Chinese Cities and a New Website
There are plenty of mind-boggling China statistics, but this is one of our favourites: Between when China Skinny was founded in 2011 and now, more than 200 million people have moved from China’s countryside to its cities. That equates to a monthly migration of Brisbane’s population, two San Francisco’s or four Manchester’s who have been lured by the bright lights of China’s cities.
We’ve been closely tracking the many changes in China through our projects, observations and over the ten years of preparing the Skinny every week. Arguably, no other changes have had the same impact on consumption and marketing as China’s rapid urbanisation. The concentration of people in its megacities has driven its marketing innovation and social drivers to consume. Pre-Covid, easier access to both visas and flight connections from cities broadened minds and increased exposure to foreign products, cultures and lifestyles. And the most impactful of all has been the accumulation of wealth and incomes from living in the city, where incomes have reached almost three times the level of the countryside, and property values have appreciated to be exponentially higher in cities than rural areas.
China already has a few global cities, but many of the next level of cities are on the verge of a similar status. By 2021, 24 Chinese cities had a GDP of at least ¥1 trillion ($140 billion), double the number in 2017. That’s two-dozen cities with an economic output of more than Myanmar, Cambodia, Uganda and Estonia combined.
Most foreign brands would see the lion’s share of their sales coming from those trillion-yuan-cities. But, as we’ve noted before, those cities are far from homogenous. Consumer preferences, lifestyles, climates and even body shapes can be vastly different from one city to the next in China. Understanding those variances between cities can help truly localise across cities and regions to remain relevant to target audiences. It can also help in identifying which cities to focus offline initiatives and targeted online campaigns on.
China Skinny often works with clients to provide deep city-specific analysis to help with targeting and prioritising cities. There are also free resources which can help understand variances between cities and which show the most growth and opportunities across different areas.
Many helpful reports have been released this month. One of those is PwC’s annual Chinese Cities of Opportunity report, which analysed 47 cities across 10 dimensions. Similarly, Economist Intelligence (EIU) recently published China's Emerging Cities 2022: Certainty Amid Uncertainty, identifying cities with strong growth potential, including those showing economic resilience in the face of Covid-19. The Wharton Economic Institute also just released its "2022 Top 100 Cities in China" ranking, categorizing 110 cities at the prefectural level or higher by their soft and hard economic power.
In addition, China Skinny has easy-to-use, interesting and valuable city-related tools free on our website: The City Tier Calculator, provides analysis into different cities including rankings by tier including population, disposable income, GDP and Starbucks stores. This can help identify potential cities to target across the tiers, or better understand and compare cities that you are already in.
The City-Nator provides some perspective by comparing the population of your home city, or another world city, with how many cities in China have more people. It’s a fun way to understand the vastness of China’s urban makeup.
Our Trackers also provide city-specific breakdowns into sentiment, behaviour and forecasts around dairy, skincare, beauty and health supplement consumption.
To make our city-tools and everything else a little nicer to use, this week we have are chuffed to announce the launch our newly-polished website. We’re still at chinaskinny.com, with all the old favourites and information about our research, strategy and branding services, but the site is a little easier on the eye and nicer to use. Go ahead and take a look around.
With the Golden Week holiday next week, we won’t be sending out a newsletter. But there is plenty to read on the refreshed site in the meantime, including some of the fascinating previous newsletters in the archives.
If you’re in China, have a great Golden Week break. We’ll be replying to clients and inquiries over the week, so please let us know if we can assist you in China in any way.
