Good news for all the "Star-buckers" in China:  they no longer have to go to Carrefour's imported goods shelf to buy bottles of their favorite Frappucino, from now on they can just pick one up in any convenience store, at an even lower price. The Seattle-based coffee company launched a Chinese version of their bottled drinks last Thursday in three Chinese cities, including Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing.

The bottles, as of the time of their release on the first of this month, are almost the same size as those sold in America. However, only Frappucino and Mocha are available in bottled form at the moment.

"It's just the beginning of the growth and development of what we have planned for Starbucks in China," said Starbucks Coffee Co. Chairman Howard Schultz, as reported in the Associated Press, “The No.1 market in terms of growth and development of Starbucks around the world is China.” Schultz also said that 80 new stores will be opened in the mainland next year.

Starbucks’ success in the nation with a long history of tea drinking, according to Geoffrey Fowler, lies in something other than the quality of their coffee beans. In his article for the Far Eastern Economic Review, he showed us how the coffee pioneers were trying to choose an ideal place for their new store four years ago in Shanghai:

“On bustling Nanjing Lu, Shanghai's main shopping strip, Kevin Lin and a posse of researchers monitor the passers-by outside a potential Starbucks store site with hand-held counting devices, tallying likely customers. A trendy 20-something couple walk past. "They're definitely a click," says Lin. Next, an unlikely prospect--a woman in her 50s wearing comfortable slacks strolls by. "Actually, she'd get a click, too. She looked in the window of that boutique……”

Just as Tom Doctoroff, the North Asia managing director of ad firm J. Walter Thompson, explained: “The Starbucks proposition in China is huge. But people don't go there for the coffee. They go there to present themselves as modern Chinese in a public setting.” That’s why high-end underwear maker Victoria’s Secret would flop in China, the high-priced underwear isn’t visible. “Chinese are proudly conspicuous consumers.”

Yet there are still certain places that the Chinese are not prepared to have an American coffee shop, for example, the Forbidden City. In 2000, a Starbucks chain store opened its doors in the former imperial palace in Beijing, which immediately outraged local media, who later reported over 70% of Chinese people do not want to see a foreign coffee chain in the hallowed palace. The chain was eventually forced to leave under extremely heavy pressure from public opinion six years later.

Although many Chinese commentators argued that it’s the authority’s fault for inviting the coffee chain in, commenting that such a thing would never have happened in the Louvre or Buckingham Palace (partially because such places won’t have such space to let out), Starbucks still acted unwisely in involving itself in this cultural conflict. This is especially true when you realize that they ignored the fact that the Forbidden City was once ransacked by the Eight Power Allied Force, in which the United States played a role.

It is true that nowadays both the authorities and the people are becoming more open in this ancient Oriental country. Yet a certain bottom line remains unchanged deep in the minds of most Chinese people. Considering the patriotic education they have received, from primary school to university, in which the humiliations of modern history are stressed, it is better for foreign investors to stay well away from these sensitive cultural symbols, to keep themselves out of trouble.

Reference:
Starbucks launches bottled java in China, by ELAINE KURTENBACH, Associated Press, Nov. 1, 2007
Geoffrey A. Fowler: Converting the Masses: Starbucks in China, Far Eastern Economic Review, July 17, 2003
http://www.starbucks.com.cn/

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