China Consumes

A shot of China Consumes Association's TV show "Consume Times"

If you haven't been reading the financial press for the last decade or so, China's economy is a mega-beast poised to gobble down, process and spit back out a tsunami of consumer and industrial goods like the world has never seen. I can vouch for their appetite to shop. Those with the means have what seems like an undending supply of stores in which to blow time and money. Now and again, due to equipment wearing out, I've had to dive in myself.

Before some recent hiking, I needed to find a pair of trailworthy shoes. In the country that supplies the bulk of the world's footwear, you'd think finding shoes wouldn't be a problem. Not so. Many of you have heard such tales before but I was astounded to find out how difficult it is to get shoes big enough for Caucasian feet. I wasn't in a huge hurry but, over the course of a couple weeks, I must have asked at well over a hundred stores. The best any of them could come up with were high-top basketball shoes.








A world-class star for some world-class consumers












Old Yao has had quite an impact here but it didn't do me any good. Luckily I found a store in Kunming selling top-of-the-line hiking shoes at a third the cost I'd have paid at home. Had my feet been two sizes smaller, I'd have had an infinite supply. Also in Kunming, we went to what only can be described as malls - of just athletic shoes. All the big cities have shopping like this. Multi-storey buildings specializing in shoes or women's accessories or whatever. My sister would love it here.

The Chinese middle class is estimated to be around 300 million people strong currently and growing fast. The buying power of each of those is something like one fourth to one third of that of a typical American consumer. The thing that frightens me most is how the whole tendency to consume is accelerating. We've only spent a couple months here but you can get an idea of the growth continuum from snapshots by visiting different places.

China still has plenty of poverty. We've spent a lot of time in villages and the people there buy nothing more than the absolute essentials - things like farm tools, rice, sandals, etc. In bigger towns you start to see cell phone stores and motor cycle dealers. The big cities are as I described above - they have it all and all you want of it. Keep in mind, we've only been visiting the southwestern hinterlands of the country. The real wealth and buying power is concentrated in the east. What I've heard about those areas sounds like a consumerist's shangri-la. All I can say, is look out Planet Earth.