Visitors flock to Disneyland
▶ Consumer passion reveals nation’s huge buying power
From crowded visitors on the first day of Shanghai Disneyland’s reopening to the high box office receipts of US movie Jurassic World: Dominion, signs show that Chinese consumers, particularly young people, remain passionate about US cultural products, an interesting phenomenon which observers said reveals China’s huge buying power.
That said, the US ought to cherish the Chinese market and abandon the cold war mentality, otherwise it may backfire on US businesses that benefit from China’s vibrant consumer market, analysts said.
“We miss her, and we want to say ‘ happy birthday’ to her in advance!”, said a 19- year- old girl surnamed Yuan Thursday morning near the entrance of Shanghai Disneyland, as she referred to “CookieAnn,” a creative yellow dog and a popular Disney character.
Yuan and her friend, a 20- year- old girl surnamed Liu, carried several CookieAnn toys into the resort on Thursday, the first day Shanghai Disneyland resumed after shutting for more than three months as a result of the coronavirus resurgence in the city.
Yuan and Liu said that they would return to the park on July 3, which is CookieAnn’s birthday.
The two girls’ attachments to Disney characters are a shared aspiration among many Chinese tourists. On Thursday, the birthday of another Disney character called Gelatoni, the Global Times observed that many tourists carried toys of the green tuxedo cat into the resort.
Many tourists, especially young people, showed a passion and commitment to Disney culture on Thursday.
“Maybe Disneyland represents everyone’s aspiration and childlike innocence. I also have that yearning for the fairy tale world,” a tourist surnamed Yang told the Global Times.
Last year, Shanghai Disneyland’s sales of LinaBell fox toys sparked a buying frenzy among Chinese consumers. According to the 21st Century Business Herald in January, the price of a Christmas edition of a LinaBell doll surged to about 3,000 yuan ($ 449) from the base price of 219 yuan in China ahead of Christmas.
Apart from fans’ passion for Disney character toys, other US cultural products enjoy enduring popularity in China. US adventure science fiction film Jurassic World: Dominion opened in China in June, and earned an accumulative box office of about 814 million yuan to date, the highest of all films being screened currently, according to data from movie ticket sales platform Maoyan.
He Jianmin, a professor from the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, said that cultural products that represent people’s common cultural pursuits will cross borders and be favored by people of different nationalities.
Some analysts told the Global Times that if the US takes moves that run counter to the culture it advocates, it might also arouse dissatisfaction among Chinese customers and consequently slam US businesses seeking opportunities in the Chinese market.