The wild, wild east

摘要

More than five centuries ago Christopher Columbus scrawled in his copy of Marco Polo's "Travels" that the Middle Kingdom would bring mercacciones innumeras (an immeasurable amount of commerce). Columbus never reached that promised land. China has continued to disappoint foreign businessmen ever since, not least because many ordinary Chinese people have been too poor to buy anything. That is changing as the country's middle class is growing explosively (see chart). In 2010 mainstream consumers-those with enough money to buy cars, fridges and phones but not Rolls-Royces-made up less than a tenth of urban households. In a new forecast, McKinsey predicts that by 2020 they will make up well over half, bcg reckons that urban private consumption will rise from $3.2 trillion today to $5.6 trillion in 2020.