In January 2013, Bloomberg reported that Beijing’s pollution was worse than the average US airport smoking lounge. The study was one of the most polarising accounts of the severity of China’s pollution at the time.

Beijing recently acknowledged that it needs to attract more foreign talent to help its transition to an economy led by consumer spending and innovation. It has even announced plans to set up its first immigration office to assist.

Online-to-Offline (O2O) is one of the most used buzzwords in China today, and with good reason. In most Western markets, O2O refers to 'click-and-collect' items - goods bought online and picked up at a brick & mortar store. Whilst retailers such as Ikea and Walmart are dabbling with it in China, cheap delivery and low car ownership means that click-and-collect hasn't taken off here like other countries. Nevertheless, China is leading the world in O2O adoption.

An article in the Sydney Morning Herald last week highlighted some common misnomers about localisation and translation for China: After researching in China, an Australian vitamin brand found that their Mandarin-speaking Chief Science Officer would be most compelling speaking English in the brand's promotional videos for the Mainland market.

Last week, WeChat's owner Tencent agreed to pay $8.6 billion to gain control of Finnish mobile games maker Supercel. This was less than two weeks after the game-to-movie adaption Warcraft stormed the Chinese box office with a record-breaking $156 million in just five days - more than Star Wars: The Force Awakens total haul of $125.4 million in China.

Xiaomi is a brand that many Chinese companies want to emulate. It has utilised China's army of engineers and manufacturing nouse to produce decent products at low prices. But unlike most local brands, it has delivered great marketing to sell those products.

2015 was a good year to be an aspiring billionaire in China. It was when the country added 90 new tycoons, passing the USA to top the billionaire count at 568. It was also the year Beijing pipped New York to become the billionaire capital of the world, and the first city to ever house 100 billionaires. Greater China now accounts for half of the world's top-10 cities that billionaires call home, with 10 of the top-15 being in Asia.

As recently as 2012, most Chinese consumers considered international labels categorically better than local alternatives. KFC was a good example: although consumers knew deep-fried drumsticks weren't a super-food, they were from an American company so must be safer, and therefore healthier, than Chinese options that could be cooked in gutter oil, with additives like melamine. That perception helped fuel more than two new KFC restaurant openings a day in China that year.

China's online shoppers are showing the stamina of Ironmen. Less than three weeks after the Single's Day frenzy, they were tapping and clicking up a storm for America's Black Friday. Shopper's Fatigue? Not the Chinese.

Last week's four-day Fifth Plenary Session in Beijing saw China's leaders meet to determine the blueprint for China's policies over the next five years. Although the full details won't be released in March next year, below are 13 highlights from the communique published following the session:

If you were selling iron ore or aluminium to China right now, or hoping to flog Swiss watches, Prada bags or Audis, you probably wouldn't be overly optimistic about Chinese growth prospects in the short term.  Anyone viewing this year's slowing 7% GDP growth in the first half of this year could be subdued as well.  Yet taking a broad-brush approach to the current market conditions in China doesn't quite tell the full story.

There has been a slew of recent coverage about Chinese FMCG brands outsmarting foreign players with faster growth rates.  Local brands often better understand customer needs and meet them with nimble product development and marketing.  They also have strong distribution networks in Tier-3 and lower cities, which boasted 8% growth last year, versus 2% in Tier 1 and 2 cities.

In 2013, there were 2.9 million U.S. Dollar millionaires in China. They were 38 years old on average. 12-months later, following a year of slowing GDP growth, low to negative house price movements in most cities, and the end of double digit growth for most luxury brands, more than one million Chinese millionaires have joined the ranks. It is another indicator of the continued growing affluence of individual Chinese.

China’s smog gets a lot of airtime around the world, with footage like masked runners navigating the soupy air in the Beijing marathon, hordes of Zhengzhou residents lining up for bags of ‘fresh mountain air’, and kids playing at school under multi-million dollar domes. Given 99% of urban Chinese breathe air considered unsafe by EU standards, there’s plenty of opportunities for coverage.

Earlier this month, Apple’s Tim Cook and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened accounts on Weibo. Modi’s selfie with Premier Li Keqiang and Tim Cook’s chronicles of his four day trip to China, helped attract almost a million followers between them, providing further validation of Weibo’s relevance in China.

New Balance has done some great work positioning itself as an aspirational, but affordable fashion brand in China. It’s hard to walk a block in China’s hipper urban suburbs without seeing young fashionistas sporting NB shoes. But for those sitting in the Boston HQ, that success would have been slightly tarnished by the recent ruling that New Balance’s Chinese brand name, XīnBǎiLún, was violating a Guangdong businessman’s trademark.

The folk in Beijing are working hard to continue to raise the standard of living of Chinese consumers, aiming to transition the economy from low value manufacturing to higher value innovation, service and consumption.

Chinese consumers embrace few things with more enthusiasm than ecommerce and smartphones. WeChat’s Tencent, Alibaba and China Mobile are rated the three most valuable brands in China with good reason.