"Just Do It": A Chinese student poses in front of a poster of Michael Jordan, who promotes Nike in China
(4 of 5)
Thanks in part to Nike's promotions, urban hip-hop culture is all the rage among young Chinese. One of Beijing's leading DJs, Gu Yu, credits Nike with "making me the person I am." Handsome and tall under a mop of shoulder-length hair, Gu got hooked on hip-hop after hearing rapper Black Rob rhyme praises to Nike in a television ad. Gu learned more on Nike's Internet page and persuaded overseas friends to send him music. Now they send something else too: limited-edition Nikes unavailable in China. Gu and his partner sell them in their shop, Upward, to Beijing's several hundred "sneaker friends" and wear them while spinning tunes in Beijing's top clubs. To them, scoring rare soles and playing banned music are part of the same rebellious experience. "Because of the government, Chinese aren't allowed access to a lot of these things," says Gu's partner, Ji Ming, "but with our shop and Nike-style music, they can get what they want."
The Nike phenomenon is challenging Confucian-style deference to elders too. At the Nike shop in a ritzy Shanghai shopping mall, Zhen Zhiye, 22, a dental hygienist in a miniskirt, persuades her elderly aunt, who has worn only cheap sneakers that she says "make my feet stink," to drop $60 on a new pair. Zhen explains the "fragrant possibilities" of higher-quality shoes and chides her aunt for her dowdy ways. Her aunt settles on a cross trainer. For most of China's history, this exchange would have been unthinkable. "In our tradition, elders pass culture to youth," says researcher Zhang. "Now it's a great reversal, with parents and grandparents eating and clothing themselves like children."
Success aside, Nike has had its stumbles. When it began outfitting Chinese professional soccer teams in the mid-1990s, its ill-fitting cleats caused heel sores so painful that Nike had to let its athletes wear Adidas (with black tape over the trademark). In 1997, Nike ramped up production just before the Asian banking crisis killed demand, then flooded the market with cheap shoes, undercutting its own retailers and driving many into the arms of Adidas. Two years later, the company created a $15 Swoosh-bearing canvas sneaker designed for poor Chinese. The "World Shoe" flopped so badly that Nike killed it.
Yet all that amounts to a frayed shoelace compared with losing China's most famous living human. Yao Ming had worn Nike since Rhoads discovered him as a skinny kid with a sweet jumper--and brought him some size 18s made for NBA All-Star Alonzo Mourning. In 1999 he signed Yao to a four-year contract worth $200,000. But Nike let his contract expire last year. Yao defected to Reebok for an estimated $100 million. The failure leaves Nike executives visibly dejected. "The only thing I know is, we lost Yao Ming," says a Shanghai executive who negotiated with the star.