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Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Vosilla who wrote (21369)	1/14/2005 11:31:32 AM
From: Chispas	Respond to of 116555

Meanwhile in Shanghai --- ......................................................... Jan 14, 2005 The Great Wall of shopping By Pepe Escobar SHANGHAI - "Adore the world. Be after it. Be in it." This boardwalk advertisement greets at least half a million passers-by every day on Nanjing Dong Lu, Shanghai's premier commercial thoroughfare, where almost 40 years ago hordes of vigilant Red Guards waved Mao Zedong's Little Red Book. It is promoting - what else - a new shopping mall. And Shanghainese are indeed more than adoring, "after" and "in" this (shopping) world. Still growing at a dizzying 12% a year - to the cries of "unsustainable" by rows of economists in bad suits - conspicuous consumption in this greatest of Asian cities peppered with 40 mega-malls and counting, is the rule. So long live the consumer revolution. In the first Ferrari showroom, opened last summer, a "pedestrian" Maranello costs a mere US$475,000. At Giorgio Armani's flagship Chinese store, facing the Bund, a Shanghainese-Milanese fusion explodes in silky minimalism. Even the jewelry design is sinified. Communist Party cadres aren't hip to Armani yet, but anyway the Milan fashion icon has already cornered the luxury market. A man's jacket costs only 10,000 yuan ($1,220) - more than the annual disposable income of a Shanghainese mid-level executive. Smart Shanghainese chic, MTV-style, shopping till they drop in the mall row of Huaihai Road, week in and out, look as though they could be in Los Angeles, London, Bangkok or Sao Paulo. And if you're in no mood to shop, the party forces you to. State holidays are longer - some a week long, like the upcoming Chinese New Year in early February, encouraging internal tourism. The six-day week enforced by state-owned enterprises (SOEs) is no longer the norm. Power cuts, according to Shanghainese, always happen when the government transfers electricity from factories to malls. There's an ongoing credit-card boom. And everybody still saves as much as 40% of his income. For the right product and the right marketing, the (polluted) Shanghainese sky is the limit. Talk about the latest, supreme object of desire, the LG G920 cell phone, retailing at 4,999 yuan ($609), is it. But in a country where in 2003 (the latest data available) the average per capita disposable income in urban areas was 8,472 yuan ($1,033) a year, while for farmers it was only 2,622 yuan ($319) a year, who's really climbing the Great Wall of shopping? (Continued) atimes.com