What Is Truly Scarce Is Not Aesthetics, but the Ability to Make Aesthetics Meaningful Through Narrative

1. Yu Chengdong Was Not Just Criticizing Store Design

Yu Chengdong’s recent criticism of retail design and aesthetics has sparked wide discussion. On the surface, it seems to be about stores, design, space, and display. At a deeper level, it touches a long-standing question in the premiumization of Chinese brands:

Why are Chinese companies increasingly good at making products, yet still less able to build a brand aura that is widely recognized around the world?

This issue should not be reduced to a simple claim that “Chinese brands lack aesthetics.” That explanation is too crude and easily leads the discussion in the wrong direction.

The real questions are: Why is one aesthetic accepted? Who defines what feels premium? Why can one aesthetic language become a global commercial language, while another, despite deep cultural roots, is often reduced to symbols, decoration, and surface style?

2. Interbrand Shows Progress, but Also Distance

The Interbrand Best Global Brands 2025 ranking offers a useful reference. Only three Chinese brands entered the global Top 100: Xiaomi at No. 81, BYD at No. 90, and Huawei at No. 96. None entered the Top 50.

Xiaomi’s brand value reached US$9.5 billion, up 18% year on year. BYD entered the ranking for the first time with a brand value of US$8.1 billion. Huawei’s brand value rose 11% to US$7.6 billion.

These numbers show two things at once. Chinese brands are clearly progressing. But there is still a visible gap between China’s manufacturing strength, engineering capability, supply-chain power, and its global brand recognition.

More importantly, all three Chinese brands on the list are closely tied to technology, engineering, and industrial capability. Xiaomi is built around consumer electronics and smart ecosystems. BYD is rooted in electric vehicles and new energy technology. Huawei is grounded in ICT infrastructure and smart devices.

In other words, the first global foothold for Chinese brands is still technology and manufacturing, not culture and aesthetics.

3. Asian and European Brands Rose Through Different Paths

This is not unique to China. Japanese and Korean brands followed a similar path when they rose globally.

Toyota, Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, LG, and Hyundai did not first win global recognition through cultural or aesthetic narratives. They won it through quality, technology, durability, industrial efficiency, and innovation.

The European path is different.

Many high-value European brands, especially in luxury, fashion, fragrance, jewelry, wine, and lifestyle categories, follow a path of culture, aesthetics, and then brand. They may not represent the world’s strongest manufacturing efficiency or the most advanced science and technology. But they have long possessed another powerful capability: turning a lifestyle, a social identity, and an aesthetic preference into globally recognized brand value.

Asian brands have typically risen as technology-and-manufacturing brands.

European brands have typically risen as culture-and-aesthetics brands.

This is not an absolute division, but it explains a great deal. For countries and regions that have not long occupied the center of global cultural narratives, technology is often easier to export than culture.

Technology can be tested. Quality can be verified. Performance can be compared. Price can be calculated.

Aesthetics and culture work differently. For aesthetics to be accepted, they need cultural influence, lifestyle projection, and accumulated narrative power.

4. Aesthetics Alone Do Not Decide Brand Level

Yu Chengdong’s criticism may sound like a design issue, but it points to something deeper. Chinese brands are moving from manufacturing competition into brand competition. And the core of brand competition is no longer simply making better products. It is helping the world understand why a brand deserves to be chosen.

Many people directly associate aesthetics with premium positioning. They assume high-end brands have good aesthetics, while lower-end brands have poor aesthetics. This is a misunderstanding.

Aesthetics are not inherently high-end or low-end.

IKEA has its own aesthetics. UNIQLO has its own aesthetics. MUJI has its own aesthetics. None of them are traditional luxury brands, yet all have coherent, stable, and self-consistent aesthetic systems.

So aesthetics do not directly determine brand level. What aesthetics determine is whether a brand expression feels unified, credible, and coherent. What determines brand positioning and pricing power is often not aesthetics themselves, but the narrative system behind them.

5. Products Create Price. Narrative Creates Premium.

Materials, craftsmanship, performance, and cost can determine the base price of a product. But the extra value consumers are willing to pay usually depends on the meaning that product carries.

Hermès does not merely sell a bag. It sells time, rarity, craftsmanship, and social order.

Chanel does not merely sell fashion or fragrance. It sells a vision of modern femininity.

Rolex does not merely sell mechanical engineering. It sells stability, achievement, and identity.

Apple does not merely sell electronic devices. It sells a cleaner, more elegant, and more controlled relationship between people and technology.

Narrative is not simply “telling stories.” Narrative answers more fundamental questions: Why does this brand exist? Who is it for? What does it stand against? What does it believe? What kind of life does it define? Why should people choose it again and again?

Today, many Chinese brands do not lack products, investment, or design teams. Their materials are strong, their craftsmanship is serious, their technical standards are high, and their prices are not low. Yet the final impression often still feels as if something is missing.

That missing part is often not design. It is narrative.

6. Without Narrative, Aesthetics Degenerate into Symbols

This is why many expressions of “New Chinese Style” easily become heavy, repetitive, or even greasy.

Landscapes, ink painting, screens, bamboo, pine trees, blank space, guqin, incense burners, scholar’s objects, and other traditional elements are all valuable aesthetic assets of Chinese culture. The problem is not the elements themselves. The problem is that they are often copied mechanically, used as templates, and piled up as symbols.

As a result, consumers do not see Eastern spirit. They see Eastern props. They do not see contemporary cultural expression. They see surface display.

This is a typical symptom of weak narrative capability.

When a brand does not know what it truly wants to express, it returns to the safest, most familiar, and most easily recognized symbols. “Eastern aesthetics” becomes screens, mountains, ink, and muted colors. “Premium feeling” becomes black-and-gold, marble, dark lighting, and empty cinematic shots. “Cultural heritage” becomes the repeated arrangement of a few classical elements.

The more symbols there are, the thinner the meaning becomes. In the end, it does not feel premium. It feels overdone.

A truly advanced Eastern expression should not repeatedly display traditional elements. It should develop the spirit of Eastern culture in a contemporary way. It should not move the ancient world into the present. It should allow modern life to grow its own cultural character.

7. Behind Recognized Aesthetics Is Cultural Influence

One reality must be acknowledged: the ability of aesthetics to be recognized is closely connected to cultural influence.

Over the past several centuries, especially through the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, modern advertising, mass media, film, fashion, the internet, and digital platforms, Western culture has long occupied a central position in global commercial narratives.

It did not only produce goods. It produced meaning.

It did not only sell products. It defined lifestyles.

It did not only build brands. It established aesthetic standards.

Eastern culture has deep aesthetic resources, and Chinese culture certainly does not lack spiritual depth. But in the modern global commercial system, Eastern aesthetics have not long occupied the center of mainstream brand narratives. This means that Eastern brands naturally need more time to build aesthetic languages that are widely recognized by the world.

This is not because Eastern aesthetics are inferior. It is because aesthetics are never accepted in isolation. Behind every recognized aesthetic, there is usually a recognized culture, an understood lifestyle, and a narrative system that has been communicated over time.

This also explains why Asian brands often rose globally first through technology, manufacturing, and engineering. Technology is easier to communicate across cultures. Whether a car is reliable, a phone is useful, a screen is clear, a battery is strong, or a price is reasonable—these are easier for global consumers to understand.

Cultural aesthetics are different. They require time, narrative, continuous expression, and the rise of broader social influence.

8. Chinese Brands Must Move from Manufacturing Brands to Cultural Brands

Chinese brands today are not facing a simple “aesthetics lesson.” They are facing a more complex transition: from technology-and-manufacturing brands to culture-and-aesthetics brands; from making things well to explaining why they deserve to be chosen; from catching up with existing standards to building their own systems of expression.

This transition will not happen quickly. It cannot be solved by a few designers, consulting projects, or store renovations. It requires Chinese brands to build real narrative capability.

Aesthetic capability matters, but it is not isolated. It is connected to cultural soil, social confidence, industrial development, communication systems, and a brand’s ability to explain its reason for existence.

Without narrative, aesthetics remain symbols. With strong narrative, a brand can gradually find the aesthetic expression that truly belongs to it.

Sometimes a brand may look good but feel empty because its narrative is weak. In contrast, when a brand has a clear narrative, it can usually find the right aesthetic system over time. Narrative tells design where to go. It tells space how to appear. It tells products what to keep and what to abandon. It tells a brand which seemingly premium languages do not belong to it.

So aesthetics are not the starting point.

Narrative is.

9. What Is Truly Scarce Is Alignment

More precisely, cultural influence determines whether an aesthetic is easier to recognize. Narrative determines whether that aesthetic can be turned into value that people can perceive, understand, and purchase. Aesthetics are only the visible outcome.

Many Chinese brands today no longer lack product capability, supply-chain capability, or design capability. What is truly scarce are three things:

The ability to form an independent cultural judgment.

The ability to turn that judgment into brand narrative.

The ability to align aesthetics, products, space, content, service, and pricing around that narrative.

Without this alignment, brands remain trapped on the surface. Stores change. Packaging changes. Visual identities change. Spokespeople change. Yet consumers still cannot explain why the brand exists.

It may be expensive, but not necessarily premium.

It may look beautiful, but not necessarily feel powerful.

It may use many cultural symbols, but not necessarily express culture.

10. Yu Chengdong’s Criticism Is Only an Entry Point

Yu Chengdong’s “aesthetic criticism” is worth discussing not because it exposed a store design problem, but because it revealed a long-underestimated weakness in the premiumization of Chinese brands. When hard power becomes strong enough, soft power is no longer decoration. It becomes the next ceiling.

The progress of Chinese brands is visible. Xiaomi, BYD, and Huawei entering the global brand ranking shows that Chinese companies are already moving from manufacturing competition into brand competition.

But their path also reminds us that the strongest global foundation for Chinese brands today remains technology, engineering, and manufacturing. In the next stage, if Chinese brands want to build stronger global premiums, they must develop a more coherent system connecting culture, narrative, and aesthetic expression.

Aesthetics determine how a brand is seen.

Narrative determines why a brand is chosen.

And culture ultimately determines why an aesthetic is believed, accepted, and recognized by the world.