Why China’s economy is weak, but surviving in the long run – Shaun Rein

 

Shaun Rein

China’s consumers are still nervous, the economy is weak, but looking good in the longer run, says Shanghai-based business analyst Shaun Rein at CNBC. Consumers are trading down now, but both real estate and infrastructure are not helping the economy, he adds. In the next decade, China’s middle class will grow from 400 to 800 million. Rein saw many of his clients move temporarily to Japan but is sure they will return to China.

Shaun Rein is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more experts on China’s consumption? Do check out this list.

For multinationals, China cannot be replaced by India or Vietnam – Shaun Rein

 

Shaun Rein

Multinationals do not have to look at Vietnam and India as a replacement for China, says business analyst Shaun Rein at CNBC. In the next ten years China’s middle class is going to grow massively, and cannot be beaten by anybody else, he adds. “About 400 million poorer Chinese are getting into the middle class in the years to come,” he says.

Shaun Rein is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touchmailto:fons.tuinstra@china-speakers-bureau.com or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more financial experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

The term ´middle class` is only confusing - Arthur Kroeber

Arthur Kroeber

The term ´middle class´ shows up in almost every analysis on China. But economist Arthur Kroeber, author of China's Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know®, thinks the term creates more confusion than clarity, he explains to Knowledge CKGSB.

KnowledgeCKGSB:

When trying to understand this new group of people—an unprecedented middle to Chinese society —the first task is to get a grip on the slippery terminology. 

“My preference is to discard the term ‘middle class’ because it comes with certain freight,” says Arthur Kroeber, co-founder of Gavekal Dragonomics, a research firm based in Beijing. As Kroeber explains it, someone of Fu Cong’s description aligns very closely with what we think of the Western middle class—home, car, vacation, white-collar job, the whole lot. But identification of people with a certain lifestyle can get in the way of understanding the significance of this group within China. 

“Because you use the word ‘middle,’ I think everyone has embedded in their mind that if you did an income distribution curve, [they are] the people who are in the middle,” says Kroeber. “But by even the most generous estimate, this is a small minority of the total population, and it basically represents the economic elite in China, so it’s not the ‘middle’ of anything.”

More in Knowledge CKGSB.

Arthur Kroeber is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers`request form.

Are you looking for more strategy experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

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How chicken brought the Wang´s a fortune - Mario Cavolo

+Mario Cavolo 

China´s middle class, not only the very rich, collected trillions in savings, hidden from the formal economy, argues the author Mario Cavolo in his bestseller. On his website he explains how the Wang´s saved their fortune by simply selling chicken on the street. 

Mario Cavolo:

Meet Mr. & Mrs. Yang, they’ve been quietly, simply, diligently making a daily profit of 1000rmb/USD $165 per day five days a week for over a decade, not a dime of it reported to the government. Now wash, rinse, repeat millions of times along China’s merchant-lined streets to finally have an understanding of what’s really going on in China. 

I first met the Yang’s in 2002 when I lived in the Jing An district of Shanghai and regularly stopped at their “hole in the wall” street spot to pick up a 10rmb/$1.50 order of their tasty “jiaoyan de” chicken tenders, tossed with fresh minced garlic, green onion and chili peppers. I moved away for several years and having a corporate client in the same neighborhood this year, I always stop by to pick up an order when I’m in the neighborhood. 

Having a long time friendship and trust with them, I inquired in a friendly conversation with the Yang’s last week that went like this: 

Mario: “So, Mrs. Yang, how many of these chicken tender orders are selling each day, 200 or more?” 

Mrs. Yang: “At least…200 to 250 on average, sometimes 300.” 

Mario: “Nice! Your cost is around 50%?…profit around 5rmb each?…that’s not bad.” 

Mrs. Yang: “No, no, only 3rmb profit ($.50) per order, look at the other expenses, the gas, the oil, it adds up, and we don’t want to charge too much. And don’t forget we also sell these whole chickens at around 20rmb each, we sell 50/day and make 5rmb profit on those.” 

So there you have it plain as day, right under your nose and every other cliche we might consider with respect to a China reality check. 250 x 3rmb = 750rmb plus 50 x 5rmb = 250rmb totaling 1000rmb per day profit. The funny thing is I sense that many of us perhaps were thinking that their total revenue per day was around that 1000rmb per day. Now, having done plenty of similar street side research in the past two years, their answer was right in line with what I expected. They are in fact taking in 3x more revenue and profit than most people might consider. 

Keeping in mind this story has its start 12 years ago, one might begin to imagine how much money they have diligently accumulated over the years.

More at Mario Cavolo´s website.

Mario Cavolo is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´request form.

China Weekly Hangout

The +China Weekly Hangout is expected to resume after Chinese New Year. Until that moment we use our scarce free moment to discuss how we can improve those online gatherings. Last week +Paul Fox, +Chao Pan, +Dashan 大山 and +Fons Tuinstra joined a first exchange on how the hangouts can be done better in 2014.

 

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• Has China a viable middle class? - The debate

Why China's middle class is not doing so well - Shaun Rein

Shaun Rein

While consumer confidence in China might be high in general, the so-called middle class - earning between 6,000 and 115,000 US dollar per year - are fairly pessimistic, explains business analyst Shaun Rein at CNBC. Mid-tier consumer brands are being hit, he predicts.   

Shaun Rein is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.  

 China Weekly Hangout 

Are foreign firms having a hard time in China? That is the question the China Weekly Hangout will address on Thursday 22 August, with as panelists China veteran-at-large Janet Carmosky, CEIBS business professor Richard Brubaker and international lawyer Nathan Kaiser. You can read our announcement here, or register directly at our event page here.

Discussion on October 11 at the +China Weekly Hangout on the ability of China to innovate, with political scientist +G. E. Anderson and China consultant at-large +Janet Carmosky. Moderation by +Fons Tuinstra of the China Speakers Bureau.

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The China middle class debate

Is China having a middle class? Yes, it has, but how large is it and is it a useful group to target if you want to sell your products on the China market? Leading opinion leaders on China differ fundamentally about this issue, and it is about time to put those differences in the limelight. Here the arguments by +Helen Wang , +Shaun Rein , +Wei Gu and Tom Doctoroff.
Initially, following Weber, the middle class was the group of people between the working class and the upper class. But especially in the US much of the working class started to consider themselves also to be middle class too, and sometimes for good reasons. But it has made the label 'middle class' a difficult one. (A thorough overview of the historical development of the definition here at Wikipedia .)

Two schools of thought exist in this China debate. One group sees the existence of a Chinese middle class as a no-brainer. While the Chinese middle class might be defined in different economic terms than the US middle class, some estimate it already to be as high as 600 million.
A second school disputes that assumption; they say money can be made at the rich and ultra-rich in China, but the middle class is at best a very thin, too thin layer between those rich and the majority of relatively poor. And even worse: China's focus on improving minimum wages for the working class, and less at improving the position of the middle class.

In the middle is Evan Osnos who uses a OESO definition for the middle class in The New Yorker:

A decade later, Chinese politics have not achieved that goal. The Chinese middle class— defined by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development as those with the means to make spending decisions beyond just subsistence—is almost certainly growing: it is now about ten per cent of China’s population, and on pace to be forty per cent by 2020. But when it comes to politics, the Chinese government risks losing the support of the middle class.

Using that definition still does not mean the Chinese middle class can buy the same products as their US counterparts, even though the costs of living in China's larger cities have matured over the past decade, and move upward even more.

The debate is both financial and political. Defenders of the middle-class theory in part looked mainly at financial criteria for the middle class in China compared to the US because (at least in the past) the costs of living in China were lower than in the US, they argued. Their opponents believe you should look also at the ambitions of the Chinese consumers. Unlike the average American consumers, Chinese do not want to be middle class. They want to be filthy rich, even when they know they might not be able to achieve that ambition all.

Whether or not there is a substantial middle class has profound consequences for marketing efforts by both Chinese and foreign companies in China. When you are selling Lamborghini's, private airplanes or yachts, the middle class is not interesting. But how looks the market for other products?

Let's give the word to the two different schools.

The Middle Class School

JWT's Tom Doctoroff clearly believes in a large and vibrant middle class, as he states in the first half of this clip:

On his side, we also find Helen Wang, author of the bestseller "The Chinese Dream: The Rise of the World's Largest Middle Class and What It Means to You. In Forbes she tried to start a debate on defining the middle class, and is more optimistic than Evan Osnos:

In The Chinese Dream, I use a combination of these definitions: urban professionals and entrepreneurs from all walks of life, who have college degrees and earn an annual income from $10,000 to $60,000. Over three hundred million people, or about 25 percent of China’s population, met these criteria in 2010.

The not-so Middle Class school

Shaun Rein, author of The End of Cheap China: Economic and Cultural Trends that Will Disrupt the World,  is one of the opinion leaders who has cautioned foreign companies to expecting a Chinese middle class comparable to the US one. In SeekingAlpha:

China's middle class does not really exist, at least by the American definition. Many analysts define the 350 million Chinese who live in households that earn between $6,000 and $15,000 a year as middle class. However, Chinese consumers with this socio-economic background do not exhibit the same hopes, aspirations, and shopping habits of middle-class Americans. As a result, brands that emphasize a middling position will not appeal to consumers there.

He was recently supported by Wei Gu, wealth editor at the Wall Street Journal:

Wei Gu estimates the middle class to be 6% of the population and stalling. She comments:

At present, the great majority of the Chinese are working class, living in households with annual disposable income of between $6,000 and $16,000, just about enough to cover basic needs, according to consulting firm McKinsey & Co. The middle class, with annual disposable income of between $16,000 and $34,000, make up only 6% of the urban population. A tiny group of upper-middle-class to rich consumers, whose disposable income exceeds $34,000, comprises only 2% of the urban population.

She quotes also Shaun Rein in her article:

"The biggest risk in the world is China's middle class not being happy," said Shaun Rein, the managing director of China Market Research, a consulting firm. "They are the most pessimistic group in the world."
"The truly rich can afford to live anywhere, and the poor get double-digit wage increases every year," Mr. Rein, author of the book "End of Cheap China," said. "China's middle class has hopes to own a car and home and be rich one day. But as their salary growth slows, they realize they will never be able to get there."

If we agree that you cannot create a middle class by just shifting definitions, the question is whether the middle layer between the rich and the poor is really substantial, and - literally - adding value to the economy? And what should be done to change the current pressure on the middle class?

Not clue how to set up a debate, let me hear your thoughts.

+Helen Wang , +Shaun Rein +Wei Gu and Tom Doctoroff are all speakers at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need one of them, or a combination? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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A squeezed middle class needs more love - Wei Gu/Shaun Rein

Wei Gu

Between a growing number of billionaires and 700 million peasants China's middle class has severe problems in taking off. In the Wall Street Journal its wealth editor Wei Gu asks for more love for the middle class. Business analyst Shaun Rein warns against an unhappy middle class.

Wei Gu:

Among the 3,000 delegates of the 2013 National People's Congress, the percentage of blue-collar workers and peasants has risen to 13% from 8% in 2012. The number of migrant workers has jumped to 30 from just three last year. Wealthy Chinese continue to be well represented. China's richest man, Zong Qinhou, is attending the annual powwow for the 11th time.

The squeezed middle class deserves more love. As many as 51% of Chinese working professionals suffered from some level of depression, the Ministry of Health said in 2011. They blame pressure from a rapidly changing society, increased competition, long work hours and high property prices.

And Shaun Rein:

"The biggest risk in the world is China's middle class not being happy," said Shaun Rein, the managing director of China Market Research, a consulting firm. "They are the most pessimistic group in the world." 

"The truly rich can afford to live anywhere, and the poor get double-digit wage increases every year," Mr. Rein, author of the book "End of Cheap China," said. "China's middle class has hopes to own a car and home and be rich one day. But as their salary growth slows, they realize they will never be able to get there."

Shaun Rein

More in the Wall Street Journal. Bot Gu Wei and Shaun Rein are speakers at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need them at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form. 

Update: Here Wei Gu talk more about the thin demografic layer called China's middle class for the WSJ.

Education is one solid way for Chinese to amass more assets. But is it working, is education a gold mine or a black hole, asked the China Weekly Hangout last week, and got some answers from HKU lecturer Paul Fox. Moderator is Fons Tuinstra, president of the China Speakers Bureau.  

Next week, on Thursday 14 March, the China Weekly Hangout will focus on the media in Hong Kong. In the 1990s they were a beacon of hope, and Hong Kong one of few global news capitals. With Paul Fox of the HKU we will discuss the state of Hong Kong media. You can read our announcement here, or directly register at our event page. 

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The second edition of "The Chinese Dream" - Helen Wang

The bestseller "The Chinese Dream: The Rise of the World's Largest Middle Class and What It Means to You" on China's middle class by Helen Wang is getting its second edition and Lord Wei, has written the new foreword, announces Helen Wang on her weblog. 

Lord Wei:

The Chinese Dream today as portrayed in Helen’s book speaks of a changing China that is discovering consumerism, that is increasingly globalised, and also at a crossroads. Will her path in years to come continue to be one that resembles that of Western countries with all the benefits of further urbanization, wealth, and industrialization, but at the same time challenges in managing scarce resources, population migration, and the social problems that affluence can bring, elsewhere called ‘Affluenza’? Or will the Chinese people themselves inside and outside China create a new sustainable Chinese Dream, based on their ancient values of respect for culture, family, and nature, harnessing technology and creativity? 

Only time will tell, but Helen’s book gives insights into how middle class Chinese consumers are thinking, what they are buying, and the lifestyle pressures they are facing which hints at the possible paths ahead. Over time the symbols of the Chinese Dream will emerge, just as red pillar boxes and the English countryside did for the British Dream in the 19th century and white picket fences and jeans have for the American Dream in the 20th century. The enduring symbols of the Chinese Dream are being invented at this very moment in time.

More in Helen Wang's weblog.

Helen Wang is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

More on Helen Wang and 'The Chinese Dream: The Rise of the World's Largest Middle Class and What It Means to You' at Storify
.

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The year of the squeezed middle class - Paul French

Paul French

Being part of the aspiring middle class is not easy, Shanghai-based author Paul French knows. Their house keepers - or ayi's - are hard to get, prices go up and your food gets poisoned, he summarizes the ordeal in the China Economic review.

Paul French:

What a Chinese New Year. It was the first major holiday in China where we really got to see just how a China without a demographic advantage might look – factory workers hard to find, wage demands spiraling and less migration to the cities. Domestic laborers (that’s “ayis” to the Chinese middle class … and you) are at the forefront of the new demographics. There simply isn’t an inexhaustible supply of them anymore. Consequently, they’re a middle-class perk that’s not going to be so abundant and cheap in future. 

And the ayis have got the memo!! Want an ayi for just a day or two a week? Forget it, now they increasingly want full-time contracts with benefits. Some people are reporting paying up to RMB3,000 a month (a preposterous and unheard of sum for those old China hands who remember paying RMB3 for taxis, etc). Some especially canny ayis are reportedly asked their employers for a flat RMB10,000 for their thirteenth month. Refuse and the chances of them sticking around are slim to nil, leaving the Chinese middle classes to do their own cleaning, washing and ironing – heavens forefend!! Or more likely, getting their parents to do it.

More in the China Economic Review.

Paul French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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Helen Wang to visit London, Paris, Europe

Helen Wang

Helen Wang, the author of the leading book, The Chinese Dream: The Rise of the World's Largest Middle Class and What It Means to You, will be visiting London early December on the invitation of Lord Wei. She will also visit Paris and other parts of Europe and is available for speeches.

On Monday 5 December she will be talking in the Asia House in London on the invitation of Lord Wei of Shoreditch. From the invitation:

In The Chinese Dream, a groundbreaking book about the rising middle class in China, business consultant and China expert Helen Wang challenges us to recognize that some of our fears about China are grossly misplaced. As a result of China’s new capitalist paradigm, a burgeoning middle class – calculated to reach 800 million within the next fifteen years – is jumping aboard the consumerism train and riding it for all it’s worth – a reality that may provide the answer to America’s economic woes. And with China’s increasing urbanization and top-down governmental approach, it now faces increasing energy, environmental, and health problems – problems that the U.S. can help solve. Through timely interviews, personal stories, and a historical perspective, China-born Wang takes us into the world of the Chinese entrepreneurial middle class to show how a growing global mindset and the realization of unity in diversity may ultimately provide the way to creating a saner, safer world for all.

Lord Wei of Shoreditch is a social entrepreneur, interested in social reform, and a citizen with a keen interest in developing civil society solutions to social problems. Nat was a former advisor with the government on the Big Society, works with the Community Foundation Network to develop local responses to the Big Society, and serves in the House of Lords as the youngest and only active Chinese peer. 'Lord Wei currently sits as the Chair to the All Party Parliamentary Group on East Asian Business and also as the Treasurer to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Chinese in Britain.

Helen Wang is available for other speeches in Europe.

Helen Wang is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch. Or you can fill in our speakers' request form. More information on 

Helen Wang at Storify.

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Luxury dreams from Chengdu - Helen Wang

Helen Wang

Second-tier city Chengdu is betting on the high-end luxury consumption and wants to bring annually twenty world-brand luxury products into the city, writes author Helen Wang in Forbes. New targets for China's middle class. Helen Wang:

A cover story in Chengdu Today, “Global Luxury Brands Stride Forward in Chengdu,” reveals that Chengdu municipal government has set a goal to bring “twenty famous international brands to Chengdu every year” and “by 2015, primacy ratio of international first-tier brands will reach 80 % or above in western China.” Hurray and hurry, luxury goods companies! 

In 2010, Chengdu’s retails sales reached $5.8 billion. Much of it went to luxury brands such as Hermes, Burberry and Prada. Louis Vuitton alone registered record sales of $138 million. Cartier generated more revenue in Chengdu than in any other city in China... 

I had an interesting conversation with the magazine’s editor Eureka Wang. Knowing that I have written a book about the Chinese middle class, she asked me if middle class Americans are also fanatically buying luxury goods. I said “very rare.” She was surprised. “Who is buying luxury goods in America then?” she asked. “The very rich,” I said.

More in Forbes Helen Wang is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.

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What is the Chinese dream? - Helen Wang

Helen Wang

The question "What is the Chinese dream?" is easier to ask than to answer, discovered Helen Wang, author of the book "The Chinese Dream", when talking to audiences in the US. The result of her quest in Forbes.

I believe part of the reason that people in the West fear China is that they are not certain whether China will be a benign power or an evil power because they don’t know what the Chinese Dream is. 

The United States as a superpower has done many wrong things and bad things in the world. But people around the world in general know what the U. S. stands for. Some people may disagree or resent U.S. foreign policies, but few people see the U. S. as an evil power. It is time for China to define a new dream. The real Chinese dream has to come from the Chinese people – something that reflects the fundamental values of who they are and what they represent.  

It will probably require some deep soul searching of an entire generation or even several generations of the Chinese people to identify the true Chinese dream. Now my book The Chinese Dream is being published in China. It is my hope that it will not only serve as a bridge between China and the West, but also start an important conversation about the Chinese Dream.

More in Forbes Helen Wang is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.

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Who are China's luxury shoppers? - Helen Wang

China's middle class looks definitely different from the American middle class. Author Helen Wang discusses with the editor of Chengdu Today the profile of China's luxury shoppers and analyzes their profiles on her weblog.

In 2010, Chengdu’s retails sales reached $5.8 billion. Much of it went to luxury brands such as Hermes, Burberry and Prada. Louis Vuitton alone registered record sales of $138 million. Cartier generated more revenue in Chengdu than in any other city in China. When I left China 20 years ago, I was considered too “bourgeois” because I liked to put on pretty clothes while others still wore Mao suits. Those days are long gone. Today, not being “bourgeois” is a subject of public ridicule. As the cover story describes, Chinese consumers consider buying luxury goods a symbol of “paying attention to details and pursuing quality of life.” You cannot argue with that. I had an interesting conversation with the magazine’s editor Eureka Wang. Knowing that I have written a book about the Chinese middle class, she asked me if middle class Americans are also fanatically buying luxury goods. I said “very rare.” She was surprised. “Who is buying luxury goods in America then?” she asked. “The very rich,” I said. This is the difference in luxury consumption between China and the United States.

More on Helen Wang's weblog (including profiles) Helen Wang is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.

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