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

To: RealMuLan who wrote (383)	8/17/2003 10:58:41 PM
From: RealMuLan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6370

China takes to capitalist road with a vengeance Cars are the hotest consumer durable in an economy that is overtaking France in motor production Jonathan Watts in Beijing Monday August 18, 2003 The Guardian The People's Revolutionary Army Museum in Beijing is enjoying its biggest crowds in years, but the main attraction is not the tanks, armoured vehicles and rocket launchers that were once the main source of national pride. Instead the throng is flocking to see the latest cause of wonder in modern China: the affordable, four door family saloon. In a dramatic sign of the changing times in China, the museum - which is supposed to be dedicated to the bloody struggle for a communist motherland - became a temporary car showroom last week: an incongruous choice of venue for the Beijing New Car Show forced on the curators by the Sars outbreak earlier this year. It is a fitting symbol of new China that the trophies of the bloody past have made way for the consumer durables of the materially obsessed present. When the show opened last week, the museum's giant statue of Mao Zedong was relegated to at best an ornament, at worst an impediment as thousands of middle class Beijingers made a beeline for the flashy displays of VW Polos, Hyundai Sonatas and Mitsubishi Jeeps in the halls behind the monument. True, it is capitalism with Chinese characteristics - there are more security guards than glamorous models and the range of vehicles is small - but the focus on cars rather than tanks is revealing. In today's China, the cultural revolution is on the roads, where increasingly rich urbanites have the money and the freedom to drive, and in the car factories, where the world's biggest and cheapest labour force is increasingly exploited by foreign and domestic capitalists. After one of the most explosive periods of growth in the history of manufacturing, China is set to overtake France this year as the planet's fourth largest car-making nation, with an output of more than 4m of them. It is expected to pass Germany in 2005. Even if the 32% rate of expansion recorded in the first six months of this year slows by half, the national bureau of statistics forecasts that China's capacity will soar to 10m vehicles by the end of the decade. ... Even in affluent Beijing, only one in 20 families has a car. Among the national population of 1.2bn, the average is one in 120 people, which has given manufacturers optimism that there is plenty of room for growth. ... guardian.co.uk