Profiteer (Daoye)

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First emerging in the early 1980s and became pervasive through the early 1990s in China, the term "profiteers," in Chinese expression daoye 倒爷, refers to a new group of private businesspeople who operate as brokers, using their market knowledge and connections to obtain goods at low prices for resale at a high prices.^[1] The term “daoye”, combining Chinese words dao (speculation) and ye (a respectful title for a male), is Beijing slang for profiteering and speculation and was especially common in Beijing at the time. In English, “profiteer” is a pejorative term for those who reap excessive profits by charging exorbitant prices for goods.^[2] In Chinese, however, “daoye” is more ambiguous. On the one hand, the term disparages the people engaged in this activity as parasites for exploiting state assets. And, on the other, the term regard such people as harbingers of China's first post-revolutionary wealthy class.