For China, we say this is excellent, since it shows that the country has moved up with flying colors from the Third World via the Second World into the First World with the efforts and diligence of its people. China is on the home stretch.

Still thirty years ago, when China had a population of 700 million, a China expert at the time asked the question “Can China feed itself amid this population explosion?” 

The new riches of a few living at the top of the population pyramid should not be criticized and are also no danger to the political system, even though the material wealth leads to a disconnect from the party-dependent system. A social economy holds the chance for the liberation of the people from material hardship and as a consequence leads to a free art of shaping one’s own life, where consumption is more or less the icing on the cake.

China currently experiences a renaissance of a wealthy caste, though one that living in the world of the 21st century, but also the development of a middle class, which is going to involve much greater prospects for the development of the consumer goods markets, than the high-end segment, which is still often referred to from the vocabulary of the past, as luxury segment.

For internationally active marketers of consumer goods, China is losing the character of an “export market”, through this development. And this development is going to be implemented quickly. Anyone wanting to secure a lasting spot for his products and brands in China is going to have to replace his current export strategy with an independent China marketing. The perception where the Chinese take on a “Western lifestyle” as way of life should not play a paramount role. Rather should the renaissance of the Chinese life-culture, relating to thousands of years of history and tradition, receive attention. It would be risky to assume that the Chinese would turn into Europeanized Asians. The fact that young, wealthy Chinese find it chic to stroll along Shanghai’s or Beijing’s boulevards with a Louis Vuitton bag, has to be seen more as a transition between consumer worlds which is subsequently going to be a Chinese consumer world, where also Chinese high-end and premium brands are going to play a role. The Chinese have been able to produce high-end products for a long time already, since they are the suppliers of international luxury brands of the “Old World”. And when it comes to the handling of marketing, we can expect a lot from the Chinese, since they were already very creative merchants, when the term marketing stood, without grand scientific explanations, quite simply for successful selling.

The international automotive industry has pointed out the path into the Chinese market and the development of established marketing positions.

The immaterial accumulation of value of future Chinese brands is also going to be co-determined by the conquest of the markets outside of China. In other words, to the same degree as international brands are establishing themselves on the Chinese market, Chinese brands are going to internationalize. Some of them are already outside the portals of Europe. And while the non-Chinese are happy that the Chinese are currently enjoying with great zest and zeal the consumption pyramid, the rest of the world can look forward to the interesting things China is about to offer to the world. After all, they have delivered precious silk, marvelous porcelain and last but not least gun powder, while our ancestors still lived mainly from the domestic hunt.

Conquering new worlds was an affair of menacing wars just a few hundred years ago, with lots of bloodshed. Nowadays all we need are elaborate, creative market strategies. I don’t think, anyone would like to say now “things were better in the olden days”