China Skinny, the weekly newsletter, deserves to be honored for its five years of journalist service. It has documented extraordinary changes in Chinese society and made us all wiser for it. The changes:
Digital China – China may have been late to the digital game, but it has gone from zero to sixty in the yearly equivalent of 4 seconds. Today digital advertising leads ad spending in all other channels while online sales are double that of China’s top 100 bricks and mortar retailers.
Experiences – Over the last five years Chinese people have broaden their lives to include creature comfort experiences for the first time in generations. Locally they are drinking at Starbucks, gaming and going to movies with abandon. And not so locally, they are travelling to experience the wider world. Overseas tourism has doubled in the last five years.
Local Products – Illustrative of quickly changing buying patterns is the smartphone market. Five years ago almost three quarters of all smartphones sold in China carried foreign brand names. Today over three quarters are local brands. To compete, Chinese products were forced to come up to international standards of quality. That pattern has been replicated in many sectors.
Health Consciousness – Extreme pollution that effected air, water and soil exacerbated by food scandals and a sedentary lifestyle all converged to force a change in government regulations and consumer behaviors. The government has implemented vast changes in carbon fuel use and the population has generated five million new gym memberships each year over the period.
Up-scaling – Five years ago a combination of pent-up demand and a lack of sophistication meant that Chinese consumers bought lots of cheap stuff to accumulate things they hadn’t had while they were simultaneously susceptible to glitzy foreign bobbles. Today they are trading up to higher quality products and they aren’t as tempted by shiny objects.
Chinese consumers have earned a valued place in the world of commerce, particularly e-commerce. Source: China Skinny