From We have been harmonised (Kai Strittmatter, 2020) pp102-3
As the cultural critic Neil Postman, author of Amusing Ourselves to Death, once wrote: “What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one”. Weibo still exists. Its bigger than ever: with more than 550 million active users a month in the first part of 2020, it is even bigger than Twitter with its 330 million and it’s still growing. But people aren’t reading, watching and commenting on the same things they were a few years ago. The most-shared Weibo post of all time dates from September 2014: ‘I am 15 today, and so many of you are on my side. Thank you for always being with me these last few years. It may well be the most-read social media post in the world, with more than 100 million shares.
Its author was one of the TFBoys, Wang Junkai. The TFBoys, a manufactured boy-band, are probably the most popular group amongst China’s young people over recent years. Three lads with an image somewhere between chorister, K-pop and communist Young Pioneer, with any hint of rebellious youth carefully blow-dried out of them. They sing about working hard at school, being a team player and serving the motherland. In one video, they dress up as Young Pioneers and sing: ‘We are the heirs to communism”.
They have 30 million followers on Weibo; add in the songs, the TV series and the films, plus merchandise, and these coiffured and primped Marxist pop-princelings are netting the equivalent of several million US dollars every month. This is what China’s social media looks like today.
Every year there is one day that pushes China’s internet to the limits of its capacity; a day when people all over the country sit in front of their screens from midnight until midnight, clicking for all they’re worth. ‘Singles Day’ is a marketing coup by the online marketplace Alibaba. In the space of just a few years with the help of enticing discounts and bargains those 24 hours have been turned into one of the most important holidays in China. It is the most unbridled celebration of consumerism anywhere in the world.
‘Singles Day’ 11 November was launched as a joke by frustrated girlfriend-less Nanjing students, but Alibaba has converted it into a day-long orgy of online shopping, which has long since overtaken its precursor and role model the USA’s Black Friday. On 11 November 2019, Alibaba turned over the equivalent of almost 28 billion US dollars; Amazons turnover for Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined was half that amount, at just over 14 billion dollars. The singer Taylor Swift and Hollywood stars like Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig have all appeared at the annual Alibaba galas in Hangzhou which kick off the day. In the aftermath, China’s postal service has to deliver a billion parcels. The Beijing branch of Greenpeace may have called Singles Day a ‘catastrophe for the environment, but it hasn’t stopped the nation descending into its annual 24-hour frenzy. Global communism is dead, and thanks to the net global consumerism has opened its new HQ in China.
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