THE REVIEW OF COMMUNICATION
2.1
(January 2002): 69-72
© 2002 National Communication
Association
Jian Wang. Foreign Advertising in China: Become Global, Become Local. Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press, 2000. x + 122 pages. Notes, selected bibliography, and index. $52.95.
Since advertising came back to life in China in the early 1979, it has become an increasingly important business, industry, and cultural artifact in the country. But research on Chinese advertising has generally been limited to occasional conference papers, journal articles, and chapters in books devoted to international advertising or international marketing as a whole. Book-volume research on Chinese advertising is of great rarity. Marketing to China: One Billion New Customers written by Baiyi Xu, an advertising veteran in China, and published in 1990 was the first English book dedicated to advertising in the country. Jian Wang’s Foreign Advertising in China: Become Global, Become Local (2000) is the second one in English focused on Chinese advertising.
Although in its broadest sense, advertising in China is as old as commercial activities in the country, modern advertising, the “paid nonpersonal communication from an identified sponsor using mass media to persuade or influence an audience” (Wells, Burnett, and Moriarty 6), is a Western—primarily American—invention. Foreign advertising’s occurrence, growth, and operation in China are of no small significance to Chinese society and culture in general and to Chinese advertising in particular. In this area, Foreign Advertising in China is the first of its kind.
When you open the first chapter of the book, you will be engaged in no time by the author’s minute and vivid description of an outdoor billboard for Hennessy in Beijing. You may feel as if you were standing at the heart of China’s capital city. Throughout the entire book, there is no lack of such descriptions and juicy anecdotes that make it highly readable to readers of any intellectual backgrounds. What will attract more of your attention is, however, the extensive, solid, and coherent research the author has presented in his book.
Foreign Advertising in China consists of six chapters. Chapter 1, “China’s Encounter with Global Advertising Culture,” sets the tone and direction for the entire book. The author’s concise and insightful discussions on the relationships between advertising, consumption, and culture, and between advertising, imperialism, and globalization not only provide a clear and necessary theoretical framework for the book, but also can be helpful to anyone who wants a quick and terse overview of these important concepts in advertising, communication, and marketing studies.
Chapter 2, “The Advertising Revolution: Foreign Advertising in China in the 20th Century,” overviews the history of foreign advertising in China, in relation to the Chinese economy and the mass media from the early part of the 20th century to the 1990s. Divided into three parts, this chapter presents a comprehensive and clear picture of the vicissitudes that foreign advertising in China experienced—from its rise in the pre-1949 communist revolution decades to its fall in the 1950s and 1960s, and then from its renaissance in the late 1970s to its sustained and rapid growth since then. While providing a meaningful historical perspective to the book, this chapter may serve as a valuable start for those who are interested in Chinese advertising history, particularly the history of foreign advertising in China.
If Chapter 2 can be seen as a historical “long shot” of foreign advertising in China, the next two chapters serve as two “close-ups” of the contemporary foreign advertising in the country. Titled “Modern Temptation: The Siren Songs of Consumption in Foreign Ads,” chapter 3 first examines the “structure of attention” in selected foreign advertisements through a vivid description of an advertising environment survey in Beijing. By summarizing his impressions of 386 advertisements carried by six types of advertising vehicles—newspaper, magazine, television, radio, outdoor billboard, and subway—in a typical day of China’s capital city in spring 1996, this “snapshot study” yields revealing information about advertising, particularly foreign advertising, in China.
In the same chapter the author reports a focus group discussion with eight students of a vocational school in Shanghai, the commercial center and a major focal point of foreign advertising in China, and a survey of nearly 200 students in the same school in 1996. The author found that foreign advertising was preferred over local advertising and generally perceived as better than local advertisements in terms of creative concepts and execution. He suggests that “what underlies Chinese consumers’ overwhelming preference for foreign ads seems to be their curiosity about the yearning for the exotic and the affluent ‘Other,’ embodied by the stylized representations of lifestyles in the foreign ads” (67).
As another “close-up,” chapter 4 reports a case study the author conducted in a multinational advertising agency in Beijing. Based on his personal observations and interviews, this chapter brings a “behind-the-scenes look” at the foreign advertising agency to the fore. The detailed descriptions of the agency’s physical setting, its organization and staff, and its professional norms offer readers a good peek into a global advertising agency’s day-to-day operation and its cross-cultural transfer in a new local market overseas.
A major challenge that foreign advertising agencies have to face in China is the ever-growing and perplexing advertising law and regulation. Titled “‘Crossing the River by Feeling the Stone’: Government Regulation of Foreign Advertising,” chapter 5 explores the relationship between the Chinese government and the multinational advertising industry in the country by examining the nature, process, and effectiveness of such law and regulation. It particularly reviews the Chinese government’s guiding principle in regulating foreign advertising, the censorship process, and the impact of the 1995 Advertising Law, the first of its kind in Chinese history. This chapter is must reading for the personnel of foreign advertising agencies and multinational companies that plan to enter the Chinese market.
Is foreign advertising becoming more global or more local in China? Chapter 6, “Global Advertising, Chinese Style,” addresses this question with an in-depth discussion. The author rejects the conventional “blanket statement of ‘globalization’ or ‘localization’ to describe foreign advertising development in China” (109). Instead, he suggests that foreign advertising in China is moving toward “glocalization,” a continuum of cultural hybridization that adapts between the global and the local. It is becoming global because modern advertising, a quintessentially Western institution, has been widely received in China; it is becoming local because it, among other things, has to be recreated to fit into the Chinese sociocultural context.
In short, Foreign Advertising in China is both informative and insightful. The topics it covers are almost as sweeping as foreign advertising in the country itself. It is undoubtedly helpful and pleasant reading for anyone who wants a broad and detailed picture of foreign advertising in China. The seemingly paradoxical “becoming global, becoming local” discussion on glocalization of foreign advertising in China brings both sides of the same coin to our attention. The thought-provoking conclusion of the book not only highlights the way foreign advertising is operated and transferred in China, but also constructively adds to theory building in international advertising and international marketing, particularly in relation to the longtime debate over standardization and localization.
Although Foreign Advertising in China has numerous merits, it would be more appealing if it were more up to date. The latest information on Chinese advertising available in the book is from 1996. In the subsequent five years, foreign advertising in China witnessed dramatic changes and experienced rapid growth, including, for example, its interest in and experiment with Internet advertising. Unfortunately, the book does not provide such information. I certainly understand the relatively long turnaround of a book project, so my slight regret is no more than just a good wish, which other readers of the book may share with me. I believe the author would take such a wish from his readers into consideration when working on a new edition in the future.
Hong Cheng is assistant professor of Communication at Bradley University.
Wells, William, John Burnett, and Sandra Moriarty. Advertising Principles & Practice. 5th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000.
Xu, Baiyi. Marketing to China: One Billion New Customers. Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Business Books, 1990.