Chinese parents today are willing to spend more than their parents’ generation were to make their children smile. Retail sales of toys and games in China leaped over 250% between 2011 and 2016, making the toy market very appealing. Today, playtime in China is more about learning than fun and games—Chinese parents think play should be constructive, making educational toys more popular than traditional ones. Meanwhile, seizing kids’ playtime is also a key to winning the toy market, and that’s why toy brands are attempting to combine their products with a learning center.
Learning from the Rust Belt: How to Revive Northeast China
China’s once-mighty industrial heartland in the Northeast, or Dongbei, has fallen on hard times in recent years. Could the key to its revival lie in the American Rust Belt experience? As happened in the US Rust Belt, firms in Dongbei, almost all state-owned, started to struggle in the 1980s. They have been in decline ever since, leaving local governments with a cluster of problems, including heavy industry pollution and high debt levels, which would be instantly recognizable to policymakers in Gary, Indiana, or Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Now that its counterparts in the West have now largely transcended the phase, what can Dongbei learn from the American rust belt’s experience?
The Real Cost of Air Pollution in China
We all know that air pollution is bad for our health. But what is often overlooked is that high pollution levels also cause significant harm to our economic well being. Brian Viard, Associate Professor of Strategy and Economics at CKGSB, has been researching the economic effects of pollution for much of the past few years. His team has found persuasive evidence that the costs of air pollution are greater and more wide-ranging than most people realize. In this interview with CKGSB Knowledge, he explains how tackling the pollution crisis could actually make the Chinese economy more productive.
The Uprising of China Fintech
China’s financial sector used to be famous for its poor service and imperviousness to innovation. Even today, when customers go to make a transaction at one of the country’s big state-run banks, they often take a bag of snacks with them—they know they’re in for a long wait. But things are changing fast in the Middle Kingdom. A new generation of digital finance firms is taking the country—and the global markets—by storm in everything from digital payments and micro-lending to insurance and wealth management. How will China’s lumbering state-run banks react? Will tightening regulation nip this revolution in the bud?
Ioana Kraft on European Dreams and Chinese Realities
Ioana Kraft began her career in international law, and moved to China 14 years ago. Since 2009, she has been the General Manager of the European Union Chamber of Commerce’s Shanghai chapter, working tirelessly to promote the interests of European businesses operating in eastern China. In this interview, she discusses the challenges and opportunities European businesses face in China.
Should China Worry About the Finances of Its Rising Middle Class?
As the Chinese economy shifts from exports and investment toward domestic consumption, the country is counting on the middle class to drive consumption levels higher. A good reason to be optimistic is that the growing middle class club, with more millennials, is getting more comfortable with borrowing. Yet it is also a worrying phenomenon because the amount of consumer debt keeps climbing. Meanwhile, the red-hot property market has always been a heavy burden on Chinese households and has been getting even heavier in recent years. Will China’s middle class be derailed? Should we worry about the finances of Chinese middle class?
Where Are Migrant Workers in China Moving to?
Economic changes and government policies are driving millions of China’s migrant workers away from the wealthy coastal regions back to the less developed western regions. The trend is a clear sign that a fundamental change to China’s economy is in progress, as a growth model that lifted more than half a billion people out of poverty starts to slow. From the early 1990s onwards, China’s double-digit GDP growth was fueled largely by the cheap labor provided by people leaving their farms in China’s poorer inland provinces to find work in the factories springing up along the coast. Now this has changed.
How Do Chinese Companies Profit from Environmental Protection?
Decades of breakneck development in China have taken a terrible toll on the air, water, and soil. The good news is that the government has started a massive anti-pollution campaign, investing at least $477 billion in environmental protection and shutting down thousands of factories. While many are being driven out of business by the campaign, it’s also creating new opportunities for green technology companies and pushing manufacturing companies to upgrade. And although a government-led campaign, further clean-up efforts can be made by private companies as local governments search for clean solutions.
How Moutai Became the World’s Most Valuable Liquor Maker
It’s a comeback story worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster. Three years ago, China’s once all-powerful liquor maker Kweichow Moutai looked to be on the ropes. President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign had dealt a vicious blow to the country’s most famous spirit brand—for years a staple on every government banquet table—and the company’s profits and share price had taken a hammering. By January 2014, Moutai’s shares were worth just over RMB 119 ($18.31) per share—a fall of 50% in 14 months. With no end to the crackdown in sight, some questioned whether the legendary distiller would ever recover.
China’s Music Industry to Break Through Internationally
As the world’s most populous country, China should have the potential to become the world’s most profitable music market, yet it is far away from that—China was the 12th largest market in 2016, with $202 million in revenue compared to the US’s No.1 ranking of $5.3 billion. But there are important differences in the way music is consumed that may give China a business edge. Led by internet firms like Tencent, China has adjusted to the digital future of music more quickly, with a whopping 96% of music revenue from digital releases and 75% of that number coming from streaming sales.
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