Market Information

BEIJING Vice and Acting Mayor Guo Jinlong yesterday vowed to accomplish the preparations for the upcoming Olympic Games to a “high level,” partly addressing concerns about traffic jams and pollution. He put the preparations on the top of the municipal government’s agenda for the year, saying: “(We must) accomplish the preparations for the Olympic Games and provide services in high-level and high-caliber ways.” Guo made the remarks while delivering a government work report to about 770 deputies to the city’s legislative body that kicked off its annual session yesterday morning. “Hosting the 2008 Olympic Games and Paralympics is a great event for the country, the people and the Chinese nation,” Guo said. He urged the National Stadium, nicknamed the “Bird’s Nest” due to its shape, and other venues and facilities to finish construction according to schedule. The expansion of Beijing international airport and Beijing South Railway would be completed this year, plus the construction of a subway linking the airport to downtown and several other subways and expressways, said Guo. He said Beijing would enact the “strictest standards” for pollutant emissions this year and curb pollution from heavy trucks that work at night. Beijing would also cooperate with neighboring provinces and cities to improve environmental conditions. However, he admitted that “the task to control pollution and traffic congestion is still arduous,” and the government needed to provide better public services.

Source: Beijing vow to reduce pollution for Games

via Shanghai Daily: National by on 1/21/08

CHINA is expected to become the world’s second-largest travel and tourism market in terms of total demand and foreign visitor numbers in the next 10 years, according to a latest research report. The research, which was jointly conducted by the World Travel & Tourism Council and a leading international consulting firm Accenture, was released after the WTTC International Conference held in the city yesterday. The travel and tourism industry in China generated a total of 3.37 trillion yuan (US$461 billion) of economic activity last year, 13.3 percent higher than the figure of 2006. That made China No. 4 after the United States, Japan and Germany in world’s tourism demand. But the demand growth surpassed that of neighboring countries and regions to top the growth rate in Asia. The report said that the amount spent on the country’s travel and tourism was expected to grow by 9.6 percent per annum in the next decade, pushing the country’s total amount to about 10.99 trillion yuan by 2017. “Travel and tourism is an important industry… we can see China will play a key role in the global travel and tourism industry soon,” Patrick Leung, executive partner of Accenture, said at yesterday’s conference. The research suggested that employment in China’s travel and tourism economy was estimated at 72.48 million jobs last year, accounting for 9.4 percent of total employment. That means one out of every 10.6 employees works in the hospitality industry. The report suggested that the employment is estimated to total 75.71 million jobs by 2017. However, a lack of high-level professionals will be a key barrier against growth in the tourism and hospitality industry, analysts said at yesterday’s conference.

Source: China’s tourism market set to be No. 2 globally

via Shanghai Daily: Business by Rachel Yan on 1/17/08

BEIJING’S economy is expected to grow nine percent or above this year, lower than the growth rate of 12.5 percent which it is expected to have achieved last year, a local development official has said.

The Beijing municipal government also predicts that the per capita gross domestic product will reach US$8,000 this year, up from US$7,000 last year, said Zhang Gong, director of the Beijing Municipal Development and Reform Commission.

Source: Shanghai Daily

CHINA has revoked the export licenses of 600 toy makers during a nationwide four-month campaign to ensure product safety and defend the “Made in China” brand around the world. The food industry was also a key target in the crackdown. The country’s leading quality watchdog has registered all toy makers and inspected more than 3,000 factories that supply toys to overseas markets during the campaign, Pu Changcheng, deputy director of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, said yesterday. Stricter supervision standards have been established for China’s toy manufacturers. The new rules require firms, especially those exporting toys, to run quality inspection checks on all their products, Pu told a news conference in Beijing. The administration will also check toys made according to designs and quality standards provided by other countries. Chinese industries have been battered by a raft of reports detailing substandard products ranging from drugs to toys. More than 19 million China-made toys were recalled in 2007, many by United States-based Mattel, after reports said some items were contaminated with lead paint. Others had small magnets that children might swallow. Pu said some of the toy recalls were caused by design flaws of overseas firms. Others were the result of quality standards in other countries. Pu also said the illegal practice of using non-food materials and recycled food or oil to produce food or oil was essentially eliminated during the campaign. “Product quality and food safety are global issues,” Pu said. “There is no end to the improvement of product quality and food safety so we need to work together to do a better job in the future.” Problems with food safety are particularly worrisome in China’s vast countryside, where lax supervision of small factories has contributed to food-poisoning incidents. Pu said one of this year’s objectives would be to increase supervision of small manufacturers. “We must fight to solve the problem of poor product quality and lack of safety in the shortest possible time,” he said. And food for this year’s Beijing Olympics will be highly scrutinized, Pu said. “All the food supplied during the Olympic Games must be produced by accredited companies who have been qualified for market access.” The food will be distributed from specially designated centers, and will undergo repeated inspections from production to consumption, he said.

Source: Toy makers feel brunt of China safety swoop

via Shanghai Daily: National by Lydia Chen on 1/15/08

THE wholesale price of homegrown kiwi fruit has risen by 30 percent year-on-year on the local market due to many having been stored to supply the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the Shanghai Fruit Association said. It said the wholesale price had risen to 55 yuan (US$7.53) for a box of 36 compared to 42 yuan a box early last year. The wholesale price of imported kiwis remains around 80 yuan a box. To guarantee supply for the Olympic Games, many traders have put fruit from the kiwi-producing areas of Shaanxi, Sichuan and Jiangxi provinces into cold storage. The kiwis are for athletes and other people during the Olympic Games as the fruit is highly nutritious and can be easily stored for long periods. “Now it’s hard to get kiwis in the areas where they grow. They are all sold out. While in the past, homegrown kiwis weren’t very popular,” said Yuan Yaxiang, an officer of the association. As a result, the reduced supplies have meant a rise in price. Yang Shu, manager of the Shanghai Xishu Fruit Co Ltd, said they had increased the number of kiwis they bought but refused to reveal the exact number.

Source: Kiwi fruit dearer as Olympics approach

from Shanghai Daily: Metro by Xu Fang

Anyone currently living in China and old enough to remember Public Enemy’s seminal 1988 rap Don’t Believe the Hype may soon turn to humming it as a defense mechanism. Because already, just seven days into 2008, the Olympic onslaught is relentless across China. As a drop-in-the-ocean example, during a 15-minute cross-town taxi ride in Shanghai today, the personal in-cab video screen showed the new “We are Ready: One Nation, One Dream” Beijing Olympic promo no less than five times. And the Games are still seven months away.

The hype isn’t just coming from within, of course – the global Olympic machine is already moving smoothly through the gears. The latest claim, by global media communications agency Initiative Sports Futures, is that the Beijing Games opening ceremony could become the first sporting event to attract a total live audience of a handily rounded-up one billion people.

The supporting evidence, however, appears rather thin. Kevin Alavy, Head of Analytics at Initiative Sports Futures, said that only a handful of elite competitions truly attract global audiences. The final of the 2007 Rugby World Cup, for example, drew only 33 million viewers globally, whereas the most-watched sporting event in 2007 was the Super Bowl, with an average of 97 million viewers tuning in at any one time during the game. Audiences for more international events, though, like the Olympics, fluctuate widely, based on factors like the size of the host country and which time zone they take place in. Somehow, that equates to the “possible billion” viewing audience. Watch that space.

Source: Beijing 2008: The First One Billion TV Audience?

via Biz China Update - News, Reports on 1/7/08