China News This Week: Wednesday 10 November 2021
This week's news and trends in China:
Environment
Why China's Climate Policy Matters To Us All: China's carbon emissions are vast and growing, dwarfing those of other countries.China’s Turning Point Report: Analysis by Deloitte has determined that rather than climate change being a drain on China's economy, climate action will increase GDP by ¥116 trillion ($18.3 trillion) through exporting decarbonisation products and services and reducing losses from climate change.
Chinese Consumers
China Skinny Takeaways from the 4th Annual CIIE: We were on the ground at this year's massive China International Import Expo (CIIE) checking out the key themes and tactics used by the 3,000 exhibitors from 127 countries.
Bottled Water, Vaccines and Electric Vehicles Propel China’s Biggest Earners: Nongfu Spring magnate Zhong Shanshan continues to top Hurun's China's rich list with a personal wealth of $60.0 billion. Former No. 1 Jack Ma dropped to No. 5, with TAL Education and Tencent founders also curbed by regulation.
Shanghai Disney Resort’s Duffy Family Launches LinaBell Providing Lessons for Brands with Mascots in China: Some valuable lessons into how Disney managed more than 300 million views on Weibo after launching a new character at their resort.
Digital China
Ecommerce Ad Spending Edges Closer to a 50% Share of China's Digital Ad Spending: China's ecommerce channel ad spending will reach $50.31 billion in 2021, which is nearly double that of the US. Ecommerce ads represent 45.7% of China's digital ad market, compared with 13.4% in the US. Alibaba accounts for 67.4% of this spend.
Beijing Wants to Make the Internet Less Annoying: In the latest round of tech regulations, the stuff users hate the most are being hit such as deceptive cell phone and broadband plans, long and confusing terms and conditions, relentless pop-up ads, overpriced cloud services and more.
Food & Beverage
Diageo to Build $75 Million Distillery to Make its First Chinese Single-Malt Whisky: Diageo is building a 66,000 square metre, carbon neutral whisky distillery in Yunnan, sourcing water from Erhai Lake. Single malts are one of the few drinks that Chinese consumers enjoy at home or in small groups, with volumes rising 20% in 2020. The move follows Pernod Richard's $150 million whisky distillery development in Sichuan. Budweiser has also announced its brewery expansion plans in China to support its growth in premium and superpremium brands, using more green power.
The Rise of Manner Coffee: It began in 2015 as a single stall and was so popular that lines spilled out into the street. Manner Coffee has built 150 new stores in the last four months, most of them in Shanghai, with plans to expand to other cities. It hopes to become a national coffee brand and domestic rival to Starbucks through highly trained baristas serving quality coffee at fair prices. It also was on the eco-friendly movement relatively early, incentivising customers to bring their own cup.
Chinese Tourists
Magic Number Eight: Whereas prices ending in ‘nine’ or ‘double-nine’ are favoured in the US, data from 63,075 room rates from 21 hotels in Macau the number "eight" was the most frequently used at the end of prices for rooms, with auspicious associations particularly relevant to gamblers. Interestingly, ‘four’ was not the least frequently used number in price-ending strategies among Macau hotels, despite being associated with death in Chinese culture. It was the fifth most-used ending number, but 50% of the time was preceded by the number "eight". When combined with other numbers it may produce a different meaning, as in the case of '84', this particular combination represents 'fortune until death' or 'luck until death'.
Entertainment
Netizens Hail as Chinese Team Wins Esports Global Final, Trends Top on Social Media: China's Edward Gaming (EDG) team earned their first-ever League of Legends World Championship title with a 3-2 win over South Korea in the League of Legends (Lol) World Championship final on Sunday. By yesterday noon, the hashtag "EDG wins championship" having over 4 million mentions on Weibo and was viewed more than 3.26 billion times. There are 488 million esports fans in China.
Parenting
New Fad in China has Parents Putting Helmets and Moulds on their Babies to Make their Heads More Round: Believing that a round head is more beautiful, parents are taking to social media to discuss "miracle equipment" that take advantage of a baby's soft bones and avoid having kids with flat heads. Ironically, flat heads used to be considered lucky and parents would make their kids sleep on books.
Cars
China’s Telsa Challenger Unveils Plan for $156,000 Flying Car: China's Tesla challenger Xpeng has unveiled plans for its sixth generation eVTOL vehicle capable of driving and flying at low altitude, taking off and landing vertically. Mass production will begin by 2024 and will retail for less that ¥1 million ($156,000).
Luxury
88% of China’s Luxury Growth Driven By New Consumers: China’s luxury fashion market in 2021 is being propelled by a cohort of 1.5 million consumers who each spend more than ¥40,000 ($6,255) per year on fashion-related luxury products. As a group, they are responsible for 81% of the sector’s total sales over the past 12 months. 50% of this group bought luxury fashion items for the first time between October 2020 and September 2021, accounting for 88% of the segment's growth. A decade ago, virtually all first-time consumers would have purchased leather goods, today's Gen-Zers are more likely to first buy a ready-to-wear item such as a signature T-shirt or other items below ¥10,000 ($1,564), with sales associates a major point of contact for sales.
