Social Science Research Council

"Engendering Wealth: China's New Rich and the Rise of an Elite Masculinity"

China's economic reforms have given rise to a class of new rich entrepreneurs and professionals, the vast majority of whom are male. While in many ways this class serves as a role model for the rest of society, the extravagant lifestyles and decadent personal lives of new rich men have attracted considerable negative attention in both official media channels and among the population at large. Many Chinese understand their behavior as resulting from a transformation brought by prosperity, a transformation that affects men and women differently. This notion is neatly captured by a Chinese saying from the early nineties, "As soon as a man gets rich, he goes bad; as soon as a woman goes bad, she gets rich." My project will investigate the ways in which urban Chinese conceptualize this relationship between prosperity and gender by examining changing ideologies of masculinity among China's new rich class, focusing on a set of values and practices I have dubbed "elite masculinity." Some of the phenomena associated with elite masculinity include extravagant spending in China's new bars, clubs, and restaurants, high rates of divorce, the rise of forms of de facto polygyny, and the cultivation of relationships with government officials through various forms of elite entertaining. I contend that studying transformations in masculinity will shed new light on relations between the Chinese state and private business, changing configurations of romance, marriage and sexuality in China's cities, the rise of new forms of consumption and leisure, and the reemergence of certain "traditional" cultural practices in China. More generally, tracing the rise of elite masculinity will help account for the specific ways in which China's economic transformation has led to changes in cultural values.