The overconsumption of ostentatious luxury goods fuels graft by forcing Chinese officials to keep up with the Zhangs. A cornerstone of combating official corruption is to make sure that civil servants receive adequate salaries that provide a secure, if plebeian, middle-class lifestyle.

Despite foolish China-bashing, Sino-Western synergies are real and demonstrate that China's reemergence is profoundly compatible with Western modernity.

To the Chinese, materialism is not superficial. It is meaningful, tantamount to advancement within society and faith in the future. Run amok, however, it corrupts ambition and threatens the country's social fabric.

International companies have long believed that they must have a presence in China because they consider its 1.3 billion people to be potential consumers. But research raises question about who the country's middle class really are and the true meaning of their disposable income.

China's consumers, while boldly ambitious, Confucian to the core and desperate to climb the hierarchy of success, are insecure. Their wealth is new and incomes are still limited.