Marketing Death: Culture and the Making of a Life Insurance Market in China

Marketing Death: Culture and the Making of a Life Insurance Market in China by Cheris Chan Oxford U Press

Marketing Death is a detailed study of how life insurance companies sell policies in a country where death is a taboo subject.

University of Hong Kong associate professor Cheris Chan hun-ching conducted dozens of interviews with insurance sales agents, their trainers and insurance buyers on mainland China. Insurance, a Western product, arrived in 1805 when a British marine insurer set up shop in Guangdong. By 1935, there were 166 foreign insurers and 45 domestic ones nationwide. Life insurance accounted for only a small share of the industry. After 1949, insurers gradually disappeared, denounced as products of capitalism.

In the late 1980s, the industry made a comeback. By 1992, licences were also given to foreign companies such as AIA, Manulife Group and Prudential. Yet public resistance to life insurance was strong at first: shops and offices in Shanghai posted signs saying, 'life insurance salespeople are not welcome'. People 'didn't want to talk about death or hear about misfortunes', writes Chan, who based her research on Shanghai in the early 2000s.

Chinese define 'a good life' as living well towards the end of life, and 'a good death' as dying while full of life. Sudden, premature death is frightening, so the topic of death is to be avoided at all costs.

Moreover, the mainland has its own long-established insurance-like risk-management practices, in the form of savings and kinship support. Many Chinese did not see the merit of saving and managing financial risks via an insurance product.