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本帖最后由 lilyma06 于 2012-3-19 11:20 编辑
【中文标题】中产阶级的崛起
【原文标题】A Great Leap Forward
【登载媒体】时代周刊
【原文作者】Bill Saporito
【原文链接】http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2097400,00.html
27岁的刘丹丹（左）和她32岁的丈夫周舟在他们北京的家中，后者在《君子》杂志中国编辑部工作。他们有一辆梅赛德斯奔驰汽车，家里的橱柜中塞满了名牌奢侈品，他们甚至给6个月的孩子穿上专门设计的衣服。
在米兰高档的保加利亚酒店中的花园餐厅里，意大利商人们在享受他们的午餐和惬意下午的雪茄。其中也有几个美国人来欧洲躲避生活的压力，他们对意大利并不陌生。但是坐在餐桌旁的中国游客并不是这样。
同样没有表现出享受欧洲缓慢时光的还有听导游介绍史卡拉歌剧院历史的满车中国游客，和参观壮观天主教堂的中国人。他们或许是搭乘从上海到米兰一周三班的飞机来到这里，我们相信还会有更多的中国人，因为在6月份的巴黎航展中，亚洲航空公司的订单填满了波音和空中客车的表格，总金额达200亿美元。
中国的游客其实不需要远离国土来亲近西方的招待。在中国南部海滨三亚，万豪集团刚刚开张了里滋卡尔顿旅游度假村，万豪和喜达屋借助万怡和福朋喜来登品牌以疯狂的速度在中国不断竖起它们的万国旗。与此同时，它们已经准备好接待下一波中国游客狂潮，预计到2020年，每年会有1亿中国游客。这个数字足以击败世界上任何一个受欢迎的旅游地。
赵琳就是这些旅客之一，34岁的她是北京谷歌公司的一位经理，她说她喜欢意大利的原因是“悠久的历史和丰富的文化”，当然还有普拉达、古奇、菲拉格慕和芬迪。赵所钟情的这些奢侈品已经是中国大城市中女性的必需品。她和她的丈夫——一位技术经理——都有自己的汽车，她的车是大众帕萨特。中国毕马威会计师事务所的消费市场经理Ellen Jin说，像赵这样的人对零售业来说越来越重要。“越来越多的年轻中国人，包括女性，在经营他们自己的生意，或者在公司担任高层管理职位，他们有很多的可支配收入。他们认为奢侈品是理所当然的，是给自己的奖励。”
世界最大的跨国公司总部几乎都在美国，多年来他们一直在猜测中国消费者是否会崛起。但当美国和欧洲竭力从过去几年的阴影中恢复过来时，几乎所有行业的公司——从汽车到消费品到电信业——都把更大部分的业务放在了中土帝国。数字再简单不过了：中国的经济在上个季度增长了9.1％，而大部分西方国家还不到2％。西方人均收入基本停滞不前，中国人却期望变得更加富有。
这是颇具讽刺意味的现实：摇摇欲坠的西方经济指望中国共产党来拯救他们的资本主义，同样，中国政府平衡经济的宏伟计划也要依赖西方的唯物质论。通过大幅度提高人民的收入水平，中国希望培养出新一代消费者，不仅仅包括像赵这样的城市居民，而且还涵盖了中国13亿人口中的一大部分。毛在长征的时候似乎没有想到“疯狂购物”的概念，然而，收入水平和消费的增长的确在缩小中国最贫穷的工人与高歌猛进的中产阶级之间的差距，到2020年，后者将占据中国70％的人口。如果中国人的消费观念成功地转变，它将分担美国消费者肩膀上一大部分的国际经济重担，中国也会因此成为无论是视频游戏还是医疗工具和薯片的庞大市场。百事公司极为看好中国市场，已经投入了数十亿美元的资金。大中国区总裁Tim Minges说：“这一代奋斗者将成为世界经济的救世主，我相信中国的中产阶级人口数量会像美国生育高峰期那样迅速膨胀。”
还有另外一种方式的角色转变：像百事、大众和摩托罗拉这些曾经提供“在中国制造”产品的企业，已经开始逐渐转变为“为中国制造”。当中国前卫消费者觊觎意大利进口菲拉格慕皮鞋时，它的意大利竞争对手健乐士正在中国更广阔的市场中生产和销售产品。同样，一度生产中国人求之若渴的日本产品的索尼公司，现在也有一条专门生产粉红色产品的流水线，因为很多中国女性喜欢这个颜色。惠普在重庆的一家工厂新近开张，那里生产的电脑产品不是出口到西方国家，而是供给中国的西部城市。喜达屋酒店旗下有圣里滋、喜来登和万怡等品牌，它的高层管理团队集体到上海驻扎了一个月，首席执行官Frits Van Paasschen希望和他未来的大客户靠得更近一些。喜达屋在中国有84家酒店，还有100家正在开发过程中。GAP最新调查结果显示，这家美国牛仔裤公司关闭了美国20％的店面，却以三倍的数量在中国开店。
这些公司的投资规模巨大，投资领域广泛，且周期较长。出品百事可乐、乐事薯片和桂格燕麦片的百事公司正在上海筹建一个研发中心，其中包括各类产品的实验工厂。这样科研人员可以迅速测试向亚洲市场投放的带有区域性风格的新产品，让它们在几个月内上市。瑞士制药巨擎诺华正在上海修建一个包含6座建筑物的园区，这将是其全球第三大研发中心。它的目的绝非把新药试验地转移到一个廉价的市场中，诺华首席执行官Joe Jimenez说，与剑桥、麻省理工学院和瑞士的巴塞尔一样，“这将是我们最主要的研发基地之一。”因为中土帝国即将成长为药品的重要市场，例如，越来越多的中产阶级摄入丰富的营养量，必然导致更多的糖尿病例，对胰岛素的寻求因此上升。
关键问题是，中产阶级的规模可以膨胀到什么程度？如果说美国有不同的两面，那么中国就有不同的四面，从百万富翁到穷困潦倒。沿海城市的人均年收入达5000美元以上，但农村地区的人均年收入只有几百美元。中国的贫富之间鸿沟巨大，用来衡量社会不平等程度的吉尼系数在世界位居首位，而且还在不断增加。这种差距让中国的政治面临各种风险。很多著名的投资者，比如对冲基金经理Jim Chanos，认为中国是一个巨大的泡沫，而且即将破裂。在他看来，这个国家所有的投机资本都让它看起来像是“1000倍的迪拜”。
但是，如果共产党可以成功地控制新一个五年计划中面对的各种挑战，5亿中国非农务工人员将得到美国工人在过去十年中都没有得到的东西：工资上涨，而且是大幅度上涨。政府计划在未来五年中，把最低工资水平上调13％到15％，这实际上会让很多居民的收入翻倍。
政府期望世界上最大规模的劳动力能把这些收入消费出去。当中国在80年代初进行经济改革时，消费占据了GDP的50％以上。到2009年，虽然收入水平有所上升，但消费占GDP比例下降到36％。这并不是因为人们消费得更少了，而是因为政府开销加大了，无数资金被投向出口加工产业以及用来在广阔国土上运输人和货物的基础设施建设。
所有这些投资都为中国80后一代人的出现播下了种子，西方公司认为他们是有史以来最大规模的消费群体。这些人现在处于20岁和30岁的年龄段，他们成长的环境是中国计划经济向市场经济的转化，并且向西方产品和生活方式展开怀抱的过程。这些年轻的中国人只看到无休止的增长，他们不像自己贫穷的父辈和祖辈人一样有那么多储蓄，那些人一般会把收入的35％到40％存在银行里。北京零点调查集团总裁Victor Yuan说：“他们不存那么多钱，所以他们会轻易地进行大笔开销。”
他们的消费真的可以让全球经济摆脱困境吗？美国消费者的支出占据全国15万亿GDP的70％，这正是让美国经济陷入瘫痪的原因。至于中国，隐藏在向消费社会转型过程之后的那些数字，应当足以引起全世界的关注。中国2011年的GDP大约是6万亿，如果消费支出从当前的36％上升到45％——这也是政府的计划——会有5400亿美元流向消费品和服务市场。这个数字足以让美国的GDP上升3.6％，对美国来说，这不啻于一场爆发式增长。我们还没有考虑中国经济的自然增长。如果中国经济按目前速度每年增长9％，而且一半增长来自消费，市场中立即就会涌入5000亿美元资金。这当然是我们最美好的设想，但如果你是一家跨国公司的老板，你肯定不愿意错过这么大的一块蛋糕。
马克波罗的回归
在香港新世界酒店集团首席运营官Symon Bridle的头脑中，你几乎可以看到他的计算过程。他是这样考虑中国旅游市场的前景的：“这个国家的目前有160万个酒店床位，美国的酒店床位有480万个。所以，当地经济的发展必然为酒店业带来巨大的商机。”波士顿咨询集团估算，中国有100万个百万资产家庭，当这些人起身上路时，Bridle希望能有所准备。新世界集团因此斥资2300万美元收购了Rosewood奢华酒店集团，就是为了吸引像32岁的刘宜宁这样的消费者。她是高朋中国公司的高级经理，除了出差之外，她每年至少有两个星期在外旅游。她说：“我喜欢去以前没有去过的地方。”现在，她手里的目的地清单越来越短了。她去过欧洲大部分国家、美国、韩国和南非，还打算在10月份第一次去日本。
出境旅游的热潮已经到来了，预计今年中国出境游的数量将达到5400万人次，这个数字在过去十年中增长了4倍。到2020年，出境旅游数量将轻松突破1亿。巴黎旅游局的官员已经在思考对策来应对这些游客了。旅游局长Paul Roll说：“我们预计到2025年，会有200万中国游客进入巴黎，”这是目前数字的3倍以上，这个城市酒店目前的76600张酒店床位将远远不够。一些顶级的亚洲连锁酒店——莱佛士、文华东方、香格里拉——都在光之城（译者注：指巴黎）积极扩张。城市规划人士甚至在城市北部复制著名的巴黎街景，以便让城市覆盖更广的地理范围。
当然，中国人在自己国家的旅游和消费也同样越来越多，部分原因在于大规模的基础设施建设。到2020年，中国新修建的高速铁路总里程将超过目前世界上所有国家运营的高速铁路总和，大约为1万英里（16000公里）。高速列车让中部城市武汉到沿海城市广州的旅行时间从14个小时缩短为3个小时。新机场如雨后春笋般层出不穷，让以前从未设想过的旅游机会变成现实。新成立的西藏航空公司的第一架空客A319飞机刚刚从拉萨起飞。
大部分基础设施连接的是已经步入富裕阶段的沿海城市和迅速发展的二线、三线，甚至四线城市，这些城市大多位于西部，本土消费刚刚兴起。（当上海和北京的雅皮士们借旅游机会到巴黎购买最新款奢侈品的时候，重庆的新富们已经等不及在家门口出席路易威登酩悦的酒会了。）
各类商业机会应运而生，从零售到旅游大巴，到迎合中国富人的顶级奢侈独家胜地。比如，里滋卡尔顿刚刚在三亚开设了商店。这意味着，在中国做生意的外国公司将面临更激烈的竞争，它们必须付出更多的努力。万豪和喜达屋在中国境外的酒店专门为中国旅客制定了特殊的服务标准，包括中文服务和特定口味的食物和饮料。喜达屋的老板van Paasschen要求旗下所有公司，包括特许经营者，要尽量迎合中国游客的需求。
塑造新口味
百胜餐饮集团中国事业部的首席执行官Sam Su认为消费者的需求已经改变了公司。百胜餐饮是美国跨国公司，旗下有必胜客、塔可钟和肯德基等品牌，该公司已经在中国经营多年，第一家肯德基在1987年开业。
它目前在中国有3200家店面，平均每天新开一家，店铺的地点一般都在类似据沿海1000英里（1600公里）、只有120万人口的天水市。除了西藏，肯德基遍布中国每一个省份，涉及700多个城市。Su说：“和以前相比，我们更重视向二线、三线和四线城市渗透。”你几乎可以说，中国的肯德基已经和它的美国表兄分道扬镳了。“我们不能完全照搬美国的模式，现在中国的经营方式似乎更加合理，更加主流。”肯德基不仅仅提供鸡肉食物，中国的消费者喜欢每天泡在里面。这意味着要提供中国的传统早餐，比如粥和那些上校根本不认得的下午茶。
随着中国消费者越来越有经验，他们与品牌之间的关系也正在改变。百事进入中国的第一个十年的业务重心，仅仅是让许多人享用他们的美式汽水饮料、乐事薯片和桂格燕麦片。现在，这些产品必须要向更了解市场的消费者提供好的口味和品牌价值。他们的研发中心就是以这个目的成立的——迅速研制迎合当地口味的产品。Minges说：“中国的消费观念毫无疑问已经发生了变化。我第一次来这里的时候，所有人只钟情品牌，渴望树立自己的外国形象。”随着品牌越来越为人熟知，百事更加深入中国市场，业务重心从自身品牌价值转移到品味和使用感受等传统价值观上。
所以，这家公司必须研制符合中国传统文化口味的食品。百事目前销售的食品中，大约35％到40％都是本地口味。由于发现薯片在夏天的销量会下滑，他们开发出一系列中国人在这个季节喜欢的凉爽口味的食品，例如黄瓜口味薯片。中国地域广泛，湖南和四川的人比较喜欢辛辣的食物，公司就推出酸汤鱼薯片，味道模仿一道受欢迎的汤菜。为了迎合急性子的四川人，又开发出“麻辣”薯片。桂格燕麦片面临的挑战是用燕麦谷物取代传统的大米食物，它因此让产品可以和中国传统早餐粥混合食用，还加入红枣、枸杞和白木耳等消费者认为具有医疗效果的成分。
对类似诺华这样的企业来说，政府提供更优厚的医疗保障政策不啻为一个绝好的消息。它的基因研制部门可以生产出低成本的流感疫苗供贫穷地区的人民使用，越来越庞大的中产阶级则有机会服用他们以前无力承担的药物。上海一座世界顶级的研发中的绝大部分员工都是在美国接受教育的中国人，他们的薪资只有美国和欧洲同行的60％，这里研制的是在大多数人群中流行病的治疗方法。公司在上海把它的科研人员队伍扩大了三倍，达到600人，主要目的是研究“富贵病”的治疗方法。越来越多的中国人在从事案头工作，他们摄入更多的肉类和糖分，而且大量吸烟，整个国家的疾病类型也发生了转化。中国有9200万糖尿病患者，肝癌患者数量也相当惊人。诺华甚至在帮助中国的食品药品监督管理局改进药物的安全性。首席执行官Jimenez说：“除了疫苗和创新性药物之外，我们还与政府进行更多样化的合作。”
即使在建筑这样神秘的领域，中国的吸引力也难以拒绝。
德国人Ole Scheeren作为Rem Koolhaas公司的合作伙伴，帮助设计了炫目的D型中央电视台大楼。类似这样的建筑物让中国有机会给外部世界留下深刻的印象。Scheeren和其它参与中国项目的西方人不同，他在这之后辞去了Koolhaas公司的职位，留在中国开始了自己的产业，他目前在与中国的城市规划部门合作。当前的一项任务是在重庆设计一个大型多用途建筑群。Scheeren说这与迪拜和吉隆坡的任何一个多用途建筑物完全不一样，“我不是用西方人的视角，而是用中国人的视角来设计它。”如果Scheeren的方向是正确的，那么他永远不用愁没有业务，因为中国永远不会没有商业机会。
原文：
Liu Dandan, 27, left, and her husband Zhou Zhou, 32, an editor at Esquire magazine’s Chinese outpost, at home in Beijing, own a Mercedes-Benz and fill their closets with branded luxury items. They even dress their 6-month-old baby in designer duds.
The voices in the garden restaurant at the high-end Bulgari Hotel in Milan are what you'd expect: those of Italian businessmen and -women enjoying lunch and a cigarette on a pleasant afternoon. A few Americans mix in, relishing a European getaway--they're not strangers to Italy. But that would not necessarily be true of the table of Chinese visitors.
Or the busload of Chinese tourists gathering in front of the famed La Scala to hear a guide explain the history of opera. Or the others exploring the magnificent cathedral Il Duomo. Perhaps they arrived on one of the three weekly flights Air China now runs from Shanghai to Milan. And more can be expected, since Asian airlines jammed the books of Boeing and Airbus with nearly $20 billion of orders at the Paris Air Show in June.
China's tourists needn't leave the country for Western-style hospitality. In Sanya, along China's southern coast, Marriott recently opened a Ritz-Carlton resort. Both Marriott and Starwood are planting their myriad flags--from the Ritz-Carlton and St. Regis to the more modest Courtyard and Four Points--within China at a furious rate. At the same time, they are preparing to receive a wave of Chinese tourists, as many as 100 million per year by 2020, forecast to descend on popular destinations elsewhere around the world.
They will be tourists like Zhao Lin, a 34-year-old Google manager from Beijing, who says she loves Italy "because of the abundance of culture and history." And because of Prada, Gucci, Ferragamo and Fendi too. Zhao has made the haul of luxury goods that are requisite for rising Chinese women in the big cities. She and her husband, a technology manager, also own cars--hers is a Volkswagen Passat. To retailers, people like Zhao are becoming increasingly important, says Ellen Jin, head of consumer markets for the consultancy KPMG China. "There are more young Chinese people, including women, running their own business or getting to executive management levels, and they have more disposable income," she says. "They see luxury goods as their just deserts. They want to reward themselves."
The world's largest multinational companies, many of them headquartered in the U.S., have been betting on the rise of the Chinese consumer for many years now. But as the economies in the U.S. and Europe have struggled to revive in the past few years, firms in nearly every sector, from automobiles to consumer goods to telecommunications, have placed a larger share of their chips on the Middle Kingdom. It is simply a matter of numbers: China's economy grew 9.1% in the last quarter, compared with less than 2% in most of the West. While incomes in the West are stagnant, individual Chinese are expected to get a lot richer.
Consider the cosmic irony: wobbly Western economies are depending on the Chinese Communist Party to save their capitalist bacon. Likewise, the Chinese government's grand scheme to rebalance its economy hinges on Western-style materialism. By substantially boosting wages, it wants to create a new generation of spenders, including not just urban sophisticates like Zhao but a much broader swath of China's 1.3 billion people. "Shop till you drop" is probably not what Mao had in mind during the Long March. Nevertheless, wage and spending growth is one way to bridge the still vast gap between China's poorest workers and its advancing middle class--which will comprise 70% of China's population by 2020. If successful, the shift to consumer spending will take a good chunk of the weight of the global economy off the shoulders of American consumers and make China a gotta-be-there market for everything from video games to surgical tools to potato chips. "This generation, these strivers, they will be the saviors of the global economy," says Tim Minges, chairman of the greater-China region for PepsiCo, which is pouring billions into China in anticipation of that growth. "I really do think the Chinese middle class will be like the U.S. baby boomers."
The role reversal has another component: companies such as Pepsi, Volkswagen and Motorola, whose products were once Made in China, are increasingly developing products Made for China. So while Chinese fashionistas crave imported shoes from Italy's Ferragamo, that company's compatriot rival Geox is rapidly expanding by manufacturing and selling in China for the broader market. So is Sony, whose made-in-Japan products Chinese once longed for; now there's a line of China-made pink gadgets because many women like that color. HP recently opened a factory in Chongqing to build omputers not for export to the West but for sale to China's west. Starwood Hotels, which runs the St. Regis, Sheraton, W and other brands, moved its entire management team and board to Shanghai for a month; CEO Frits Van Paasschen wanted to be a bit closer to where future customers are. Starwood has 84 hotels in China--and 100 under development. A recent announcement by Gap says it all: the famous American jeans company is closing 20% of its American stores and tripling the number in China.
The investments companies are making are big, deep and long term. PepsiCo, maker of Pepsi, Lay's potato chips and Quaker Oats, is building a massive R&D center in Shanghai that will include pilot plants for each product area, so food scientists can quickly test new offerings created for Asia, including regional varieties, and get them to market within months. Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis is spending $1 billion on a six-building campus in Shanghai that will become a third global R&D center. This is not for outsourcing or a cheaper place to run drug trials. "It's going to be one of our primary research sites," says Novartis CEO Joe Jimenez; it will join centers in Cambridge, Mass., and Basel, Switzerland. That's because the Middle Kingdom is a growth market for important drugs. For example, a richer diet among a growing middle class means more diabetes--and more insulin sales.
The key question is, How big can the middle class grow? If there are two Americas, there are about four different Chinas, from millionaires to the desperately poor. In the coastal cities, the average annual income can be $5,000 or more, but in the rural areas, it drops to a few hundred dollars a year. China has a huge wealth divide--its Gini coefficient, the measure of how much inequality there is in a society, is one of the largest and fastestgrowing in the world. That divide has created increasing political risk in China. Many notable investors, like hedge-fund manager Jim Chanos, see China as one enormous bubble, ready to explode. According to him, all the speculative capital in the country makes it look like "Dubai times 1,000."
But if the Communist Party can successfully navigate the risky rebalancing road laid out in its new five-year plan, 500 million nonfarm workers will soon get what American workers haven't had in a decade: a raise. A really big one. The government is targeting minimum-wage increases of 13% to 15% over the next five years, essentially doubling the income of many citizens.
And the government expects the world's largest workforce to spend it. When economic reforms began in China in the early 1980s, consumer spending was more than 50% of GDP. By 2009, consumer spending had dropped to 36% of GDP even though wages were rising. That's because the government was doing even more spending itself, pouring cash into export industries and expanding the infrastructure to move people and products around a vast geography.
All that investment sowed the seeds for what Western companies hope will be the greatest generation of spenders ever known--the group of Chinese known as the Post-'80s Generation. Now in their 20s and 30s, they came of age as China shifted from a command economy to a more market-focused one, open to Western products and lifestyles. These younger Chinese have known nothing but nonstop growth, and they are much less likely to save than their more hardscrabble parents and grandparents, who typically put away 35% to 40% of what they earned. "They don't deposit that much money," says Victor Yuan, chairman of the Beijing-based Horizon Research Consultancy Group. "Their bank-savings rate is much lower, and it is much easier for them to spend money."
Can they really spend enough to bail out the global economy? U.S. consumer spending is about 70% of the nation's $15 trillion GDP, which is what helped get America into trouble. As for China, the numbers behind any big shift toward consumerism there are potentially world altering. China's 2011 GDP is roughly $6 trillion. If consumer spending goes up from the current 36% to reach 45% of GDP--the government's stated goal--$540 billion in spending would flow into consumer goods and services. That amount of spending would be enough to lift the U.S.'s GDP by 3.6%, which is a boom. And that doesn't even factor in China's economic growth. If the economy expands 9% annually, as it has in recent years, and half that growth goes toward consumer spending, you quickly get to $500 billion in additional spending in two years, using current numbers as a guide.
That's the most bullish scenario, to be sure. But if you are a global corporation, you definitely don't want to miss out on a piece of that potential stimulus package.
The Reverse Marco Polo
You can almost see the math floating above the head of Symon Bridle, chief operating officer of the Hong Kong--based luxury-hotel company New World Hospitality, as he ponders the possibilities for the travel industry in China: "It's a country that now has 1.6 million hotel beds. In the U.S. there are 4.8 million. Extrapolate that. There's a huge opportunity for hotels that's being driven by domestic growth." Boston Consulting Group estimates there are 1 million millionaire households in China. When those folks start hitting the road, Bridle wants to be ready, and so New World recently spent $230 million to acquire Rosewood Hotels & Resorts, to lure travelers like Liu Yining, 32, a senior manager at Groupon China. She spends at least two weeks a year on leisure travel in addition to taking business trips. "I like to go anywhere I haven't been," she notes. That list is getting shorter. She's been to most European countries, the U.S., South Korea and Southeast Asia and planned to visit Japan for the first time in October.
The exodus is already under way. There are an estimated 54 million outbound trips from China, a number that has quadrupled in the past 10 years. By the end of the decade, the figure could easily reach 100 million. Already, tourism officials in Paris are trying to puzzle out how to make the numbers work. "We estimate that by 2025, around 2 million Chinese will visit Paris," says Paul Roll, the city's head of tourism. That's more than triple the current number. That could be a problem in a city with 76,600 hotel rooms, even with top Asian chains like Raffles, Mandarin Oriental and Shangri-La bolstering their room counts in the City of Light. That's why city planners are creating more Paris by replicating famous Parisian neighborhoods in areas just north of the city.
Of course, the Chinese are traveling and spending more in their own country too, in part because of a gigantic infrastructure build-out; China will have constructed more highspeed-rail capacity by the end of the decade than is currently operating in the rest of the world, some 10,000 miles' (16,000 km) worth. The high-speed trains cut travel time from Wuhan, in central China, to Guangzhou, on the coast, from 14 hours to 3 hours. New airports are being built at a rapid clip, creating travel opportunities that once were unheard of. Tibet Airlines, a new company flying out of Lhasa, is operating the first of its three new Airbus A319s.
Much of the new infrastructure links the already rich coastal areas to fast-growing second-, third- and fourth-tier cities in the west--where domestic spending is often most fevered. (While Shanghai and Beijing yuppies can buy the latest luxury goods on trips to Paris, nouveaux riches in Chongqing can't wait to hit the newly built LVMH boutique at home.)
That creates all sorts of new opportunities, from retail to bus tours to ultra-luxury resorts catering to rich Chinese in entirely new places like Sanya, where Ritz-Carlton has set up shop. This all speaks to the fact that companies that want to sell to the Chinese have more competition--and they have to work a lot harder than they did in the past. Both Marriott and Starwood are rolling out programs in non-China hotels that provide a special service tier for Chinese travelers, including Chinese-language services and food and beverage offerings. Starwood boss van Paasschen allows that the entire company, as well as its franchisees, may ultimately have to bend more to the will of Chinese travelers.
The New Tastemakers
Sam Su, the CEO of Yum! Brands China, sees a country whose consumer demands are already changing his company. Yum!, the U.S.-based multinational that owns Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC, has been in China a long time; it opened its first KFC there in 1987.
It has 3,200 outlets in China, opening one a day in places like Tianshui, a city of 1.2 million that's 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from the coast. KFC is in every province in China except Tibet and has restaurants in more than 700 cities. "You can say we go in much deeper than even the second-, third- or fourth-tier cities," says Su. You can also say KFC has parted ways with its American cousins. "We can't just take the U.S. model and put it in China. We have a very good business model right now. It's more mainstream." There, KFC isn't a chicken joint; China's consumers want it to be an everyday place. That means, for instance, a breakfast of traditional Chinese foods like congee (a rice porridge) and a teatime menu the Colonel wouldn't recognize.
As China's consumers grow more experienced, their relationship with brands is also changing. PepsiCo's initial focus in its first decades in China was simply to get enough people to try its American soda, Lay's chips and Quaker Oats products. Now the products have to deliver taste and value to a more sophisticated customer--hence the R&D center that can quickly pivot with products geared to hyperlocal tastes. "No doubt there's been a significant shift in Chinese consumerism. When I first got here, it was all about the brand, the badge value of a brand. Being foreign was aspirational," says Minges. As brands became more familiar and Pepsi got deeper into the country, the focus moved away from the ego value of brands to more-traditional values around taste and usage.
And so the company has had to develop flavors that match China's food culture. About 35% to 40% of the flavors that Pepsi now uses in its Lay's brand of chips are local. Noticing that chip sales sagged in the summer, the company created a range of flavors to match cool foods the Chinese prefer in that season; a cucumber flavor, for instance, was added. Since China has a number of regions, like Hunan and Szechuan, where spicy food is preferred, the company added a hot-and-sour-fish chip, which mimics the flavor of a popular soup; for the hotheads in Szechuan, it came up with the ultimate "numb and spicy" chip. Meanwhile, Quaker Oats, faced with the task of introducing an oat cereal to a rice culture, instead devised a product to be blended with the congee that Chinese typically eat for breakfast. It includes red dates, wolfberries and white fungus-- ingredients that consumers consider to have medicinal properties.
For firms like Novartis, the government's promise to deliver better health care will be a boon for business. Its generics division can manufacture low-cost flu vaccines that poorer areas of the country need, the growing middle class will have access to medications that it didn't in the past, and a world-class R&D center in Shanghai--staffed largely by U.S.-educated Chinese scientists (who work for about 60% of what they would earn in Europe or the U.S.)--can develop therapies for diseases that are prevalent in the population. In Shanghai the company is tripling the number of its scientists, to 600, to deal with diseases that wealth brings. As the Chinese become more sedentary, eat more meat and sugar and continue to smoke in great numbers, their disease profile changes. There are more than 92 million Chinese diabetics, for instance; other diseases, like liver cancer, show up in greater numbers now too. The company is even helping China's food-and-drug administration improve drug safety. "Between vaccines and innovative pharmaceuticals, we are uniquely positioned to go to the government with a broad range of offers," says CEO Jimenez.
Even in something as esoteric as architecture, China's pull is too enormous to resist.
German-born Ole Scheeren helped design the snazzy, D-shaped CCTV building in Beijing as a partner in starchitect Rem Koolhaas' firm. Buildings like this have helped China make impressive statements to the outside world. But unlike most of the Westerners involved, Scheeren stayed. He quit Koolhaas' firm to start his own and is now working with Chinese city planners. One current commission is a massive mixed-use development in Chongqing that Scheeren says won't look like every other mixed-use project from Dubai to Kuala Lumpur. "I'm not going to design from the West for China," says Scheeren. "I'm going to design from China for China." If Scheeren gets it right, he will never run out of projects, because China won't.
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发表于 2011-12-10 16:53
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发表于 2011-12-10 18:56
