embarrassed, even years after the Cultural Revolution, to be seen as being attached to their colonial history.
