Business
Businesses that want to keep selling through war and upheaval make deals with whoever holds power, including rival governments and occupying armies. During the 1937–45 war, Chinese medicine makers negotiated with both Chinese and Japanese leaders.
Consumer culture does not simply flow from the West into other societies. It is built at the points where local entrepreneurs meet their own customers, and those firms carry it outward to local, national and cross-border markets.
Home-grown businesses can outsell powerful Western companies in their own region. Chinese medicine makers out-competed Western rivals for Chinese and Southeast Asian customers for decades, in peacetime and in war.