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More cars in the drive

2013-02-08 09:05

China has been leading the world in auto production and sales for four consecutive years. Last year, the industry again achieved outstanding results with car sales totaling 19.3 million, an increase of 4.3 percent on 2011.

The endless boom

2013-02-08 09:05

Over the past 60 years, the world's tourism industry has been growing faster than its economy, with the number of travelers increasing in that time from less than 1 million a year to more than 1 billion, and tourism sales revenue from $1 billion to $1.2 trillion (880 billion euros).

This isn't just a trend

2013-02-08 09:05

China is now the top source for international students in the United States. Since 2006, more and more Chinese students have come to study in the US, according to the Institute of International Education of United States. For every four international students in the US, there is one from China. The number of Chinese students registered in the US for the 2011-12 school year reached 196,029, an annual increase of nearly 23 percent over the past six years.

Doors are open to China's home-improvement market

2013-02-08 09:05

As China's middle class continues to expand, its demand for high-end home improvement is soaring. There is a consensus among industry observers that international brands offer the value that Chinese middle-class and high- net-worth homeowners seek when planning to furnish their homes. Moreover, after a decade of relentless residential expansion in the country, homeowners may be expected to shift from refurbishing their homes entirely to working on them room by room. In the near term, homeowners are already looking to social media and online tools for home improvement ideas and advice. These channels open new doors to China's home-improvement market for foreign brands.

Changing winds of consumerism

2013-02-08 09:05

It's an accepted truism that as people make more money their spending on what they eat and drink rises disproportionately. The Chinese middle class is certainly following this pattern, and there are big opportunities for international brands that cater to their demands for quality, safety and service.

A drama that could have an unhappy ending

2013-02-08 09:05

With the rise of the middle class in China, the country's box-office revenue has skyrocketed in recent years, and foreign companies are stepping up the production of works made jointly with Chinese filmmakers.

Survival of China's fittest luxury brands

2013-02-08 09:05

Luxury items are mostly rare and expensive, and their appeal to Chinese shoppers, particularly to the hard-working middle class, is great because they are perceived as a reflection of the owner's personal values.

In search of the middle-class dream

2013-02-08 09:05

How big is China's middle class? It's not an easy question to answer because it seems everyone has their own definition of the term middle class. McKinsey, Forbes, Bain & Co, Euromonitor and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences are just a few who have had their say on the matter.

On the cusp of a boom

2013-02-08 09:05

The rapid growth of e-commerce has triggered a raft of opportunities for retailers in China. Online interactions and visits to online forums have increased and so also the researching of brands on the Internet.

Oil's well that ends well

2013-02-01 09:13

China's appetite for oil has been soaring over the past two decades, and its oil imports will continue to soar in the decades ahead. The country will thus become far more exposed to the risk of international supply disruptions than it is today. This has raised great concern about China's energy security, because its rapidly increasing oil imports come mainly from politically unstable regions and are shipped through lengthy sea lanes over which China has little say.

A whole new world

2013-02-01 09:13

To maintain their success after the current period of easy growth, Chinese state-owned enterprises should consider the option of expanding overseas. Although well equipped financially for the days ahead, SOEs must engage their competitors on fresh terrain, going beyond cost advantage. New skills for innovation, quality, branding, talent management, post-merger integration, stakeholder management and corporate governance will be required.

In Japan, the sun also sets

2013-02-01 09:13

Ructions in Tokyo could have implications on china, rest of the world.

Talking about a revolution

2013-02-01 09:13

L'Ancien Regime et la Rvolution (1856), or The Old Regime and the Revolution - written by the French thinker Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) - is now a bestseller in China, a phenomenon that can be explained in three obvious ways.

A locomotive that could give more pull

2013-02-01 09:13

Investing in Germany offers the opportunity of drawing on technological know-how

Good set of numbers disproves doubters

2013-01-25 09:33

When it comes to the Chinese economy, it seems that there are none so blind as they who will not see. For once again, hard facts last year got the better of those who are forever predicting doom.

Does FDI provide spoils, or does it just spoil?

2013-01-25 09:33

Since China's strategy of going global began in the late 1990s, its foreign direct investment has increased rapidly, attracting considerable attention from policymakers, academics and the public.

The city that is ready, willing and able

2013-01-25 09:33

It may come as a surprise to some that many of China's larger companies are experiencing financial hardship and are even losing money. For example, the profits of Li Ning, a long-time beacon of Chinese consumer goods producers, fell 85 percent in the first half of last year, and there is already talk of losses this year.

Time to defeat poverty in Mali

2013-01-25 09:33

The future of the country depends on a concerted effort to improve its socio-economic development

Trade data is not what it seems to be

2013-01-25 09:33

At the core of globalization in the 21st century is the growth of supply chains. It is a fact that value chains have changed the old ways of organizing international specialization, of production and of understanding comparative advantages over the past 20 years. They have changed the face of trade.

The bane of domestic consumption

2013-01-25 09:33

A year of transition lies ahead, and it will not necessarily be that easy

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