The population of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei cluster (also called “Jing-Jin-Ji”) will be +100M people. That’s pretty fascinating. Some thoughts on where we are and what’s coming next. The economics of Beijing as a mega-city are already fantastic. The economic output is already over 10% of China’s GDP. So this mega-city is already a big deal in […]
The big China consumer stories of the past years have included a vaccine scandal, food contamination scares, surging overseas home buying, and continued rising consumption by urban families. These stories, in reality, are mostly about Chinese women as an ascending consumer class. More specifically, they are about Chinese moms, who are quickly becoming the most […]
Apple’s success in China has been spectacular. Truly outstanding. But while the “Apple in China” story is usually told in terms of the rise (and now leveling off) of iPhone sales, it has also been just as big a success in terms of brand building. Apple today is known and loved by China’s increasingly wealthy […]
Pacific Prime is one of Asia’s top brokers of international health insurance products, especially for expatriates. Founded by Neil Raymond in 2000 and based in Hong Kong, they have a particularly good view into the current changes in health (and other) insurance in China and Asia. And as I am someone who has been working […]
Jonathan Woetzel and I have just released a new 2017 version of our One Hour China book (here). We originally released it in 2013 and it (quite surprisingly) jumped onto the best-seller list (for China). It has more of less stayed on the best-seller list for the past three years. But a new version was […]
Hello from Peking University, It has been a whirlwind of meetings and travel this month. I now call visiting three countries in a week a “triple”. There have been some interesting China business events recently, especially the United Airlines incident. Below are my comments on that – and my favorite China articles and books for […]
The Chinese market is difficult and failure is common. This is true for both domestic and foreign companies. But the country is also huge and there is almost always another opportunity available. The brutality of the Chinese market is compensated for by its breadth. French food company Danone and Danish brewer Carlsberg Group provide good […]
The “30M Chinese live in caves” statistic keeps getting repeated. And from relatively reputable sources – including the LA Times, the NY Daily News and Business Insider. Some reports even claim up to 70M people live in caves in China. Certainly many people in Shaanxi do have cave houses, as shown in the Shaanxi picture […]
So Yum! China has been spun-off. A reasonable move that gave them increased owner/management focus. It also gave some activist hedge funds a nice return. And the new spun-off Yum! China entity has released its first 10-Q, which was some interesting reading. But there are now some important challenges going forward. These are widely discussed […]
It was the 2008 melamine baby powder scandal that finally made food safety a national priority in China. And the 2016 vaccine scandal may be what similarly finally wakes Chinese consumers up to the issue of drug safety. Unfortunately, sick newborns may again be the mobilizing image. Drug scandals have been happening in China for […]