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Strategies & Market Trends : China Warehouse- More Than Crockery -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RealMuLan who wrote (109)	8/5/2003 11:52:01 AM
From: RealMuLan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6370

China's consumer era takes hold By John Berthelsen From the increasingly stylish boutiques and bars of Shanghai to the factories of Guangzhou and Shenzhen, China's Maoist era is well and truly gone, replaced by progressively more rampant consumerism that is taking the world's most populous country into the era of the credit card. Much of this stems from structural changes introduced in the 1990s by China's iron ex-premier, Zhu Rongji, who in 1998 forced through housing reforms that have gone largely unnoticed by analysts. These reforms have turned over vast amounts of state-owned housing to the people who lived in them at discounts of up to 80 percent. Other laws enshrined private property ownership in the Chinese constitution and allowed land-use rights up to 70 years. Private home ownership, the devil's own work to a proper communist, is taking over. Besides transforming tens of millions of people from asset-poor renters into homeowners, this has had a more profound effect. It has begun the process of turning China into a credit-driven society, as most of the developed world is today. The ability to buy on credit is transforming China itself, says Hugh Peyman, head of the Asia-based Research-Works (www.research-works.com ) strategic analysis firm. ... With its consumerist society just getting under way, China is now committed to opening its economy as stipulated under the agreement to join the WTO, and Western manufacturers and exporters once again are murmuring to themselves the mantra: There are 1.3 billion people there and if they each only buy a single pair of shoes ... China has been disappointing the world's shoemakers for decades, perhaps centuries. It is a question whether they will continue to do so. But whether the world's merchants get a chance at Mr Wang, the Chinese version of Mr Smith, the national economy is producing on its own. This is a different China. (Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.) atimes.com