Shanzhai and Common Prosperity: How China’s Grassroots Entrepreneurs Helped It Fake Social Harmony in an Era of Gross Inequality

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In the early noughties, China’s several-hundred-million migrant workers — at once the primary driving force behind the country’s miracle boom and its most ‘left behind’ demographic — developed and rallied behind a type of imitation mobile phone handset that would later become known as shanzhai. Emerging at the height of China’s reform era (1978-2017), during which the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) preoccupation with developing the economy had contributed to a growing gap in income inequality, the shanzhai culture in some ways served to temporarily mitigate the socially destabilising effects of class distinction. Despite their often-illegal practices, the shanzhai entrepreneurs were tolerated and even endorsed by lawmakers, this article argues, for the sake of preserving social harmony throughout China’s ‘gilded age’ of economic overdrive. Considering recent events, the once flourishing grassroots shanzhai culture is likely to find itself in the crosshairs of Xi Jinping’s post-reform era (2017-present) crackdowns, as the CCP shifts its focus from economic development to achieving ‘common prosperity’ by means of consolidation of its authority.

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