Chinese people should consume Chinese products! This slogan was the catchphrase of a movement in early twentieth-century
China that sought to link consumption and nationalism by instilling a concept of China as a modern nation with
its own national products. From fashions in clothing to food additives, from museums to department stores, from
product fairs to advertising, this movement influenced all aspects of China s burgeoning consumer culture. Anti-imperialist
boycotts, commemorations of national humiliations, exhibitions of Chinese products, the vilification of treasonous
consumers, and the promotion of Chinese captains of industry helped enforce nationalistic consumption and spread
the message patriotic Chinese bought goods made of Chinese materials by Chinese workers in factories owned and
run by Chinese. In China Made, Karl Gerth argues that two key forces shaping the modern world nationalism and consumerism
developed in tandem in China. Early in the twentieth century, nationalism branded every commodity as either Chinese
or foreign, and consumer culture became the place where the notion of nationality was articulated, institutionalized,
and practiced. Based on Chinese, Japanese, and English-language archives and published materials, this first exploration
of the historical ties between nationalism and consumerism reinterprets fundamental aspects of modern Chinese history
and suggests ways of discerning such ties in all modern nations.