When Chinese youth meet Harry Potter: Translating consumption and middle class identification

In the year 1999, the already famous book series Harry Potter arrived in China; during this time a steady influx of foreign popular culture was visibly beginning to transform Chinese society into an increasingly robust and globalized consumer culture. Scholars and critics have debated how this consumerist turn in Chinese society exposes the processes of global dialectics, stretching everyday life and social agency between commodity enchantment and exploitative commodification (Davis 2005; Poon 2003; Wang 2005). This study will not only analyze the aforementioned debate, but will instead look at the contextual forces as well as the self-reflections made by young Chinese readers as the explanatory framework for addressing the effect of Harry Potter on the cultural imagination of materialism, inter-generational differences, and middle class life in China today.