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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Seeker of Truth who wrote (45527)	2/3/2004 3:15:35 AM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Services are as sticky for developing countries as agriculture is for developed ones. Developed countries want to sell services in developing countries but the developing ones want developed countries to open their markets for agriculture products. At the moment, developing countries ganged up ) together to act as a block (the so- called G20 against agriculture subsidies since developed countries don't want to oepn the market for agriculturals but want to sell services. No agreement has so far been found.

To: Seeker of Truth who wrote (45527)	2/3/2004 7:13:20 AM
From: TobagoJack	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Hello Malcolm, My observation of in-China competition between the manufacturers is that the Europe/US/Japan-invested enterprises generally do not have an easy time with their Chinese domestic and Chinese Taiwan/HK competitors as compared to with each other. The Chinese manufacturers (white goods, electronics, cosmetics, householder products, etc) tend to be quite nimble, and their cost structure is better suited to cut-wrist competition via death-level discount, and their goods (quality vs. price) tends to be better weighed for the local market. The above is of course a gross generalization, because Volkswagon, Daimler Chrysler, Proctor & Gamble etc are all very successful companies in China. Chinese domestic competitor's fit and finish is simply not up to snuff yet. But then again, the Chinese domestic competition against these very big outfits have not even started yet in earnest, and so the domestic companies and foreign-invested companies are not actually competing against each other. More like the domestics are fighting off the domestics, the Hondas are bloodying the Toyotas, and P&G acquired Wella, and fend off Japanese outfits. For the services side, insurance, courier package etc, I do not know. I suspect that the competition will be ferocious in the life insurance sector where customers are new to the industry (never bought life insurance), less so in the banking and property insurance areas (customers do not typically move readily, tied to existing policies and services by outfits that better understand their customers needs and risks). For courier, I believe the Internationals will seek to work with Sinotrans because the infrastructure duplication would make their services prohibitively expensive relative to Sinotrans. Bottom line, I admit I am guessing. I think the death match arena will be flooded with crimson liquid. Pure chaos, but much dynamism will result. J