Profile of China's Markets: Complete Market Data on Spending Patterns of 1.1 Billion Consumers in China (review)

Reviews 185 Hessler Lee, compiler. Profile ofChina's Markets: Complete MarketData on Spending Patterns of1.1 Billion Consumers in China. Vancouver: Hercules Publishing House, 1994. 256 pp. Paperback $45.50, isbn 1-896299-00-8. The 1980s opened with the entrepreneur's ultimate dream: an unlimited market of one billion consumers. Much has been written about China's potential as a market for foreign noncapital goods, but the reality of the 1980s was an economy oflittle purchasing power at the individual level. With an average annual per capita income measured in hundreds of dollars, a national economic policy based on import substitution and export orientation, and numerous tariff and nontariff barriers, solicitous foreign businesspeople hoping to exploit the China market were served instead with a sobering reality check. Times have changed. Guangdong Province may be the world's largest importer ofluxury German automobiles. Farmers in discordant fashions cruise stylish Beijing department stores wielding huge roles oflarge-denomination renminbi bills. Most large cities have at least one, if not several, American fast-food franchises that often seat far more customers than their sister franchises in the United States (and still do a brisk business). Whether or not several hundred million Chinese will ever purchase an American toothbrush, you can certainly buy Oral-B 40s in most large cities. Motivated more by the prerequisites ofjoining the World Trade Organization than by spontaneous volition, China has truly begun to liberalize its domestic market, and the evidence of this trend is both statistical and visual. The modern, information-dependent company sinks or swims on the availability and interpretation ofmarket data. Since the mid-1980s, China has become increasingly adept and sophisticated in the collection ofdemographic and economic data. Much ofthis is available to the public, domestic and foreign, through omnibus statistical yearbooks. Several ofthese national and provincial yearbooks, as well as the statistical output from other government agencies and research institutes , provide the information that is impressively organized in this book. Profile ofChina's Markets is divided into three major parts: National Urban Market Data, Market Data ofMajor Cities, and Market Data ofProvincial Cities and Towns. Part 1 is further divided into a section on general information (such as population, average number ofpersons per household, employment by major sectors, vital statistics, and literacy rates, among other things), and a section profiling urban markets (including data on employment, household income and© 1996 by University spending patterns, and the average cost ofmany foodstuffs, tobacco, clothing, duofHawai 'i Pressrable goods, and so on). Part 2 provides similar data on thirty-three of China's largest cities. This list includes the three provincial-level cities ofBeijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai; twenty-five provincial capitals; and six other comprehensive indus- i86 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 1996 trial cities. Part 3 repeats many ofthe same data categories by province, but is subdivided into general information, aggregate data for urban sites classified as cities, and aggregate data for urban sites classified as towns. Altogether, Part 1 provides extensive numbers for forty-one statistical categories, Part 2 for twentythree categories, and Part 3 for thirty-eight categories. Several ofthe categories in Part 3 provide a column ofnational averages for a quick and useful comparison. The data used in these tables appear to be from the mid-1980s; if so, this is a near fatal flaw. The compiler provides a far-too-inadequate two-page introduction (die only prose in the book), where the only information sources are given as "China's State Statistical Bureau, Public Security Ministry, Social Economic Survey Office, various population research institutes, and other government ministries , commissions, and agencies." A bibliography giving the exact sources and years ofpublication would have confirmed the timeliness, and therefore the legitimacy , of die data. Even if the data are somewhat dated, die average purchasing power of urban residents has unquestionably increased since China's reform experiments began in the early 1980s; Profile ofChina's Markets at least gives us a geographic pattern of spending for some point in time. As a genuine middle class emerges, however, so, too, does the disparity between the relatively few haves and the far greater number ofhave-nots. This is an important distinction that could...