China has an appetite for design – just not its own. The market for interior furnishings is expanding, along with the country’s middle class, but new consumers have tended to favour products imported from the west.
Though the country is home to tens of thousands of design students graduating each year, few will get to show their work to a large audience. If they do gain recognition, it is almost always abroad. Design curators in Europe and the US are picking up on the younger generation’s adept translation of traditional crafts but will China ever show enough interest in its own designers to help them succeed at home?
At the age of 25, Xiangfei Ran is a rare design success story for his generation. Sothing, the industrial design company he founded with five friends in 2010, has won several international design awards and works with Intel, Lenovo and Philips among others.