ABSTRACT
The vast container ship sat in the dock at the port of Tianjin is not full of Chinaprice products ready to be shipped to bargain stores of the West. It has come from the West carrying a rather different cargo - not new commodities, but rather the remains of old commodities. Waste is crucial to the narrowing of the gap, and this is, of course, precisely the story of China's current development policy. It is this dual concern with a 'progress' that moves away from basic manufacturing, but that acknowledges its importance, that has seen China portray itself to the world in a seemingly contradictory set of images ranging from the super-glossy international Shanghai Expo, to the pride in Yiwu as the world's factory, to the presentation of the traditional elements of Chinese culture at the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony. Meanwhile in the West, the narrowing of the consumption-reconsumption gap is enabled solely by the low price of the commodity.
