what chinese brands reveal about modern consumption.

Most people do not trust China as a global power. Many of those same people still carry Chinese phones in their pockets.

That contradiction is often dismissed as hypocrisy or inattentiveness. It is neither. It reflects how global consumption actually operates. Political suspicion and everyday behavior move on different timelines, and they rarely wait for alignment.

Chinese brands did not succeed because skepticism disappeared. They succeeded because consumers learned how to route around it. Habit did not resolve moral tension. It neutralized it.

Normalization did not require trust, agreement, or reconciliation. It required repetition. Once products became routine, origin stopped functioning as a moral question and receded into logistical background noise. What replaced it was not belief, but familiarity.

The global success of Chinese brands reveals something uncomfortable about modern consumption: people do not need to believe in a system to sustain it. They only need to live inside it long enough.

suspicion does not disappear; it gets bypassed.

Consumer distrust rarely vanishes. It lingers, reshaped by history, politics, religion, and group identity. In Indonesia, animosity toward China, religious affiliation, and collectivist social ties all increase consumer ethnocentrism, reinforcing skepticism toward foreign brands.

Yet purchasing continues. Kusumawardani and Yolanda (2021) show that even when distrust is explicit, purchase intention remains high when brand image is favorable. Brand image does not erase tension. It absorbs it. The contradiction is not resolved; it is managed.

Consumers learn to hold incompatible positions with minimal friction. They can distrust China as a state while relying on Chinese brands as everyday tools. The product does not need to be defended. It only needs to work.

habit overtakes origin.

Once products settle into daily routines, the criteria for judgment shift. Usability, price, and reliability begin to outweigh symbolic origin. Over time, origin does not disappear, but it loses urgency.

Ramadania, Reswari, and Dhamayantie (2018) show that innovation and brand attitude exert more influence on purchase intention than country of origin once familiarity is established. Origin remains visible, but it no longer drives the decision. Evaluation gives way to repetition.

This does not signal ideological acceptance. Consumers do not need to endorse a brand’s national story for it to succeed. They only need the product to function consistently enough to become background infrastructure.

At that point, purchasing stops feeling like a choice. It feels like continuity.

origin as identity.

As skepticism and consumption coexist, origin begins to serve a different role. The question is no longer whether consumers distrust Chinese brands, but what that distrust does once a product is embedded in daily life.

Research on brand origin salience shows that national origin does not always trigger defensiveness. In some contexts, it signals participation in a shared global marketplace rather than foreignness. Shi et al. (2024) find that Chinese brand origin can stabilize or even enhance brand evaluations when consumers interpret the brand as globally integrated rather than nationally threatening.

This explains how Chinese brands succeed even where political unease persists. Consumers separate geopolitical anxiety from everyday use with increasing ease. Over time, the brand’s function outweighs its symbolic ties.

In Indonesia, this separation is especially clear. Animosity, religiosity, and ethnocentrism shape perception, but they do not prevent normalization. Brand image mediates identity concerns, allowing products to circulate without requiring cultural resolution.

Acceptance arrives not through agreement, but through familiarity.

the cost of indifference.

This shift carries a cost. When origin becomes informational rather than emotional, accountability thins. Consumers learn to detach use from consequence so thoroughly that labor conditions, surveillance concerns, and geopolitical power become abstract rather than actionable. Indifference is not neutrality. It is a skill cultivated through convenience.

Global capitalism depends on this arrangement. It does not require loyalty or belief, only continued participation. The more familiar a product becomes, the less moral effort its use demands. What fades is not awareness, but responsibility.

conclusion.

The global rise of Chinese brands does not signal the collapse of skepticism or a change in political values. It exposes something more unsettling.

Consumers have become adept at compartmentalization. They can distrust a country, criticize its power, and still rely on its products without experiencing contradiction. Moral tension does not disappear. It is deferred, managed, and eventually ignored.

Across these studies, the pattern is consistent. Animosity, religiosity, and ethnocentrism shape perception, but they rarely interrupt habit once brand image and repetition take hold. Innovation weakens the weight of origin. Familiarity dulls its edge. Over time, use outpaces belief.

This is why many Chinese brands no longer need to defend themselves. They are not competing for approval. They are competing for permanence. Once a product secures space in daily life, origin becomes a footnote rather than a question.

The most consequential shift is not acceptance or rejection, but indifference. Indifference allows systems to persist without justification. It permits participation without reckoning.

When a product stops standing in for a country and starts functioning as infrastructure, it no longer asks to be judged. It simply continues.

In a global market organized around repetition rather than trust, that quiet continuation may be the most powerful force of all.

references.

1. Kusumawardani, K. A., & Yolanda, M. (2021). The role of animosity, religiosity, and allocentrism in shaping purchase intention through ethnocentrism and brand image. Organizations and Markets in Emerging Economies, 12(2), 503–525. https://doi.org/10.15388/omee.2021.12.67

2. Ramadania, R. A. R., & Dhamayantie, E. (2018). Discovering Chinese product strategies on stimulating attitude and intention: Involvement of innovation, country-of-origin, and knowledge. Managing Global Transitions: International Research Journal, 16(3), 215–234. https://doi.org/10.26493/1854-6935.16.215-234

3. Shi, Z., Zhang, X., Jin, C., & Huang, Q. (2024). Being a member of the global community: The effect of Chinese brand origin salience on global identity perceptions and brand evaluations. Journal of Product & Brand Management, 33(7), 842–854. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-02-2023-3846