Socialism and the fashion business: The case of China and Hong Xiang

Abstract

Abstract This article explores how fashion businesses were transformed from capitalist fashion firms to socialist fashion firms after the Communist Party established the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. By exploring the case of the first Chinese fashion company, Hong Xiang, through business records stored in the Shanghai Municipal Archive Center, I argue that during the Mao era (1950s–1970s) the Chinese government socialized fashion businesses in five key areas. It first took over ownership of private businesses in the name of a ‘merger’, while imposing a particular ideology in which working attitudes and clothing represented people’s political attitudes towards the nation. In clothing design, a set of dichotomies defined what was socialist dress and what was capitalist dress: socialist design was simple, economic and practical; capitalist design was complicated, luxurious and over-decorated. In business management, the government encouraged the Chinese to believe that socialist systems were better than anything under capitalism by manipulating business information and offering different interpretations of bourgeois business strategies. At a micro-level, the socialist country meticulously manipulated particular vocabularies to reflect the change of the system from capitalism to socialism. This article re-examines this rich history to offer new insights into the tensions and translations between capitalism and socialism that occurred in the Chinese fashion business between the 1950s and the 1970s.