IKEA Sleepover in Beijing

November 1, 2010

Zach Honig, a former editor at PC Magazine, writes a Blog called Tech, Travel and Tuna.

While in Beijing, Honig remembered a piece he read in the LA Times about Beijing residents loving IKEA but not for shopping. Curious, he visited the IKEA in Beijing and saw how popular IKEA is in a snoozy sort of way.

In fact, I sympathize with the Chinese snoozers.  Have you ever slept on a “hard” Chinese bed?


Love after the first bite.

Honig also mentioned that he ran into China’s Net Nanny since he couldn’t access his WordPress Blog, Twitter or Facebook, which includes anarchists scheming to bring down orderly societies. There is some truth to that.

Meanwhile, the IKEA snoozers have not slowed expansion plans in the Middle Kingdom since IKEA plans to double the number of stores in China to 18 by 2015.

The current eight IKEA stores in China are predicted to draw 27.3 million visitors (or should I saw snoozers) this year. IKEA also owns a 49% share of Inter Ikea Centre Group that builds shopping centers and is planning to spend about 1.5 billion to build more malls in China.  Source: Financial Post 


Bargains at IKEA Shanghai store

 The reason for IKEA’s investment in China is due to retail sales that rose 18% the first eight months of 2010, compared to a sluggish annual increase of 2.5% for retail sales in the US.

Another factor is the Chinese save then pay cash for most of what they buy. It is estimated that Chinese households have accumulated $16.5 trillion (valued in US dollars) in assets.

Don’t forget to drop by Zach Honig’s Blog and see his photos of snoozing IKEA fans in Beijing. The link is at the top of this post.

Discover more about Doing Business in China

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

4 Comments | business, capitalism, China, economy | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Opposites Attract

November 1, 2010

If the old saying that opposites attract is true, China and the US are perfect for each other.

The Huffington Post’s Robert Lenzner writes that China Needs to Hit the Brakes; US Needs to Step on the Gas.

Lenzner explains that China’s economic goals are to avoid what happened in the US when subprime mortgages burst the real estate bubble and almost brought down the West’s house of cards.

To succeed, China is attempting to slow its economic growth and smother inflation.

However, in the US, the opposite it happening as the US wants to add to the national debt to avoid deflation and stimulate the economy at the same time.

Lenzner points out why China has everything to lose if this doesn’t work. China’s current 12th five-year economic plan is concentrating on the rural poor, and it is about time.

In fact, smaller cities are being built for some of the rural poor while extending electricity to remote villages across China.

At the same time, China is expanding the rail system and building more roads to reach people that haven’t been touched by China’s economic progress.

To avoid unrest, China’s future depends on improving the lifestyles of about 700 million rural Chinese.

Learn more at Volting all of China into the 21st Century

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

Leave a Comment » | America, China, economy, environment, health care | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

GM Volt in China Soon

October 31, 2010

Bertel Schmitt writes in The Truth about Cars that GM will introduce the battery powered VOLT in China in the second half of 2011.

According to the Schmitt, GM has already conceded the Volt will be a failure in China because Chinese consumers are buying mostly gasoline and diesel powered cars and trucks.

There is one advantage China has over America and most of the world. The centeral government may decide to require taxis then the rest of China’s car owners to buy electric or hybrid and set a deadline.

Imagine how that would succeed in the US. In fact, China is doing something the US is having trouble getting started.

China is building wind farms off its coasts and replacing out-of-date coal burning power plants with modern, cleaner coal powered generating plants.

In fact, China has a long way to go to clean up its environment but it is moving in that direction.

Meanwhile, in the US, the top ten selling cars for 2010 are all gasoline powered as they are in China. Source: Good Car Bad Car

Even with polluted air, gasoline power remains king. I drive a hybrid and walk whenever possible. However, many people who live in the same town drive huge, gas guzzling SUVs.

Statistics tell us that the Chinese middle-class consumer isn’t that different from similar people in the US.

Learn more from Cornering the Plug-In Hybrid all Electric Car

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

Leave a Comment » | America, business, China, economy | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Global Slave to the US Dollar

October 29, 2010

I read an interesting post at Business Insider by Charles Hugh Smith – Here’s Why China loses Whether The Dollar Strengthens or Weakens.

Smith’s opinion is that China cannot win the currency war with the US because the yuan’s value is linked to the dollar and China is trapped.

He says that if the US dollar loses value, China will pay more for the imported commodities needed to fuel its economy—the lower the dollar sinks, the more commodities will cost.

If the dollar strengthens, goods manufactured in China for export will cost more to sell.

If Smith is right, this explains why China wants to replace the dollar with a basket of currencies to compute the value of the yuan for global trade.

This also explains why other nations (such as the BRIC), a few oil rich Middle Eastern kingdoms and several European nations want the same thing China wants.

The world appears to be exhausted by America’s Wild West debt ridden economy and they want to dismount from the dollar and replace that old nag with a herd.

I wonder what Smith thinks would happen if the dollar were replaced as the globe’s master currency.

Learn more about the Sinking Dollar

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

Leave a Comment » | America, China, economy, politics | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The Have or Have Nots at the G-20 in South Korea

October 28, 2010

The world appears to be divided between nations that have spent too much and those that save.

In China, people that hold onto money are called “Iron Roosters”. In the US, we call people who save stingy or skin flints or other insulting terms. The average saving rate among Chinese is about 40%, while the average family in the US carries several thousand dollars in credit card debt.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the US is among the ‘Have Nots’. In G-20 Deal to Curb China is Weakened, Evan Ramstad and Bob Davis said that “China, Japan and Germany all have surpluses; the U.S. has a deficit.”

However, the US is not alone. “Australia, Canada, Britain and France, all of which have current-account deficits, lined up with the US” to pressure China to let the value of the yuan rise.

The US and other Western nations that have overspent need to export more products to other countries and import less.  For this to happen, the US dollar must be worth less than the Chinese yuan to pressure U.S. consumers to stop buying products made in China when prices for those products become higher than what is manufactured in America.

This means that countries with money in the bank want to rely less on exports for growth and more on homegrown demand instead of buying more products from the debt-ridden nations.

Germany’s current account surplus is about 6%, Japan’s 3% and China is at 4.7%. The U.S. is running a 3.2% deficit, which should be no surprise.

It appears that China won this round and will not loosen controls on the value of the yuan yet.  The US went into the G-20 summit in South Korea wanting to punish China for US consumer appetites to buy cheap foreign made goods.

Instead, little was accomplished.

It’s all about the national interest of each nation, and China and America have opposing interests.

If America wins, China loses.

In fact, whoever, wins this global currency war will be the stronger for it. The question is, Will the Iron Rooster win or the Buy Now Pay Later nation?

See Democracy’s Economic Roller Coaster

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

Leave a Comment » | America, China, cultural differences, economy | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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