Cao Tingting, "Joining the Don't Buy Crowd"

Cao Tingting, “This Year, I Joined the ‘Don’t Buy’ Crowd”[1]

Introduction and Translation by David Ownby
 
Introduction
 
This is a piece of light journalism that is worth a quick read because it is yet another reflection of the sad state of China’s economy in 2024.  Cashing in on China’s huge domestic market of consumers has long been a dream of capitalists the world over, and the dream came to life, at least for a while, as China’s middle-class bought homes and cars and China’s wealthy fueled the world’s luxury markets. 
 
Whatever the success of China’s efforts to control the first wave of the coronavirus, the extension of the policy over the subsequent years, with its lockdowns and other restrictions on daily movement, killed the goose – or perhaps geese - that laid the golden egg:  free mobility within China and engagement with the rest of the world.  Chinese have traditionally shown a propensity to save rather than to spend, and as the economy contracted during the pandemic, people stopped spending, and a nervous optimism about an economy that many already worried only benefited the rich has now become a thoroughgoing pessimism.  There are stories every week about the real estate market, about local government debt, about youth unemployment.  This week’s new focus on the sad plight of those investing in China’s stock market.
 
Hence the piece translated here, which celebrates those who have simply decided not to buy, to resist consumerism as much as possible.  The piece does not pretend to be a “deep dive” into the subject; it reads instead as if an editor said to a reporter “my cousin stopped buying stuff and this might be a trend, go check it out!”  So the reporter found a handful of people who told the same story:  they used to buy a lot of things for the fun of buying, but now they no longer have the money so they are seeking happiness in other ways.  The trend is an online “movement” in the way many things are in China (and elsewhere); people form groups to share their experiences and support one another.
 
Without trying to be analytical, the piece does paint a basic picture of consumerism in China, the platforms, the discounts, the Black Friday equivalents created simply to make buying fun and communal.  Of course, when people don’t buy things, merchants can’t sell things, but this piece is not about the consequences of not buying on the economy as a whole, nor about what the government should do.  This piece is a celebration, a sigh of relief that “thank God we’re over consumerism.”
 
Translation
 
Those fighting back against consumerism
 
At the beginning of this year, in Shenzhen, the “money-making city," 35-year-old Zhong Man mapped out a plan for something that would have been unthinkable ten years ago - not to buy clothes for a year.   She sent a post to Douban’s “Don’t Buy/Fight Back against Consumerism” group to record her feelings about not buying:

"I'm going to Phuket on May Day, and I suppressed a strong urge to buy 'travel clothes'.  It's been six months, and it's amazing, but I have completely lost the desire to buy things.  I fulfilled my plan on December 1, and although it started out as a one-year thing, having completed it I feel very relaxed, much lighter in body and mind.”
 
There are more and more people like Zhong Man these days who are determined not to buy things. Wen Xiaoyu from Zhengzhou got through her first shopping holiday "without buying a thing," saying "there is absolutely nothing I wanted." Xi Rui, from Chongqing, decided to not indulge in the platform discount purchase 凑单,[2] saying: “To get the whole discount, you have to find something else you want, which means you wind up more and more things." To put it another way, "If you don't buy anything, you save 100%."
 
The "Don't Buy" group Zhong Man joined contains some 370,000 "straight thinkers [lit. rational geese 理智鹅]." The group was founded in October 2020, and its introduction bluntly bursts the bubble of consumerism: "By inciting feelings of anxiety, people are incited to keep buying to satisfy their pseudo-needs." The group preaches “rational consumption, which makes full use of each item." All the lists of products that other people have pitched to them [种草/zhongcao, lit. “planting grass,” Internet slang for pitching products to someone] are here turned into detailed lists of what not to buy. 

Although the “buy your way to happiness” mantra can still be heard, the members of this group are like small fish swimming upstream. They don’t stock up, they don’t do discounts, and they stand firm in the face of price cuts. They do not participate in Singles’ Day and they do fight against consumerism.  Their new name is the non-buyers’ crowd.

In this crowd, not buying clothes might win you a bronze. Those who hold out on Singles’ Day can claim a silver.  The idea is to buy as little as you can on a daily basis, and if you have to buy something, buy the cheapest version you can.  For example, the migrant worker looking for an energy boost at Starbucks will make a detour to Luckin when he realizes his Starbucks brew will cost him 30 RMB (approx. 4 USD). Elite non-buyers have begun to implement the spirit of not buying even their daily necessities. The top players make treasures out of what they throw away or grow their own vegetables and produce consumer goods.

For another example, some people have taken up the "challenge not to buy anything in 2023," including clothing, shoes, and handbags, milk-tea and takeaway snacks, home appliances, and even spurn the money-saving coupons from shopping apps. Over the course of the year, they used up what they already had, buying only things needed on a day-by-day basis and nothing else.  After all, it is only when you have time on your hands that you realize that while it is all too easy to trade money for things, it is very difficult to trade things for money. 
 
Many in the non-buyers’ crowd have been inspired by the book The Year of Less by Cait Flanders. The author was determined not to consume for a year, insisting that you can “ignore 70% of the things you don’t need, cut down on your spending, and learn to question any decision you make." Finally, the author found that after a year, she was "$500,000 richer and 26 pounds lighter," and that she had “written a book and found her old happy self.”
 
In China, the king of the non-buyers is Ding Hong. According to media reports, Ding Hong is 42 years old and was born in a small mountain village in Guizhou. She started saving money beginning in the third grade and went to study in New Zealand at the age of 35.  When working in China, Ding Hong did not rent a house for six consecutive years. She ate and lived at the company and went to the gym when she needed to shower. All she owns is a backpack, which usually lives under her desk at work. In extreme periods of not buying her average monthly expenditures hover around 500 RMB (approx. 70 USD).  The magazine "Selfie" also reported that Qiao Sang, another non-buyer, can even reduce her expenses to about 400 RBM (approx. 56 USD) per month. Since becoming a non-buyer, she has spent 190,000 RMB (approx. 24,600 USD)less in a year.
 
The no-buyer’s crowd continues to grow, and the message has also reached the merchants. For example, this year the platform Taobao canceled Double 12 [a shopping day held on December 12, following another on November 11] for the first time, the newly launched "Taobao Year-end Good Price Festival" looked even worse, and Singles’ Day was also mediocre. According to the "2023 Singles’ Day Net-Wide Sales Data Interpretation Report" released by Star Map Data, the total year-on-year increase in transaction volume of Singles’ Day in 2023 is a mere 2.1%. The growth rate of live-streaming e-commerce, which last year was 146%, has also dropped to 18.6% this year.
 
The ship of the consumer era is turning. Even though slogans like "people’s lives can’t be about saving money all the time” and "you can take your time and save your money but you only have one life" have made the rounds, the no-buying crowd remains unmoved, and keep on saving their money while asking people to share their experiences of not buying online. 
 
Some people bluntly state that they "have bought nothing for several Singles’ Days in a row."  Other people have seen through the discount nonsense, saying “you don’t save all that much money, and you have to buy all sorts of stuff, some of which is merchant overstock and defective products.”  Others still have studied the underlying logic of shopping, noting that "Lots of shopping activities are held in the middle of the night when you are not thinking clearly and it is easy to buy thoughtlessly." The reason why even more people don't buy is simple:  “The more money you set aside, the more secure you feel.” 
 
In the "Don't Buy/Fight Consumerism" group, almost every day someone shares their reasons for not buying. “Don’t buy brands that advertise all the time;” “don’t buy scratch cards;” “don’t buy books you won’t read,” and even “don’t buy anything at all if you hesitate to buy it.”
 
The not-buying voice is only getting louder. In addition to the fight consumerism group, there are also groups with similar goals such as the "Stop Buying/Mutual Unselling[3] Association," which has more than 110,000 people "unselling" one another. Another group is called “Use Up Everything,” where members share stories of using empty bottles. There is also the "What If We Can Be Happy Without Consuming" group, whose members share insights on how to obtain “free” happiness.

Drifting with the times

In fact, many people often go through a period of frenzied shopping before deciding to stop.  Zhong Man has been working in Shenzhen for nearly 10 years. In her first two years, she was swimming in an ocean of consumerism. “I was looking too much for the affection and recognition of others,” she says, and buying clothes became a placebo. Often, the price tags of one item were not yet removed before she ordered a new one. She also liked to buy shoes, especially niche brands from abroad. It took a long time for these foreign shoes to get to Shenzhen, and she often ordered a new pair before her previous order arrived.  Her husband also loved shopping, and she had a great sense of satisfaction when she saw the boxes piled up at home.
 
At the time, her house had five wardrobes, four of which were hers. She even had relatives who would visit to “shop for clothes,” and would leave with a few things they liked just like when they went to the stores. The Shenzhen winter is short, and she had a lot of winter clothes squeezed into compression bags, never seeing the light of day.
 
It was the era of consumerism . Fourteen years ago, the first Singles’ Day created a consumer miracle. Sales were ten times higher than usual, with 27 merchants selling 52 million RMB (approx. 7.2 million USD) worth of merchandise.
 
In the following years, people’s consumer desires grew like bamboo, and every Singles’ Day marked a new record - 936 million (approx. 130.3 million USD) in 2010, 5.2 billion in 2011 (approx. 724.4 million USD), 19.1 billion RMB (2.66 billion USD) in 2012...Behind the rapidly developing e-commerce platforms were countless frenzied shoppers. Undoubtedly, it was an era when happiness could be bought through consuming.
 
Now, however, some people are encountering a severe winter for the first time and have gradually tightened their belts; the frenzied shoppers’ crowd has given way to the no-buying crowd.  The dopamine hit from shopping has become illusory. Zhong Man discovered that shoes for which she had spent thousands of RMB and had them shipped from abroad found no buyers even when she offered 20 or 30% off.  She wasn’t happy about it, and she had to keep them in her closet.  Excessive consumption not only means that your money is gone without a trace, it also means a lack of space. 
 
Xi Rui from Chongqing recently moved and experienced the bitter consequences of the buying habit. After working for a couple of years she had accumulated a lot of stuff that she didn’t want to throw away, but which were too much for her new place after she moved. For a while, she liked to follow life hacks and bought a lot of things that way. They were cheap, but she rarely used them.   “It was a waste of time, space, and money."
 
She was renting a room near her company. The room was not big, so she had to buy storage boxes for all her things. When she moved to her new place, she still had to make room for the storage boxes, so she fell into a cycle of hoarding.  And before she could get rid of the old things, new things were crowding in.  In those days, she often noticed moving-related items on her cell phone - moving companies, door-to-door cleaning, Velcro mops, shopping software...before you know it, she had spent even more money.
 
After moving, she posted a post begging people: "Please don't be brainwashed by consumerism!" – and included a random picture of her house.  Surprisingly for a post advising people not to buy, many people asked for links to the items that appearing in the picture - bed sheets, coffee tables, sofa covers, and even a bottle of a soft drink on the table…A lot of people saw opportunities….

In the consumer era, it’s all about buy, buy, buy. For example, paying via interest-free installments is presented as solving people’s urgent needs. To encourage the customer to place their order, installment plans were set up even for items as cheap as a few dozen RMB.  But in the era of non-consumerism, some people began to argue that installment plans were the greatest form of consumerism.
 
In a group post, Lu Wei, 24, once shared the two purchases she most regrets:  a cellphone for more than 7000 RMB (approx. 975 USD) and a gaming console for more than 2000 RMB (approx. 280 USD).  Her monthly salary was a little more than 2000 RMB and she had 10,000 RMB (approx. 1,400 USD) in savings. Buying the phone on installments meant only 600 RMB (approx. 84 USD) a month.  Everything was under control at the beginning because the rent on a family property covered the 600.  But the tenant moved out, and her family stopped supporting her, and living just on her salary suddenly became tight. Overnight, the 600+ became a real source of pressure. 
 
Trapped in the installment plan, she sold the game console to get some money, even if it had been bought with emergency savings. She recalled that "I had really sworn in my heart that I would not touch that money unless something very important happened." But at this point, consumerism had taken over.  When she thought about “buying really good game cards, so that I could play without signal problems on airplanes and TGVs, and become a high-end electronic product player,” she couldn’t help herself from getting up in the middle of the night to place an order.
 
By this point, she was paying back 10,000 RMB (approx. 1,400 USD) in installments, “which was like opening Pandora's box," and the money flowed out like water without her even noticing. She kept buying things until she finally woke up, at which point she had only a little more than 100 RMB (approx. 14 USD) left in her emergency savings.

The transition
 
Something usually happens for people to become non-buyers – a move, an illness, a sudden layoff. Behind these emergencies, there are deep-seated worries – will things get better or worse?
 
Zhong Man became a non-buyer after buying a fixer-upper which doubled her mortgage and led to feelings of financial pressure. She started keeping track of every penny.  "For example, even if I buy a red envelope[4] for a dime, I’ll write it down," she said.
 
Many non-buyers find that by holding off on buying for a while, they can save money, which is tantamount to making money in disguise, and that this positive feedback is addictive. For example, Hangzhou resident Liu Jian, 25-years-old, wants to leave her job and put together a nest egg, after which she can put the manipulation and pressure of her work environment behind her[5].   Such thoughts weighed on her and reduced her desire to shop.
 
On the eve of Singles’ Day, she originally picked out a few things and put them in her shopping cart, but in the end didn’t buy them. "Once I decided to quit, I found that these things were not so necessary anymore."
 
What made Xi Rui join the non-buying crowd was the fear of being “optimized” [i.e., fired] at work. There was one round of optimizing when she just joined the company, which luckily passed her over, but then there was a second round and a third round.  Her cash flow could be cut off any day, which means that not buying is the sensible choice.

Wen Xiaoyu became a non-buyer because she had no other choice. She is 30 years old. She originally worked in human resources. She is married and has no children. Things changed at work, and the new project they put her on was 70 km away from home, but in order to keep her job, she sucked it up and switched to the new project, even if could only go home once a week.
 
Then she had to work overtime for two consecutive weeks, which delayed her menstrual period for more than ten days.  Although her workload doubled, her salary did not change at all. She felt that "the price/performance ratio was too low" and she finally quit.  So without her salary, and given that her husband's job was also unstable, she joined the non-buyers’ club.
 
Income is the factor directly motivating non-buyers. After studying people’s consumption habits, Yin Jianfeng, the chief economist of China Zheshang Bank, found that consumption rate is determined by two factors: First is the percentage of their income in the context of national income? Second is the tendency to consume. In other words, what proportion of their disposable income are people willing to spend on consumption?
 
Of the two, income is the deciding factor of the two. Because the propensity to consume depends on income, if income is high and stable, and there is confidence in the future, the propensity to consume will naturally be high, and vice versa.
 
These days not only are incomes shrinking, the discounts offered on shopping platforms are thinner as well. “Ten years ago, there were really discounts on Singles’ Day.” Zhong Man remembers that in the past few years, some brands of cat food and small appliances could be purchased at better prices than usual, but now “the feeling of getting a bargain is gone.” Some netizens also discovered one case during this year’s Singles’ Day of an item of clothing that usually goes for 99 RMB (approx. 14 USD) required a deposit of 105 RMB (approx. 15 USD).  “The pajamas I was interested in last year were 79 RMB (approx. 11 USD), but they are 20 RMB (approx. 3 USD) more this year. I miss the days when it was easy to just get 50% off.”
 
In addition to economic pressure, the attitudes of non-buyers have also changed.
 
The two years since Zhong Man stopped buying clothes like crazy were also a time of great psychological changes. Zhong Man and her husband decided not to have children, which met with fierce opposition from their families. "Suddenly you find out that family members who used to be so nice to you can also say something that really hurts you.  It’s very painful."
 
In a sense, deciding not to buy is also to getting one’s agency back. "People wear clothes, rather than clothes wearing people." Zhong Man felt that after her inner core stabilized, those impulses that had driven her to shop to gain praise from others basically disappeared.
 
Lu Wei feels the same thing about agency. Her change stemmed from her uncle's sudden illness. Not long ago, Lu Wei's uncle suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and was paralyzed in bed. His younger son owed online loans and was unable to pay his medical expenses. This left the eldest daughter responsible for taking care of her uncle. The two constantly quarreled over money.
 
"My uncle is also someone trapped by consumerism. He has no money to pay for medical expenses and nursing care. And then I suddenly thought - what if it was me? I am an only child and if this should this happen to me, what kind of care could I offer my family with the money I have?" She suddenly realized: "I am not using money; money is using me."
 
Subsequently, she started paying attention to her bills and sorting out her financial situation, and discovered that "in fact, 1000 RMB (approx. 140 USD) is enough for my mobile phone needs.  The extra 6000 RMB (approx. 835 USD) is just to get impress colleagues." She recorded these two purchases to remind herself to always "think twice before buying."[6]
 
Sustainable non-consumption
 
Becoming a non-buyer is sometimes no easy matter. When you are in a world of consumerism, not buying often means having less to talk about with colleagues, rejecting invitations from friends, and losing out on new experiences.
 
For some non-buyers, the reality of consumption is that they cannot afford it. Someone once posted their experience about going to a shopping mall, and when they saw that prices were too high, they bravely said as much to the shopping guide, after which they felt relieved.  No matter who you are, changes in consumption patterns will change your mentality.
 
Recently, Zhong Man has acquired a new hobby. When a person walks towards her on the street wearing something with a recognizable brand, she will automatically calculate in her head "how much money I would have if this product were converted into cash."  Spontaneously, many non-buyers are doing similar things.
 
After deciding to stop buying, Lu Wei's life went on as usual, but she had more money. Now, should the urge to over-consume strike, she directly converts money into work time. "If it takes a few days of work to buy something, I usually feel like it’s not worth it and let it go."
 
Xi Rui also mastered the same trick: "How many pounds of beef could I buy for the money I would have to pay for this thing I want? Will buying it make me happier than eating a good hot pot?? If not, then I don't buy it."

In addition, non-buyers often have the habit of keeping records. Since Zhong Man started paying attention, she has spent less money and what she spent was spent more rationally. However, some netizens also shared their experience of failing to keep records because they spent too much money and couldn’t remember everything. “I started making things up at the end of the month,” one said.

When push comes to shove, it’s not the accounting software that makes the difference, it’s no longer buying into the fantasy of consumerism. As the author of The Consumer Society put it:  "What people are more attracted to in consumption today is not the function of the item itself, but a symbolic code that has been created somehow."
 
In fact, people only need very few things to maintain their daily lives. Zhong Man found that despite four wardrobes of clothes, she basically wore the same things over and over.  Sometimes, when she accidentally puts a hole in something or stains it in such a way that it can’t be washed clean, she even feels a bit excited, thinking "I finally consumed another piece of clothing."
 
Not buying is a kind of release for her, liberating her from the mountains of stuff she bought. Lu Wei had the same feeling.  Her life did not become less convenient because she was buying less.  Instead, she realized that "The basics in life don’t cost that much. I know who I am, and what I wear will not change things.”
 
She worked as a brand director in a fast-moving consumer goods company, and her job was related to consumption. At one point, the two ideas of buying and not buying were competing in her head. Later, at her urging, the company also tried bottle recycling and accessible packaging, which pointed toward sustainability. Consumption is no longer an end, but a means to achieve actual needs. In addition, she also set herself the principle of "trying not to increase the number of physical objects."
 
In order to achieve sustainable non-buying and fight against the desire to buy, the non-buying crowd has also come up with a trick that works for them.  For example, they consciously installed a cooling-off period for shopping. If they want to buy something, they add it to their online shopping cart, and then don’t look at it for two days, after which they find that their initial urge has diminished considerably. Wen Xiaoyu made a no-buy list for herself, and "looks at it every day to prevent unnecessary spending."
 
Xi Rui also set herself three major rules for buying things: "1. Do you really need it? 2. Would you still buy it if no one knew? 3. Will your life will change after using it?"  As long as one of the answers is “no,” she doesn’t buy it.

In addition to restraining the desire to consume, maintaining daily life might also require more skills, which, if you acquire them, might boost you to the position of the king of non-buying, and thus push you to continue not to buy. Southern Weekend and other media reported that Ding Hong, the king of not buying, solved the problem of having clothes to wear by remaking old clothes sent to her by friends.  Cui Jia, a Shijiazhuang native, is also good at using old clothes as materials to make clothes for himself. He also grows vegetables and fruits on his family’s land and on the roof of his building.   He is so committed to not buying that he claimed to have spent only 20 RMB (approx. 3 USD) in the past three years.
 
Zhong Man has another replacement for buying - exchanging things for things.  Last year, she joined a used goods group. People in the group gathered together because of the common concept of sustainability, following the principle that "what you’re not using may be someone else’s treasure." All it takes is for someone in the group to “make a wish.”
 
For example, Zhong Man recently needed a computer bag, and one of her friends gifted her one. The two met at the subway station, and one told the other not to leave the station so as to avoid wasting a subway ticket. Zhong Man gave away a lot of clothes to the group, finding a more appropriate home for the items.
 
The end of the year is approaching, and Zhong Man's plan not to buy clothes for a year has been successful. She decided to keep going – wearing what she has as long as she stays the same size.                                                                                                                                                            .
 
Notes

[1]曹婷婷, “今年，我成了“不买族,” published on the online platform of 每日人物 on December 23, 2023.

[2]Translator’s note:  The idea of the coudan discount is that the more you spend, the bigger the discount the platform gives you.

[3]Translator’s note:  “Unselling” here is bacao/拔草, lit. “pull up the grass,” the opposite of the practice of pitching (zhongcao) mentioned above.

[4]Translator’s note:  Hongbao/红包, used throughout the Chinese world to give gifts, usually of cash.

[5]Translator’s note:  The term used in the text is PUA, “pick-up artist,” which is now used in China to describe manipulative workplace practices, particularly those employed by bosses.  See here for details.

[6]Translator’s note:  This is a play on a well-known expression from The Analects having to do with thinking twice before acting.