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China Consumer Behavior Economics Trend Watching

China, Socialism & Consumer Behavior: auto sales up 17% in first half of 2008

China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said on recently that between January and June 2008, the country sold 3.61 million passenger motor vehicles, a growth of 17.07 percent over the same period a year previous. The growth rate, however, was 5.19 percentage points lower than the 22.26 percent level recorded in the same period last year […]

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China Consumer Behavior Trend Watching

Living in China: Obesity in China is a growing epidemic

Twenty-five years after China opened up to the west the Chinese are paying a price. Rapid social and economic change is transforming China, with enormous implications for its population and economy. Today the country has the fastest-growing obesity rate in the world and more than a fifth of China’s adult population is overweight, related to changing dietary and physical activity patterns. Overweight and poor diets are becoming a greater burden for the poor than for the rich, with subsequent large increases in hypertension, stroke, and adult-onset diabetes. The related economic costs represent 4–8 percent of the economy.

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China Consumer Behavior Trend Watching

China, Socialism & Consumer Behavior: India, China, and Brazil sees highest jump in millionaires

India, China, and Brazil saw bigger growth in the millionaire population last year than anywhere else, and wealth in the Asia-Pacific is expected to grow nearly 8 percent a year to 2012 despite a slowdown in the world at large, a survey showed. The number of millionaires in the Asia-Pacific grew 8.7 percent from a year ago to 2.8 million people and their combined wealth soared 12.5 percent to $9.5 trillion US dollars, excluding the value of their homes and consumables, Merrill Lynch and Capgemini said at a news conference in Singapore recently…

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China Consumer Behavior Information Technology Trend Watching

Internet in China: online shoppers spend 2.3 billion U.S. dollars in 1st half of 2008

Online Chinese shoppers spent 16.2 billion yuan (2.3 billion U.S. dollars) in 19 major cities in the first half of 2008, China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) said on recently. The findings were based on a survey carried out in four municipalities directly under the central government — Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Chongqing — and 15 developed cities such as Changchun, Dalian, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Jinan and Guangzhou, among others […]

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China Consumer Behavior Economics

Living in China: Cost of food drives up Consumer Price Index to 8.5%

China’s consumer price index(CPI) rose 8.5 percent in April, mainly driven by uncurbed food costs, the National Bureau of Statistics(NBS) said recently. The figure, compared with 8.3 percent in March and a nearly 12-year-high of 8.7 percent in February, was broadly in line with most forecasts.
The NBS attributed the figure to a low base of comparison: the CPI rose just 3 percent in April 2007. Another factor was the rapid increase in world grain and commodity prices…

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China Consumer Behavior Economics

Living in China: Beijing’s Consumer Price Index rose 6.5% in April 2008

Beijing’s consumer price index (CPI) rose 6.5% in April, according to the latest statistics from the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics and the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics Beijing Survey Organization. Food prices rose 21.6%; while non-food prices rose 0.3%. Consumer goods prices rose 8.7% and that of service rose 0.8%. Food prices increased by 21.6% as compared with the same month last year, among which grain prices increased 9.0%; oil prices increased 29.2%; meat and its products prices increased 46.8%; egg prices increased 6.3%; aquatic products increased 19.9%; and vegetables prices increased 11.4%…

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China Consumer Behavior Information Technology Trend Watching

Internet in China: Over 100 Million Youth Seek Fun Online

On April 25th, 2008, China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) released the Research Report of China Youth Internet Behaviors. The report studies the online behaviors of 107 million China’s netizens under the age of 25. According to the report, China’s youth netizens are more inclined to entertainment demand. The most used online serves for youth are IM(91.3%), online music(91.1%), online movie/video(82.9%), search engine(73.4%), online games(68.2%), online news(63.4%) and email(58%). If compared with the average usage level of all Internet users, the usage rate of online games, online music and online movie/video among youth are much higher than average rate […]

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China Consumer Behavior Economics Trend Watching

Living in China: GDP could be 2.5 times that of the US by 2030

China’s economy could be 2.5 times that of the US by 2030, based on Japan’s experience and the yuan’s appreciation against the greenback, a senior Chinese economist says in Harvard Business Review’s Chinese edition. The forecast by Justin Lin Yifu, head of Peking University‘s China Center for Economic Research and recently appointed chief economist of the World Bank, in the May issue of the magazine published on Thursday is one of the most ambitious for China’s economic growth…

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China Consumer Behavior Trend Watching

China, Socialism & Consumer Behavior: Passenger-car Sales in the Rise

China’s passenger-car sales rose 20.41 percent for the first quarter from a year earlier, led by two ventures of Volkswagen AG, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said recently. Domestic car makers sold a combined 1.85 million passenger cars, including sedans, multi-purpose vehicles, sport utility vehicles and crossovers during January to March, compared with 1.53 million units for the same period of last year, the official auto association said…

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China Consumer Behavior Information Technology Trend Watching

Chinese People and their Mobile Phones: over 555 million mobile phone users

The number of new mobile subscribers hit a record high of 8.48 million in January, taking Chinese total mobile users to exceed 555 million, accounting for 41.6% of the country’s population (user density), sending over 54 billion short messages, averaging 3.17 per phone number a day. The continuous falling of handset prices and user charges has directly led to a sharp increase in the number of mobile phone subscribers, Wang Lijian, a spokesman with the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) told Xinhua on recently…