Starbucks offers an “American lifestyle experience” for $4 a cup. But buying American brew—one of the only ways the Chinese can vote—is threatening the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
People’s Daily is the official newspaper of the CCP. If Xi Jinping wants an opinion published, it would appear there. So when People’s Daily publishes something, China and the rest of the world pay attention.
Some Chinese netizens were outraged.
People’s Daily caught a whiff of viral controversy, or perhaps the excuse for which it was waiting. Their columnists normally stick to loftier topics, but they stooped down to address the issue in a commentary by calling Starbucks “arrogant,” thus signaling to the entire country that the company is out of official favor.
Starbucks called the incident, which supposedly occurred on Valentine’s Day, a “misunderstanding.”
A cup of tea from a regular Chinese shop, on the other hand, can be about fifty cents. Given the price differential, Starbucks has done surprisingly well over the past two decades.
Surely, officials in Beijing would prefer to see local coffee shops backed by national champions succeed against American capitalism. The success of Starbucks must be a thorn in their sides—why would “patriotic” Chinese buy overpriced American coffee, other than to acquire the frowned upon “American lifestyle,” however fleeting?
That is apparently making Starbucks the target of ambitious Party apparatchiks. In December, a Beijing News undercover investigation found food safety violations at two stores in Wuxi, near Shanghai. According to the report, the stores used pastries supposed to be binned and expired matcha liquid. Matcha is a brightly colored green tea.
Starbucks confirmed the violations, shut the two stores, apologized, and conducted staff training and its own inspections throughout all its thousands of stores in China.
Wuxi’s Market Supervision Administration also conducted inspections of all 82 Starbucks in its territory. It found 15 issues, including incomplete disinfection records and employees who did not wear work caps as required.
The news received tens of millions of views on Weibo. According to Reuters, one user said: “If Starbucks is like this, the other shops really worry me. They suffer the scrutiny because it is a foreign brand.”
But Starbucks apparently also gains in popularity from its foreign, and more specifically American, status.
Political resistance to the regime cannot be ended altogether through the quashing of freedom of speech in favor of democracy, for example. For many, their purchases are an outlet for their dreams and aspirations of living in a modern and open society, whether that be support for Western holidays like Christmas and Halloween, or a daily decision to buy coffee from Starbucks rather than local fare that is just as good but cheaper.
Pushback against Beijing can be that subtle, or come from unexpected places, like the former editor of Global Times, Hu Xijin. After the latest People’s Daily attack on Starbucks, even Hu, previously known as one of China’s fiercest nationalists, advised moderation.
According to Reuters, Hu “urged his Weibo users to see the Starbucks Chongqing incident as an accident and not more, adding that Starbucks’s status as a foreign brand should not subject it to more criticism.”
Hu said: “China is a country that is open to the world. To label a mistake as arrogance is not conducive to the bigger environment of opening-up.”
Hu, who recently retired from his position as editor-in-chief of Global Times, is sticking his neck out in favor of an “open” China, and remarkably so. He directly criticized the word choice of People’s Daily, the most powerful newspaper in China.
The two academics quote five Chinese citizens (initials in parentheses) who describe their perception of Starbucks.
“The ‘fashion,’ lifestyle and Western associations of the brand offer a tool for the projection of a particular sense of self, as an individual—someone ‘quite modern’ (LL) with ‘individual characters and tastes’ (CW). But at the same time, an individualized sense of self is bound up with the reproduction of collective identities, via class—to be seen as ‘a modern young professional’ (YS); via tradition—to enact cultural values of thrift and judiciousness in the marketplace by selecting a brand with a ‘good reputation’ that is ‘trusted due to its global fame’ (YaY); and via nationality—to actively partake as a consumer-citizen of a China ‘connect[ed] to the outside world’ (JW).”
As illustrated by this Chinese perception of Starbucks, and the most recent attack on the company by the regime’s most important mouthpiece, there are two main conclusions to draw.
First, Western companies in China face major risks from Beijing, which is increasingly and more fundamentally anti-Western in its orientation.
Second, the regime is starting to see significant numbers of Chinese consumers who choose Western products as a threat to stability. That someone like Hu is willing to defy the People’s Daily over his cup of Joe, is a signal that many in China oppose Beijing’s excesses.
A morning brew in China, therefore, has not only cultural but political consequences. Starbucks could be bringing the smell of freedom to China, one fragrant brew at a time. It’s unlikely to change the regime anytime soon, but its commercial success should tell us something about Chinese public opinion. As Beijing opposes the revelation of such opinion, especially when it is pro-Western, Starbucks better watch its back.
The days of American Joe in China could be numbered.
