SOCIETY: China Gets Makeover through Beauty Pageants

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, Dec 4 2003 (IPS) - Shedding lingering memories of grey Maoist uniforms and communist commissars who frowned on beauty contests, China has embraced the Miss World competition on Saturday as yet another status symbol in its long quest for world recognition.

Shedding lingering memories of grey Maoist uniforms and communist commissars who frowned on beauty contests, China has embraced the Miss World competition on Saturday as yet another status symbol in its long quest for world recognition.

Playing graceful host to the beauty contest is now seen as adding the missing dash of glamour to the list of China’s recent feats – putting man in space, winning the right to host the 2008 Olympics, and the 2010 World Expo.

When they crown the 53rd Miss World in the subtropical island of Hainan in south-eastern China on Dec. 6, Chinese organisers will complete a remarkable image makeover for both the world’s most populous country and the host tourist resort.

The state media, controlled by the Chinese Communist party, has rallied to conjure up an image of an exotic spot where triumphant beauty queens parade in skimpy swimming suits under lush palm trees.

Indeed, the reports splashed on the front pages of many newspapers this week represent a revolutionary turnaround in attitudes for a country that during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) used the media to propagate plainness of the type that banned makeup, forbade fashion and ostracised people who dared to have individual style.

In Sanya, Hainan’s leading tourist resort that plays host to the competition, local officials have spent 26.5 million U.S. dollars on bridges, roads and a 4,000-seat Beauty Crown Theatre. They can expect to see the city grace the television screens of 2 billion people across 146 countries who will view the pageant.

In the Chinese officials’ view, Sanya, hitherto renowned as one of China’s sex capitals, would no longer be associated with seedy bars and prostitution – it would be the world capital of glamour.

A steady embrace of commercialisation and beauty at home is aiding official ambition for recognition in all ways western.

The pursuit of beauty has become big industry in China, employing more than 7 million people in everything from beauty salons to cosmetic shops. In the last five years, the industry has grown faster than the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Buoyed by growing fascination at home with beauty and style, Chinese officials are bidding to host the 2005 Miss Universe, while the country’s most avant-garde city, Shanghai, is preparing to host Miss International in 2004.

Even the ‘People’s Daily’, the flagship paper of the Communist Party and the least versatile publication in the country, could not miss commenting on this beauty obsession.

“The craze in pageants is, on one hand, due to people’s nature to pursue beauty, and social and economic development makes it possible for this pursuit and enriches its contents,” the paper said on its website.

“On the other hand, under the market economy pageants become a medium, and the beauty economy is prospering,” it added.

The Sanya government, which spent some 3 million dollars to buy the hosting rights to the event, is riding high on that boom and hopes to recoup through the generated increase of tourism.

In the early 1990s, local officials in Hainan struggled to create a capitalist enclave rivalling Hong Kong. Hainan was declared China’s largest special economic zone and the local government lured people from all over the country with promises to work in a booming export-processing base.

But instead of seeing thousands of assembly plants springing up, in the mid-1990s Hainan saw a speculative property boom and economic recession that drove people away and left thousands of empty buildings.

The failure to develop an export processing industry has led island officials to promote tourism as the key growth industry.

Hoping to encourage the speedy growth of tourism and boost revenues, local officials have silently tolerated prostitution. This however, earned Sanya a reputation of the new sex capital, famous for its karaoke hostesses and bars.

Now, organisers are all at pains to emphasise that holding Miss World in Sanya would mean more than just choosing women for their looks. Judges would focus on three central qualities: attitude, then appearance and then ability.

The winner’s primary role is supposed to be a social one, such as visiting poor children and distributing free milk.

All the money raised through auctioning tickets to the competition would be spent on charity, Zhou Xiong, director of the Sanya organising committee told the ‘Beijing Youth Daily’ newspaper. Ticket prices range from 80 to 2,000 U.S. dollars.

However, a local tourist official spent 28,000 dollars to buy a commemorative entry ticket with the signature of China’s Miss World candidate, Guan Qi, the paper reported.

Having secured a chance to showcase China abroad by playing host to the Miss World finals, now the country is fretting about whether the winner would be a woman from China.

“It is our chance to win the title on home turf,” suggested taxi driver Shao Weiping. “Guan Qi is probably not the most beautiful woman in China but how do you find her? China is such a big place.”