A model poses in front of a car produced by Shanghai GM at an auto show in Shanghai. Am Xin / China Daily

By Tian Ying and Stephanie Wong (China Daily) – BEIJING – After 8.6 million Chinese bought their first cars last year, General Motors Co, Volkswagen AG and Ford Motor Co are positioning themselves to compete for return customers.

The number of car models in China’s showrooms quadrupled in the past six years, forcing companies to fight for attention by unveiling vehicles at the Imperial Ancestral Temple in Beijing and the Great Wall outside the capital – and by paying Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps millions of dollars.

“It is clear that brands are still in the forming process,” said Joerg Mull, chief financial officer for Volkswagen AG’s China unit. “One of the keys for success in China in the long run is brand building and brand establishment.”

About 83 percent of Chinese buyers last year purchased their first vehicle, said the State Information Center, a research arm of the government’s National Development and Reform Commission.

At stake for China’s more than 130 carmakers is winning loyal customers in world’s largest automobile market.

Sales in the country surged 46 percent to 13.6 million last year, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. In the US, sales slumped 21 percent to 10.4 million, the fewest since 1982, according to Autodata Corp.

This year, sales in China may rise more than 10 percent to about 15 million vehicles, Chang Xiaocun, head of the Ministry of Commerce’s market construction department, said. Customers choose from 221 models, more than double the total of 2008 and more than quadruple that of 2004, the manufacturers association said.

“You’ve got to create the right image, you’ve got to market it aggressively,” General Motors’ China President Kevin Wale said after the company and Chinese partner SAIC Motor Corp launched their Buick Excelle XT in Shanghai.

Car buyers in China tend to be younger than those in the US, Wale said, so the Internet is a key part of an automaker’s marketing strategy. The average Buick customer in China is 28, married and a college graduate. His US counterpart is 66 and doesn’t have a degree, General Motors China said.

– read more at ChinaDaily.com…

The JW Marriott hotel, Shanghai

With the forthcoming Shanghai World Expo, which will be held from May 1 to October 31, hotel rates in the city have jumped about 20 percent according to a People’s Daily online report Wednesday.

A report by the China Economic Weekly says the room rates of five-star hotels like the Shangri-la, Grant Hyatt and Hilton during the Shanghai Expo is about 1,500 yuan ($219.74) to 1,800 yuan, an increase of more than 20 percent compared with the end of 2009. The demand for rooms this year was greater than that at the end of 2009.

Statistics from Ctrip.com, a leading online travel service company in China say that the demand for rooms from economy hotels was more than four times than that at the end of last year and the prices also increased at different levels.

Meanwhile, the person in charge of rooms at the five-star JW Marriott Hotel in Shanghai said that prices may grow further as the expo draws nearer.

Currently, Shanghai has 550,000 beds, or 340,000 rooms; this is enough accommodation during normal periods, but not enough during the holidays, according to Han Zheng, mayor of Shanghai.

The upcoming World Expo is expected to bring in an estimated 70 million visitors and 58.5 million may from the other provinces or overseas, with the People’s Daily online report estimating an additional 400,000 beds are needed a day on average.

– read more at Global Times…

A row of Carrefour shopping trolleys at the entrance to a Beijing outlet of the French retailer. (XU YIN / CHINA FOTO PRESS)

Retailer embarks on strategic expansion on the back of high sales

By Yu Tianyu (China Daily) – It’s 1 am one day during this year’s Spring Festival and hundreds of consumers are on a shopping spree, waiting in long queues, trolleys piled high with goods, at Carrefour’s Tiantongyuan outlet in the Changping district of northern Beijing.

The night time craze was symbolic of the retail giant’s strong performance in China. Claudio Gouveia, vice-president of Carrefour China and also general manager of the North Territory of Carrefour China, said the country has become one of the most significant and also fastest-growing markets for the retailer.

Carrefour last year pulled out of Russia and southern Italy amid the economic meltdown following decisions to quit Japanese, South Korean and Mexican markets in 2005 and 2006, because of “unsmooth operations”. It sold its stores to local enterprises.

However, the retailer maintained steady expansion in China. Gouveia said that Carrefour opened 22 new stores in 2009, boosting the total number of outlets to 157 across the country. It plans to open 20 to 25 new outlets this year.

He added that the company was satisfied and very optimistic about its business in China because the country’s household consumption rates have been high.

In the past year, Carrefour benefited a lot from the stimulus measures, introduced by the Chinese government. For example, the authorities subsidized energy-saving household appliances in an effort to encourage their purchase.

Gouveia said Carrefour had a very clear strategic plan for the Chinese market and would be focusing on constructing hypermarkets with an average size from 6,000 sq m to 11,000 sq m.

The company was making great efforts to balance its presence in big cities and also second and third tier cities. It has been operating its retail business in 45 cities across China.

“Currently, Carrefour has a good presence in big cities while more new stores will be in second and third tier cities,” said Gouveia.

The French company will be the first international retailer to enter the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, where it plans to build a new outlet in 2011.

The retailer plans to develop its China-based outlets alongside the construction of local infrastructure and arrival of new businesses. “For instance, there will be a new airport in the Daxing district of Beijing’s southern suburb and there may be a new outlet nearby. I believe we have many opportunities in this area,” said Gouveia.

In response to its rival Wal-Mart, which is planning to build about 50 new stores each year, adding to its current total of 160 outlets, Gouveia said the focus of Carrefour was to keep a good balance between the rhythm of expansion and the quality of the stores.

– read more at ChinaDaily.com…

Forward looking: Yoshiharu Fukuhara makes a point during the recent interview he gave The Japan Times at the head office of Shiseido in Tokyo's central Ginza district. The world-famous cosmetics and toiletries company was founded by his grandfather in 1872, and Fukuhara now serves as its Honorary Chairman, while also running the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. YOSHIAKI MIURA PHOTO

Yoshiharu Fukuhara not only headed the iconic company his grandfather started, but there’s his orchids and cameras — and a museum to run, too…

By EDAN CORKILL, Staff writer, The Japan Times – In July 1942, seven months after the attack on Pearl Harbor that started the Pacific War, Tokyo hosted one of the most ambitious exhibitions of art the world had ever seen. “Leonardo da Vinci,” staged in an exhibition hall in the central district of Ueno, featured 600 exhibits by and related to the Italian master whose life, from 1452 to 1519, and works in both the arts and sciences, place him at the very pinnacle of the European Renaissance.

Among the many thousands of visitors who crammed in for some wartime distraction was an 11-year-old boy named Yoshiharu Fukuhara. Gazing at da Vinci’s paintings, drawings and designs for such machines as helicopters and water pumps, the young Fukuhara was astonished that a single person could embody such diverse interests and expertise.

It’s not surprising that da Vinci struck a chord with Fukuhara. His own family boasted several modern-day Renaissance men. The pattern for their lives was to combine artistic activities with careers at the business that Fukuhara’s grandfather, Arinobu, had founded in 1872: the cosmetics and toiletries-maker Shiseido. As Fukuhara explained recently to The Japan Times, it was a pattern he followed himself.

By the time Fukuhara was born, in 1931, Shiseido — whose name derives from a passage in the “I Ching” calling for “the virtues of the Earth” to be praised — had established a thousands-strong network of stores throughout Japan, where it profitably sold its toothpaste, perfumes, facial powders, vanishing creams and soaps.

The company was then under the leadership of Fukuhara’s uncle, Shinzo, a multitalented man who had not only steered the business through expansion and incorporation, in 1927, but had also established himself as one of Japan’s leading art photographers. In 1919, he was also responsible for creating what is now Japan’s oldest existing art gallery, the Shiseido Gallery in Tokyo.

Fukuhara’s father, Nobuyoshi, also shared his brother Shinzo’s twin interests of business and photography. When he wasn’t keeping tabs on the Shiseido books as the firm’s accountant, he was snapping flowers in his carefully kept garden.

The young Fukuhara followed his forebears into Shiseido in 1953 — a move he puts down to a series of coincidences rather than familial grooming. Nevertheless, his commitment to the company, and the respect he was accorded within it, led to him being named the president of its then-new U.S. subsidiary, Shiseido Cosmetics America, in 1966. Just over two decades later, in 1987, he took over the presidency of the entire operation.

Fukuhara oversaw massive expansion of the Japanese brand, playing a direct role in its metamorphosis into an international, or, as he says, a “stateless” icon. Shiseido now has annual net sales of over ¥690 billion, with more than a third coming from abroad. Top products such as its Tsubaki shampoos and the Shiseido makeup line have seen it become a household name not just in Japan but in Asia and elsewhere around the world.

Nevertheless, Fukuhara never forgot the lesson he learned from da Vinci and his own family members, and the horizons of his interests have always extended far beyond the Shiseido domain. His two greatest passions are orchid cultivation and photography, both of which he has pursued since his student days.

But he has done more than that. For the last two decades, in particular, Fukuhara, now 78, has become a self-made champion of the arts, lobbying high-flyers in the public and private sectors to improve their support for the arts. – read more at The Japan Times Online…

Gary Wang, founder and CEO of Tudou.com, describes himself as a "world citizen", having studied in the United States and France. PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY

By Wang Xing (China Daily) – Gary Wang comes across as more like a professional game player than his major role as the founder and chief executive of Tudou.com, one of China’s largest online video websites.

Even when his company endured a government-led online crackdown on copyrighted video content last year and had to face a group of new giant competitors such as CCTV and Baidu, the 36-year-old chief executive still maintained his calm and confidence rather than submitting to worry or panic, something many had expected.

Wang dropped out from China’s rigid education system in the 1990s, but later managed to get his bachelor, master and MBA degrees at the world’s best educational institutions. He enjoys hiking and reading and describes himself as a “world citizen”. He is also the author of a popular Chinese fiction book that some believe to have described his early days of studying in the United States and France.

As a man who comfortably mixes his work and free time, Wang is happy dealing with business emails while camping during a hike and allows flexible working hour for his employees. As an interviewee he is relaxed to the point of resting his legs on the office table while excitably discussing his favorite books.

Surprisingly, these characteristics, regarded by some as perhaps conceited and arrogant, helped Wang win approval from many investors, one of whom once said he felt “assured” by Wang’s attitude towards work and life.

“Doing business is like playing games: You grow up by passing each level and fight with bigger bosses each time,” Wang said, sitting in his office in Beijing soon after CCTV and Baidu announced they were establishing their own video websites. “I believe we can survive and thrive.” – read more at ChinaDaily.com…

Reading up on feng shui could improve your financial skills. (CFP)

By Li Tao (China Daily) – HONG KONG: While financial analysts read all sorts of indexes to form a picture of the economy, feng shui experts in Hong Kong are applying their art to a similar end.

Peter So, a popular local feng shui master, is trying to convince undecided investors not to purchase property in Hong Kong until 2015.

So said past experience showed the city’s property prices rising continuously for five years and then falling over the next six. He said prices peaked in 2009, the final year of the last cycle, and were now due to tumble.

“The theory has never been wrong in the past,” said So. “Apartment prices fell in value almost 50 percent between 1986 and 1991 and then rebounded to another high in 1997. They slumped again in 2003 because of the breakout of SARS, and it is acknowledged that property prices have been way up over the past few years, even though the city’s economy was damaged severely by the global financial crisis.”

So said the next bottoming of the property market would occur in 2015 and he had now started saving money ahead of the eventuality.

As to stocks, So eschewed predicting whether it would be a lucrative market or not this year, but advised investors to differentiate odd years from even ones when buying, a tactic he said was effective eight times of 10.

“Though the stock market is volatile, rough fluctuations still can be determined. Generally, the market rises high initially but ends low in odd years. The trend reverses in even years. This is an even year, so investors should consider buying stocks in May or June, when the market will be at the year’s bottom,” said So.

However, just like the mercurial markets, predictions from different feng shui masters vary, sometimes considerably.

Edwin Ma, another local feng shui master, disagrees with So about the city’s property market.

“If I am to make a suggestion to my clients, I will definitely advise them to pour money into the property market this year,” Ma said.

Ma anticipates a flat year in housing prices, but he said it was still worth investing since “in comparison with stocks, property prices are de facto guaranteed to make a fortune, while most stocks were not”.

He added: “The stock market seemed exuberant last year, but it has become the playground only for rich people because profitable stocks were no longer affordable to most ordinary investors.” – read more at ChinaDaily.com…

Wuxi is attempting a transformation from a manufacturing hub to a high-tech city.

By Chen Limin (China Daily) – Wuxi, one of China’s top 10 cities as ranked by GDP in 2009, hopes to transform from a manufacturing hub to a hi-tech city by expanding cooperation with domestic and overseas businesses.

As a major city in the Yangtze River Delta, Wuxi, Jiangsu province, landed 12 new projects last month including those in electronic information, biopharmaceutics, new energy and materials and outsourcing, totaling 715.7 million yuan.

Wuxi’s development district has already inked an agreement with consumer electronics maker Beijing Huaqi Information Digital Technology Co Ltd, to invest 30 million yuan in a hi-tech manufacturing base.

Beijing Huaqi, maker of Aigo branded electronics, plans to locate its MP6 wireless technology unit in Wuxi.

“Wuxi is one of China’s bases for the ‘Internet of Things’ industry. This is one of the major reasons we chose to locate here,” said Frank Zhou, general manager of Beijing Huaqi’s MP6 business unit.

The “Internet of Things” is a network of web-enabled objects linked together with online services that interact with these objects. Underlying the Internet of Things are technologies such as radio frequency identification (RFID), sensors and smart phones.

The Internet fridge is probably the most often-quoted example of what the Internet of Things will enable.

Zhou said Beijing Huaqi hopes to leverage Internet of Things technologies in association with its closely related MP6 business.

Beijing Huaqi expects its MP6 business – focused on the firm’s Internet music player – to generate revenue of 2 billion yuan over the next three years. Zhou said the company is eying both Hong Kong and New York as possible future locations for an initial public offering.

Just last year, Wuxi formed new alliances with telecom carriers China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, to cooperate in research and development, project incubation and other commercial applications. – read more at ChinaDaily.com…

Chinese Luxury Shoppers Outspend Japanese 2-To-1 At South Korean Malls: Wealthy Chinese Travelers In Korea Favor Cosmetics, Children’s Supplies, Ginseng And Healthcare Products, Luxury Watches – This week, more news about free-spending mainland Chinese tourists came out of South Korea. As more Chinese tourists have headed outward, most of them staying relatively close to home, the Korean media has consistently framed news about tourist behavior as a sort of rivalry between China and Japan — a phenomenon Jing Daily discussed last fall. (’Tourist Profile: Japanese vs. Chinese‘) According to Tencent (via Yonhap), after a year in which the number (and profligacy) of Chinese tourists increased at Korean luxury malls, shoppers from mainland China now account for twice as many sales per capita as Japanese tourists.

Hummer price soars in Shanghai: Although Tengzhong failed in buying Hummer, the Hummer dealers are overjoyed, taking the opportunity to raise the price. On February 25, the reporter learned from Hummer dealers in Shanghai that after hearing the acquisition of Hummer failed, dealers immediately raised the price of Hummer, among which Hummer H3X produced in 2009 rose by 20,000 yuan, and Hummer H2 is planning to rise by 100,000 yuan. (Via Business – People’s Daily Online.)

Calvin Klein To Focus On Chinese Market In 2010: American fashion brand Calvin Klein has announced plans to open 60 new chain stores in Asia in 2010, mainly targeting its expansion in the Chinese market.
According to reports from Singapore’s Channel News Asia, Calvin Klein’s current revenues from the Asian areas account for 15% of its income worldwide. (Via ChinaRetailNews.com.)

Toyota chief’s testimony closely watched in Japan: Japan appeared largely relieved Thursday that much-anticipated testimony by Toyota’s chief executive before U.S. lawmakers was finally over, though analysts said the company’s recall woes are no closer to being solved. Toyota Motor Corp. President Akio Toyoda’s appearance before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, was closely watched in Japan, where the company his grandfather founded is a national icon. It was the top item on local morning news programs. At least one channel briefly broadcast his testimony live, where it took place Wednesday in Washington. (AP) (Via News On Japan.)

Singapore Witnesses Record Number of Travelers in January: January of 2010 managed to see the highest ever recorded number of travels to Singapore for the month. Figures shared by the Singapore Tourism Board have revealed that as many as 908,000 travelers visited Singapore over the past month, which is a hike of nearly 17.5% compared to January of 2009. The top 5 markets for the month which generated visitors for Singapore were Indonesia with 173,000 visitors, China with 99,000 travelers, Australia with 90,000 travelers, 68,000 came in from Malaysia and 57,000 travelers were from India. (Via TopNews Singapore.)

The rise and rise of the 'rich class' A woman takes a look at a model of a property development in Haikou, Hainan province yesterday. Properties on the island province have become hot targets for the newly-rich Chinese. (China Daily)

Chen is one of the China’s rapidly expanding “rich class”. He has several properties in Beijing, including a grand courtyard house he uses solely to entertain friends and business associates.

The large siheyuan, a traditional house found in the capital’s sprawling hutongs, cost Chen 12 million yuan ($1.75 million), suggesting he is far removed from those who sweat and struggle for years to afford small, humble homes.

China has seen a massive expansion in the rich class in the past five years, according to analysts.

“The country’s fortune is increasing at a skyrocketing speed and is converging toward the rich class,” Rupert Hoogewerf, founder of the Hurun Rich List, told Outlook Weekly.

“The number of people with a personal wealth of more than 1 billion yuan has rapidly risen since 2004. Then, there were 100. In 2009, we discovered that 1,000 people are now in the club.”

A spokesman for the Forbes China Rich List also said the threshold for being among the 400 richest people on the Chinese mainland had risen from 1.22 billion yuan in 2008 to 2.05 billion yuan last year.

The growth in Chinese millionaires alone has attracted interest for multinational companies, including Deutsche Bank AG, which is planning to target more services to China’s rich class, reported the German press.

According to other experts, the rich class is a group with only one thing on their mind: property.

A recent poll of wealthy people in Beijing and Shanghai by the Beijing Youth Daily found most owned at least three properties, while many subscribe to the traditional belief that, if you have money, you should invest in property. – read more at ChinaDaily.com…

Hong Kong clothing retailers threaten to quit Taiwan over tax issue: Taipei – Four Hong Kong clothing retailers are threatening to quit Taiwan over a tax dispute with Taiwan authorities, a press report said Monday. The four Hong Kong retailers – Hang Ten, Giordano, Bossini and BaLeNo – made the threat in a petition to President Ma Ying-jeou, demanding that their names be cleared, or they might withdraw from Taiwan, the United Daily News quoted Lai Shih-pao as saying. (Via China News.)

Hainan to curb ‘whopping housing price’: As of the phenomena that the ‘whopping prices’ for living in hotels in Hainan Province ‘bluff off’ the tourists during the Spring Festival, the government would takes efforts to regulate the market, Wu Kunxiong, deputy director general of the tourism department of Hainan Province said Saturday. The government will strictly crack down on the house speculators and formulate tourism standards to cope with the high prices, according to Wu. (Via Business – People’s Daily Online.)

Revenue From Beijing’s Five-star Hotels Beijing Down 16.9% In 2009: According to data provided by Bureau of Statistics of Beijing, the revenue of star-grade hotels in the city decreased by 9.7% year-on-year in 2009. During the entire year of 2009, star hotels in Beijing made total revenues of CNY21.94 billion, including CNY9.98 billion from guest rooms. (Via ChinaRetailNews.com.)

APEC seeking pathways to Asia-Pacific free trade area: Senior officials from Pacific Rim economies accelerated their efforts Monday to seek ”possible pathways” to a region-wide free trade zone, but fell short of reaching any consensus except to continue necessary work. After a meeting in Hiroshima, where Japan formally took up its chairmanship of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum for 2010, a Japanese official said, ”We already have very sensible analytical studies but also have lots of issues that require further discussions.” (Via Kyodo News (Business).)

Asia leads global march away from easy credit: (HONG KONG) The US Federal Reserve has just kick- started its cautious exit from unprecedented emergency lending measures – but the process has been going on for months in the Asia-Pacific region, underscoring the two-speed path of the global recovery. (Via Business Times Online – All The Headlines.)