China is now biggest market news, various sources.

[touchring]

Fast trains, ghost cities, all hype. Oh yeah, but is it all hype?

My sources in China are telling me that China's consumer market, both brick and mortar and online, is growing fast and is going to be very massive...

Since GDP figures are unreliable - I actually suspect under-reporting rather than over-reporting, we can only obtain a picture from individual companies reporting their China sales.


http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/01/10/uk-bmw-china-idUKBREA090AI20140110

China edges out U.S. as BMW's biggest market on 2013 sales

SHANGHAI Fri Jan 10, 2014 9:09am GMT

(Reuters) - Sales by German luxury carmaker BMW (BMWG.DE) in China rose 20 percent last year to overtake the United States as the group's biggest market.
BMW sold a record 390,713 BMW and Mini cars in China last year, up 19.7 percent from a year earlier, the company said in a statement on Thursday, outpacing the overall market growth of 13.9 percent. Its 2013 U.S. sales were up 8.1 percent to 375,782.

More and more Chinese consumers are buying luxury cars from BMW, Audi and Mercedes-Benz as they get richer and seek more exclusivity, shrugging off the negative impacts from the anti-extravagance campaign initiated by President Xi Jinping last year.
China's premium car market will grow at an annual rate of 12 percent through 2020, and overtake the United States as the world's biggest market for luxury cars as early as 2016, according to consultancy McKinsey & Co.

"We achieved our 2013 targets, but it is even more satisfactory that the volume growth was backed by solid substance in every aspect of our work," Karsten Engel, CEO of BMW Group Region China said in the statement.

"This proves our China strategy worked well and it will be adhered to in this year continuously."
Engel told a news conference on Monday the group will introduce more than 10 new models in China, including its electric BMW i3, this year.
BMW will also expand its dealer network and ramp up local production of vehicles through its Chinese joint venture, according to transcripts of Engel's remarks on Monday.

BMW brand car sales grew 19 percent to 362,100 units in China last year and Mini cars increased 23 percent to 28,613 vehicles.
(Reporting by Samuel Shen and Kazunori Takada; Editing by Matt Driskill)

http://www.cnbc.com/id/46940039

China Becomes World’s Biggest Grocery Market

Catherine Boyle | @cboylecnbc
Tuesday, 3 Apr 2012 | 7:10 PM ETCNBC.com

The onward march of the Chinese consumer continues, with China overtaking the U.S. as the biggest grocery market in the world in 2011, according to new research out of the United Kingdom.

The Chinese grocery sector was worth $970 billion (607 billion pounds) at the end of 2011, while the U.S. market came in at $913.5 billion (572 billion pounds), research by food industry analysts IGD showed.

The figures come at a time of widespread food price inflationas well as rapid economic growth in China, which is now the world’s second-largest economy as well as the most populous country. The analysts believe the gap between spending by Chinese and American consumers on groceries will widen over the next few years, with the market for groceries in China reaching 918 billion pounds by 2015.
The leap has been driven by food price inflation as well as economic growth, as soft commodities such as wheat surged in response to increased demand from China and other emerging markets. The Chinese are moving from a diet based around rice and pork to embrace dairy products, wheat, grains, white and red meat, which has helped boost prices around the world.

The four BRIC countries— Brazil, Russia, India and China — are expected to make up four of the top five grocery markets by 2015.
The forecasts take into account a “significant slowing” of China’s rapid economic growth. Worries about worse-than-expected growth in China’sgross domestic product , which the Chinese government predicts will expand by 7.5 percent in 2012, down from 9.2 percent last year, have come onto the markets’ agenda again.

Wages should continue to grow faster than inflation, as the Chinese government has tried to dampen inflation at the expense of slowing growth.
“Despite the slowdown, measures to stimulate Chinese domestic consumption present an opportunity for retailers. For example, higher wages could boost disposable income and increase the number of potential customers,” Cécile Riverain, IGD’s international research manager, toldCNBC.com.
Consumer goods giants like Unilever and Procter & Gamble have been able to push through double-digit price rises and still maintain volume growth in China, while price increases have hit their volume growth in Western markets, according to Rahul Sharma, retail analyst at Neev Capital.

“There’s actually much more pricing power in Asia than in the West,” he told CNBC.com. “Consumers are maturing and buying more brands, but it’s not the usual suspects that are doing well.”

He added that Western brands are generally well-trusted in China, which has seen a number of food safety scandals in recent years.
Western fast food retailers can also benefit from the increased number of Chinese people eating out, according to Sharma. Kentucky Fried Chickenhas a much bigger presence in China than fast food rival McDonalds .

Global retailers like Walmart , Tesco and Carrefour are trying to capitalize on the burgeoning Chinese consumer, with mixed results so far.
Chinese consumers, many of whom are used to shopping in “wet markets” — traditional fresh food markets — want to have fresh food and are still extremely price-conscious, according to Sharma.

“It’s actually the local retailers who are doing best,” he said. “There’s a big focus on price and retailers have to convince Chinese consumers that they’re not too expensive.”

International chains will open close to 2,700 stores in China over the next four years, according to IGD.
“There are significant hurdles to overcome, not least the often slow and arduous legal process, but securing return on investment is the most challenging piece of the jigsaw for global retailers,” Riverain said.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...ne-market-boom

China becomes biggest market for red wine, with 1.86bn bottles sold in 2013
Boom attributed to new urban affluence – and to Chinese fondness for lucky colour

Kim Willsher in Paris
The Guardian, Wednesday 29 January 2014 15.39 GMT

The Chinese appear to have beaten the French at one of their own favourite pastimes – quaffing red wine. China's drinkers knocked back 1.86bn bottles of vin rouge last year, an increase of 136% over five years, making the country the leading market for red wine.

However some experts say the boom, which has led to increasing interest from Chinese buyers in French vineyards, is more a matter of cultural sensibilities than taste.

The colour red is considered lucky in China and is also affiliated with the Communist government, while white is associated with death and is predominantly seen at funerals.

France, where consumption of red wine is dropping, was in second place in this league, followed by Italy, according to the latest figures compiled by the London-based company International Wine and Spirit Research.

The US remains the world's biggest market for all colours of wines, said Vinexpo, the Bordeaux chamber of commerce organisation that commissioned the study.

"Apart from the healthy aspect in comparison to the excessive consumption of rice wines, the success of red wine [in China] is largely down to the symbolism of its colour," said a Vinexpo spokesperson. "Red is a very positive colour in Chinese culture and is synonymous with wealth, power and luck. In the business world these three values are fundamental, therefore red wine is often found in banquets to seal partnerships. And red is also the colour of China."

Guillaume Deglise, Vinexpo's new chief executive, said: "White is the colour of death. So you don't want to drink that, and why would you?"

He said though that as the Chinese market matured he would expect white wines and champagne to become more popular.

In trade terms the Chinese consumed 155m nine-litre cases of red wine, compared with 150m cases in France and 141m cases in Italy.

Demand for red wine in China has grown steadily since the mid 2000s and today's sales figures are more than 175% higher than those for 2005. During the same period red wine sales dropped by 18% in France and by 5.8% in Italy.

Researchers believe that drinkers in the Asia-Pacific region will be polishing off more than 4bn bottles of different wines a year by 2017.

Economists see Chinese drinkers' growing taste for wine as evidence of the creeping westernisation of the country. Wine was once the prerogative of government and party officials and wealthy businessmen. State clampdowns on corporate excesses have forced drink companies and wine-makers to look for new customers among the urban nouveau riche.

Last year the auctioneer Christie's opened the world's first estate agency for wealthy Chinese who like wine so much they want to buy the vineyards.

In 2012 Christie's sold more than £23m worth of wine at nine sales in Hong Kong.

China is now the fourth largest export market for French burgundy producers behind Japan, Britain and the US.

Overall, Americans remain the world's most prolific consumers of still and sparkling wine, drinking nearly 325m nine-litre cases in 2012, followed by France with just over 303m cases, and Italy with about 297m. Germany is in fourth place with 278m cases, then China with 172m and the UK with 135m. The top 10 is completed by Argentina, Russia, Spain and Australia.

The stereotype of a Chinese wine drinker is the businessman easing into a deal, probably with an official, over a bottle of Chateau Lafite, its label prominently displayed.

But the austerity and anti-corruption drive of the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, has led to a marked decline in conspicuous consumption and sales of high-end wine.

While imports to China rose 5% by volume last year, their value grew just 0.5%, said Jim Boyce, writer of the Grape Wall of China blog.

Ma Huiqin, who has run lessons in wine tasting for 10 years and last year tutored more than 400 students, said that few distributors expected pricey wine sales to pick up soon. Instead, growth was likely to come at the lower and middle end of the market.

"When I started teaching, only a few people would have tasted wine. When you asked about tastes they would say sweet and sour," she said. "Now more than half have experienced wine before they come to my class."

She added: "Young people are a very strong driving force … Chinese people want to try something interesting and new. Pizza has been very successful; KFC has been very successful. Twenty years ago very few Chinese drank coffee, but now so many do."

But Ma, who is also a microbiologist at China Agricultural University, and an expert on wine marketing, noted that figures overestimated actual consumption because distributors and retailers held large amounts of unsold stock.

She said: "For most Chinese it is still an occasional commodity, mainly for holidays. There will be more consumers, but they are occasional consumers."

A good example is Ms Xue, who works for a wine company in Hebei province, receives six free bottles a year, enjoys red wine and believes it is good for her health. Even so, she does not drink often. "Maybe during the festivals," she said.

Boyce said: "The average is [about] one bottle a year per person. But the scale of China makes it a huge market."

Reds have long dominated the market and about 70% to 80% of sales were of Chinese wines, or those made from a blend of Chinese and imported wine, he said.

While Chinese wines did previously have a poor reputation, the Changyu Moser XV was one wine he would definitely recommend, he said.

Tania Branigan

• This article was amended on 31 January 2014. The earlier version referred to "1,865bn bottles" where it should have said "1.86bn bottles", and gave incorrect figures for total wine consumption by various countries in 2012.

http://www.ibtimes.com/china-extends...digits-1621254

China Extends Lead As World’s Largest Car Market By Sales; GM, Ford China Deliveries Up By Double Digits

By Angelo Young@angeloyoung_a.young@ibtimes.com
on July 07 2014 3:41 PM

Four years after China became the world’s largest auto market, the pace of growth has been relentless. Last year, Chinese consumers bought about 2.7 million more new domestic and foreign brand vehicles than American buyers. In the first six months of this year, the Chinese market leads by almost 3.7 million.

Total U.S. new-auto sales grew by 1.1 percent to 8.15 million vehicles, according to the latest figures from automotive data provider Kelley Blue Book. The U.S. auto market is on track finally to recoup to pre-recession sales levels this year.

China new-car sales surged by nearly 10 percent in the first half of 2014, well on its way to breaking its 2013 record of about 20 million deliveries. IBTimes
At the same time, new-car sales in China so far this year are expected to come in at about 11.81 million, about 9 percent growth, based on an IBTimes estimate using data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers for the first five months of the year. (June figures are due out later this month.)

This is welcome news for General Motors Co. (NYSE:GM), the second-largest foreign automaker in China, which has been suffering a public relations crisis over a slew of recalls and the fatal ignition switch flaw in some older mid-sized sedans. Chevrolet sales are starting to feel a consumer backlash in the U.S., but GM said Monday that sales in China have increased 10.5 percent in the first half of 2014, to 1.73 million vehicles.

Ford's China sales jumped 35 percent, but it's still far behind GM. Volkswagen AG is the largest foreign automaker in the country. GM is in second place. IBTimes
“We anticipate sales remaining strong through the end of 2014, as more people – particularly outside China’s major cities – become first-time vehicle buyers,” GM China President Matt Tsien said in a statement.

Ford Motor Co. (NYSE:F), a relative newcomer to the Chinese auto market, reported a 35-percent jump in deliveries, to just under 550,000 units. Ford is leagues behind GM and the largest foreign automaker in the country, Germany's Volkswagen AG (FRA:VOW), but is investing to expand its factory floor space and catch up to its competitors.

“We continue to grow our sales network, increase capacity and hire great employees,” said John Lawler, chairman and CEO of Ford China, in a statement.

Foreign automakers are required to form partnerships with domestic producers in China.

GM’s largest joint venture, called Shanghai GM, sold 819,667 vehicles in the first half of the year. SAIC-GM-Wuling sold 883,724 vehicles, while FAW-GM delivered 27,579 units. GM's top three joint ventures (it has 12 in China) boosted sales between 7 percent and 11.5 percent so far this year.

Ford makes passengers cars as Changan Ford. The joint venture reported a 39 percent rise in sales in the first six months, to 286,433 cars, led by strong demand for the Ford Focus. Ford’s commercial vehicle partnership, Jiangling Motors Corp., registered a 21 percent increase to 132,938 vehicles in the first six months of the year.

Car sales in China don’t give up the same profit margins, since many of the vehicles made under these joint ventures are targeting middle and lower-middle class buyers. But high volume can make up for at least part of what’s lost in profit and automakers are banking that China’s growing middle class will continue to strengthen the appetite for high-margin luxury cars and SUVs.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/...ndroid-devices

Monday, February 18, 2013, 12:10 pm PT (03:10 pm ET)
China surpasses US as biggest market for Apple, Android devices

By Kevin Bostic
The world's most populous nation is now the biggest market for devices such as Apple's iPhone and those running Google's Android operating system, as a new report has China surpassing the U.S. for the total number of smart devices in operation.

Research firm Flurry tracked more than 2.4 billion anonymous, aggregated application sessions across more than 275,000 applications around the world, finding that the Chinese smart device market surpassed the United States market over the last month. In January 2013, China's 221 million total active iOS and Android devices was about equal to the 222 million in the United States, according to Flurry.

From January 2012 to January 2013, the U.S. added 55 million new smart devices. Over the same period of time, China added nearly three times as many: 150 million new devices. Flurry's report estimates that, had it not been for the traditionally heavy holiday shopping season, China would have overtaken the U.S. two months ago.

Taking into account the rate of growth for the mobile market, China should at the end of February have roughly 246 million devices, while the U.S. should have 230 million.

Given that China has more than four times the population of the United States, Flurry does not expect the U.S. to regain the lead in device activations.

The only country that could come close is India, which has a population comparable to China's. India, though, currently stands at only 19 million active smart devices, by Flurry's estimate, and is not likely to challenge China in the near future. China and the United States each have more than five times the smart device install base of the next largest market, the United Kingdom.

Even given its massive install base, China still ranks among the top 10 fastest growing Android/iOS markets. At 209 percent growth year-over-year, it ranks sixth in therms of growth rate. Topping that list are Colombia and Vietnam, at 287 and 266 percent growth, respectively.

Flurry's report tags the mobile computing boom as the fastest-adopted technology revolution in history, pegging it at 10 times faster than the PC revolution and three times faster than the Internet boom. China is apparently now at the forefront of that revolution, and Apple in particular is keenly aware of the opportunities and challenges presented by the world's most populous country.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has made multiple visits to China in the past year, meeting with executives from China Mobile, the country's — and the world's — largest wireless carrier. Such meetings, along with recent payment option changes, are aimed at getting Apple products into the hands of Chinese consumers, who typically cannot afford the premium pricing Apple attaches to its wares.

Among the Chinese that can afford Apple products, the company's offerings have proven an immense success. The iPhone 5 moved two million units in its first weekend of Chinese availability, and Apple's iPad mini reportedly debuted to insatiable demand.

Discussing the issue in quarterly conference calls and interviews, Cook has noted the importance of the Chinese market in Apple's future plans. The company already heavily relies on China and southeast Asia in general for supplies and cheap manufacturing labor, but figures like those seen in Flurry's report are leading analysts and investors to predict that the company must make lower-cost iDevices in order to fully address the mobile computing boom in emerging markets.

http://www.straitstimes.com/news/bus...-year-20140420

China set to replace US as Volvo's biggest market this year

PUBLISHED ON APR 20, 2014 10:15 AM 0 0 0 0

BEIJING (REUTERS) - China is set to surpass the United States to become Volvo Car Group's biggest market in 2014 with sales of at least 80,000 cars in the world's largest auto market.

Its car sales target for 2014 is around a third higher than the 61,146 cars sold in 2013, while sales in the United States in 2014 are expected to increase only in line with the broader market, it said in a statement on Sunday.

In the first quarter of this year, it sold 17,286 cars in China, up 25.4 percent from a year earlier.

Volvo, whose XC60 SUV is its best-selling model in China, expects the Chinese market to help boost its global sales in coming years, though it faces competition from foreign firms, such as General Motors Co, and domestic players such as SAIC Motor Corp.

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/...rt-grid-market

China becomes biggest smart grid market


19 FEB, 9:59 AM
CLIMATE SMART ENERGY
Bloomberg New Energy Finance


Global smart grid investment reached $14.9bn in 2013, up from the $14.2bn recorded in 2012, according to the latest authoritative figures from research company Bloomberg New Energy Finance.


China finished the year as the world’s largest smart grid market, exceeding the US in dollar investment for the first time as the North American market continued to slow.


Smart metering accounted for just under half of the total smart grid spending worldwide, with distribution automation and other integrated demonstration projects rounding out the total.


China spent $4.3bn on smart grid in 2013, with a large part of that going on the installation of 62m meters. China now has just under 250m smart meters installed but has indicated that it will push out the end-date for completing its metering programme from 2015 to 2017. China now has more than twice as many smart meters installed as the total number of households in the US.


Meanwhile, US smart grid spending is slowing down. The North America market shrunk significantly in 2013, falling 33% to $3.6bn as the last of the US stimulus-funded projects wound down.


There were promising signs in 2013 on smart metering in several key European markets, including a large metering contract in the UK, a new tender in France and completion of the long-awaited cost benefit analysis in Germany. Japan’s utilities are in the tendering and procurements stages of their deployments while Brazil’s smart metering roll-out is being delayed by certification and financing challenges.


Distribution automation ? or the use of technology to locate and automatically fix faults and to fine-tune voltage levels on the grid ? continued to grow last year. Global spending on distribution automation increased to $5.4bn from $4.4bn in 2012 driven by renewed interest in renewable integration and grid reliability in China, the US and Europe.


Bloomberg New Energy Finance sees the following developments in 2014 and beyond:


– Asia still has years of growth ahead. Despite China’s recently announced slowdown in meter installation, China’s 5-10 year meter replacement cycle means that as this major wave of installations finishes in 2017, the first wave of replacements is expected to commence. 2014-15 will bring also an increase in distribution automation spending in China while smart grid activity in Japan, Korea, India and South East Asia will also ramp up.


– The US is entering a second major smart grid phase: information integration. With its growing penetration rates for smart meters and distribution automation, the next phase for the US smart grid is using the new data coming in off the grid to improve areas like outage management, customer segmentation and theft detection.


– Europe is the smart grid’s sleeping giant. Europe has installed only 55m smart meters but this is expected to rise sharply to 180m by 2020. Spain will remain as the most active market in 2014 but large-scale deployments in the UK, Germany and France will begin to ramp up in late 2015.


Bloomberg New Energy Finance sees strong support for further smart grid investment. Colin McKerracher, senior energy-smart technologies analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said: “Global investment in the smart grid increased relatively modestly last year after five years of rapid growth. But the fundamental drivers of the smart grid – greater grid reliability, further integration of renewable energy, and improved demand-side management – are stronger than ever.


“Asian and European markets will drive growth through 2020, while in North America the focus will continue to shift from hardware to software as utilities look to squeeze additional value out of the vast amounts of grid data now available.”


Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s data on smart grid investment are collected by its teams of analysts and researchers in Japan, China, the US, Brazil and Europe, and aggregated in London.

[jk]

Re: China is now biggest market news reports - various sources.

thanks for pulling all these reports together, touchring. reading through them, i had a couple of reactions.

one was a chuckle over the analysis that "red wine is consumed because red is a lucky color and also associated with the communist regime". it just hit me as bizarre when, on the one hand these reports document rapid modern development, but otoh, these kinds of superstitions are cited as explanations of market developments. i wonder instead about whether there's some differential in its asian flush syndrome - not that i know, just that i wonder.

another, more important thought that arose was the question of how this increasing consumption will interact with china's still-latent demographic crisis. any thoughts on that?

[GRG55]

Re: China is now biggest market news reports - various sources.

As a counterpoint to the above, news from earlier this week posted below.

Despite the breathless headlines, China is having great difficulty generating internal consumption across the broader economy. The abysmal Services Index readings (record low!) imply that the current round of official stimulus (China blinked. Again. Is anybody surprised?) is once again going towards increasing supply. This is ominous for the global economy as China is determined to remain THE low cost producer, recapture some of the production lost to its lower cost neighbours such as Vietnam, and there is little indication that the rest of the world has the capacity to absorb more Chinese output (USA macro is a continuing trend of falling current account deficits, so good luck pushing even more containers into the Port of Long Beach). Another round of exported deflation seems inevitable now. Before winter is over we should see renewed calls for anti-dumping and other trade actions against China from the USA and Europe...and more pressure on Central Banks to maintain/increase QE policies.

Global imbalances seem even more precarious than they were when EJ wrote his "Economic M.A.D." article in 2006. "Nobody" saw the coming implosion in Japan in the late 1980s. "Nobody" saw the coming implosion in the financialized United States economy last decade. Where's the next "unexpected" and allegedly unseen implosion going to be sourced?

China Services Index Falls to Record Low

By Bloomberg News
Aug 4, 2014 10:54 PM MT

China’s service industries stagnated in July as a private index (MXAP) fell to a record low, suggesting the government’s stimulus measures are failing to gain traction outside of manufacturing.

The services Purchasing Managers’ Index declined to 50.0, the dividing line between expansion and contraction, from June’s 53.1, HSBC Holdings Plc and Markit Economics said today. A similar official gauge released Aug. 3 dropped to a six-month low of 54.2.

Asian stocks extended losses as the HSBC-Markit index’s lowest reading since it began in 2005 signaled that falling home prices and new construction are dragging on services, which account for almost half of gross domestic product. The International Monetary Fund’s China mission chief warned last week real estate is the biggest near-term risk to the economy.

“The weakness in the headline number likely reflects the impact of the ongoing property slowdown in many cities,” Qu Hongbin, HSBC’s chief China economist in Hong Kong, said in a statement. The report points to the need for “continued policy support to offset the drag from the property correction and consolidate the economic recovery,” Qu said...

[touchring]

Re: China is now biggest market news reports - various sources.

As a counterpoint to the above, news from earlier this week posted below.

Despite the breathless headlines

Deciphering China's economy is never easy due to the diversity (including income inequality) and size of the country and diversity of culture. The real estate bubble in recent years is also incredible and unbelievable.

I'm also a skeptic myself and have seen real estate being built and left empty for years before they are occupied. The other issue is aging population.

We have heard of ghost towns, but how about a ghost Manhattan?

http://www.dailybrainfreeze.com/cons...ties-of-china/




Regardless of all the problems, one thing is for sure, China's consumer economy is going to be the world's largest within a matter of just 3 years given the 15-20% a year growth seen by companies selling in China.

A real estate bust might set that back by another 4 years (judging from the speed Dubai bounced back).

So regardless of what happens, China will still be the largest economy by 2025 even after factoring in a super devastating real estate bust.

And even when China is the largest economy, China's consumption will still be growing by 10-15% a year by virtue of the large population and lower GDP per capita. With fast growth, China will probably be 50% larger than the next largest economy, the USA, by 2030. And this is based on the assumption that the dollar doesn't go bust by then...

This is ominous for the global economy as China is determined to remain THE low cost producer, recapture some of the production lost to its lower cost neighbours such as Vietnam

Speaking about Vietnam, I've also traveled to Vietnam recently, nice food, coffee and hardworking people. Vietnam is a great place to setup a manufacturing plant, but China has already moved up the economic development curve. Manufacturing doesn't always need super low cost labor when you have automation. China is also investing a lot in automation, transportation and even solar panels - here's another headline on China being the largest solar energy market.

This report really surprises me because I've always thought that the US is the largest solar market after Germany because of Obama's solar energy policy.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-0...st-market.html

China Drives Record Solar Growth Becoming Biggest Market

By Marc Roca Mar 8, 2013 4:21 PM GMT+0800 - Comments Email Print


The $77 billion solar-energy industry is forecast to expand the most since 2011, as China becomes the biggest market for the first time and drives annual global installations to a record.


New generation capacity will rise about 14 percent this year to 34.1 gigawatts, equal to about eight atomic reactors, according to the average estimate of seven analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. That would beat the 4.4 percent growth in 2012, when demand shrank in Italy and France after subsidies were cut.


China, after building scores of factories that helped cut panel prices 20 percent in the past year, is poised to become the biggest consumer of the devices after doubling its 2013 target for new projects in January. Tumbling prices are benefiting installers including Solarcity Corp. (SCTY) and SunPower Corp. (SPWR) of California while hurting manufacturers such as LDK Solar Co. of China and Norway’s Renewable Energy Corp. ASA. (REC)

[touchring]

Re: China is now biggest market news reports - various sources.

thanks for pulling all these reports together, touchring. reading through them, i had a couple of reactions.

one was a chuckle over the analysis that "red wine is consumed because red is a lucky color and also associated with the communist regime". it just hit me as bizarre when, on the one hand these reports document rapid modern development, but otoh, these kinds of superstitions are cited as explanations of market developments. i wonder instead about whether there's some differential in its asian flush syndrome - not that i know, just that i wonder.

another, more important thought that arose was the question of how this increasing consumption will interact with china's still-latent demographic crisis. any thoughts on that?

Another reason that is not mentioned. Red wine is deemed to be more healthy and many Asians drink wine for health reason rather than cultural.

China's demographic crisis hasn't reached the severity of Japan or even Hong Kong's. I believe that China will adopt an open door policy to attract foreign labor, similar to what Hong Kong and Singapore has been doing, and this will act as a counter to an aging population.

2050 is still a long way to go. But by then, I'm sure robotics and AI will be so advanced, having fewer adults in their working age might actually be beneficial. On the other hand, having a large young population that is unemployed due to any reason can be very destabilizing as we can see from Syria, Egypt, Libya and Afghanistan.

IMHO, the verdict is not set in stone yet. Militarism is the curse of all emerging powers and will invariably bring down the economy in the long run.

The other factor is whether the West will go into war, be in real war or Cold war. Capital and people are very mobile today, and if there's unrest in the West, they will move to China and Asia Pacific..


http://www.cnbc.com/id/101198566#

[dcarrigg]

Re: China is now biggest market news reports - various sources.

China will still be the largest economy by 2025 even after factoring in a super devastating real estate bust.

Wasn't world's biggest economy by 2025 Deng Xiaoping's stated goal back in '78 or around there? I seem to remember that from back in the old pen and paper days, but I can't find an online source quickly.