Anxious Wealth interrogates the dark side of China's warp-speed economic growth, but with more nuance than one usually finds among those who address the subject through criticism of neoliberalism or of one-party authoritarian politics. In part, Osburg carves out an original perspective, because he has spent thousands of hours socializing with Chengdu entrepreneurs. He does not ignore earlier scholarship, but he always returns to the lived experience of these business people, and especially to the men he knew who worked in the real estate and construction industries. The tensions, contradictions and limitations of their lives are the primary subject of his inquiry and thus the title: Anxious Wealth. To argue that economic elites in China, particularly those who have made windfall profits by leveraging special favours from government agents, are anxious is hardly an original observation. But because Osburg was so deeply immersed in the lives of these entrepreneurs, and because he returned again and again over nearly a decade, his close scrutiny of their extensive socializing provides the best account of how “shared transgressions” (p. 63) not only infuse instrumental networks with sentiment but also make superiors beholden to their inferiors.
Chapter one opens with a seemingly simple question about why the newly rich male entrepreneurs of Chengdu spend so much of their time and money socializing in coffee shops, bars and saunas. The first answer is the title of the second chapter of the book: because “entertaining is my job.” The second answer, and the title of the third chapter, is because “relationships are the law.” For these men who own private companies it is essential to maintain close relationships with state agents who control such key assets as land and who can choose to enforce (or not enforce) regulations. Therefore, cultivation of trust and indebtedness, especially through sharing expensive and often illicit, sexual pleasures, determines the success, or even survival, of a business. But the extensive socializing and ostentatious consumption not only impact the finances of these men but also shape their identities even as they foster vulnerability and insecurity. To readers who closely follow events in China the observation that business men carouse with government officials to gain special treatment or that such socializing is not without personal cost will not be entirely original. Gail Hershatter, on whom Osburg builds, already established how central Dangerous Pleasures were to the creation of elite men's networks and identities in the Republican era. And a casual review of daily tabloids in the Americas or Europe document that collusion between business and political elites routinely occurs on the occasions of extravagant socializing. In fact, one of Osburg's main contributions to the comparative discussion of corruption is to draw clear parallels between behaviours in China and those observed in other parts of the world and other historical eras. Because of frequent reference to such parallels as well as the fine overview of the contemporary political-economy of China, Anxious Wealth should appeal to a general readership as well as to students not specializing in the study of China.
Osburg argues that his study of networks in the world of business differs from previous work in China because he emphasizes the centrality of gender and because he offers more detail on the actual practices through which entrepreneurs build their connections. Until another ethnographer as good as Osburg sets their sights on the practice of leisure consumption among Chinese business people, Anxious Wealth will indeed stand apart. But whether he is as distinctive in placing gender at the heart of his analysis, some will take exception. While there is a chapter on female entrepreneurs and comparisons between women who get ahead through the “beauty economy” (chapter five) and those who do not, neither women entrepreneurs nor women in the entertainment venues occupy a central role. Nevertheless, Osburg's inability to give equal attention to male and female voices does not refute nor diminish the validity of his central claim about the centrality (and corrosiveness) of networks built through shared consumption between officials and private businessmen in contemporary China. Moreover, to capture the emic world and sensibilities of all participants in this complex social landscape would require a Rashomon style narrative that is beyond conventional academic ethnography.
