You are right ,in China from the western point of view the average
people are poor, but the real situation is not so. I remember when I
visited China in 1992, I am very surprised at the price of goods
over there. Example: My friend rented a three bed rooms one bath apartment from the organization he worked for(The government provid
most people with apartments with very low monthly rent) , the monthly rent is 7 Yen or 0.85 USD per month, and with $10 USD 10 people had a very fancy dinner in a high level restaurant, and four waitresses stand
on side to serve the guests all the time. With two yen(about 0.25USD) totally, my friend bought me two big bags of apples and orangies(around
15 pieces for each fruit).My friend with me got a serious cold and went to visit the local hospital, the charge is 0.5 yen (about
0.05 USD, 1 coin) with two bags of medicines. In pekin, with 0.5 yen
you can travel to anywhere in the city with the subway. I visited
China again in 1997, I am very surprised at the propersity of the cities I visited , i.e Shanghai, Pekin, Senzeng, Kwancho.Modern and high rise buildings are everywhere.If people do not tell you you are
in China, you will think you are in Hong Kong. With 1000 yen (about 120 USD) of monthly income, you can have a very decent life in Pekin!!
When I visited China in 1992, the principal of the university I visited told me that the buying power of 1 USD in US equals the buying power of 1 yen in China. But from my own study, the real situation is that the buying power of 5USD in US equals the buying power of 1 yen in China.
Now , talking about PCS, China has about 1.2 billion of population according to official record, but since many population in the inland and mountain areas are never recorded, the real population is about 1.4 billion, that is about 25% of the world population. After years development of economy since 1978, about 100 million people in the coastal areas can now afford PCs, and lot of them can afford cars.With economy continuing being developed, the number will increase continuously.The
annual growth rate of China's economy is about 9%. In China , most
people is poor from western point of view (if you do not take the
buying power of local currency into consideration), but the government is very rich( I remembered last month the Chinese president visited US, he placed an order of 3 billion USD to buy
30 commercial plans fom Boing during his visit, this is just very very small number of commercial jets China will buy in the years to come. China is currently building enormous number of airports across the whole country, so you may start to accumulate boing(BA)'s stock now)
, with the modernization of the offices and government own factories going on
across the nation, the Chinese government buys a lot of computers, and
most of them are ordered from companies like HP, CPQ, IBM, and to the
government money is not an issue, but the quality. For the average consumers, the sub $1000 and any high end lower than $2000 probably
are good candidates in the Chinese market for now. But like I said, as times go by, things will change dramatically!!!!Cock Cola went to China in 1978, and in the first few years they can not sell much, but
now I see Cock is everywhere, and Cock built the largest assembly and
manufacturing plants in China. The same for Hamburgs,the largest
MD restaurant in Pekin can serve more than 1200 people anytime, and market is still expanding quickly. To understand the real situation
of China, you have to visit there by yourself !!!!!!!!!
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