Even during the current economic headwinds, private brands continue to get the trust of China’s consumers, says Hurun chairman Rupert Hoogewerf, among the 2022 China Hurun Brands’List, where Shanghai-listed Kweichow Moutai even outranked the technology giants as Tencent and Alibaba, reports the South China Morning Post.Read More →

The crowds might be back in China’s restaurants but they are not spending as much as they used to. The economy is not back on track, the labor market is bad and salaries are being cut. Business analyst Shaun Rein has sent his researchers out, and they did come back with bad news, he tells CNBC.Read More →

Women account for 70% of the purchases in China’s households, and marketing expert Ashley Dudarenok looks into the 2023 trends for the female consumer at China’s Women’s Day, for the Jing Daily. Most of China’s platforms dive deep into this important segment of consumers.Read More →

The exit of the Zero-Covid policy in China was not the cause of the rampant spread of the virus, or triggered by the protests, but was already spreading unstoppable for a longer time, according to the World Health Organization, writes Reuters. WHO’s emergency director Mike Ryan described the end of the zero-Covid policy as an unavoidable strategic decision on Wednesday 14 December.Read More →

Strategic analyst Victor Shih, author of Coalitions of the Weak, (2022), looks at China’s sudden exit from its contested zero-Covid policy. Was it because of the protests, was it planned before, and what does it mean for the country’s domestic policies and economics? A discussion at the New Yorker on how decisions at the  top-level take place.Read More →

One of China’s leading health experts, Zhong Nanshan, expects China to return to normal after Covid-19 halfway 2023, according to AFP. After the surprise turnaround in early December from the zero-Covid policy, the country is now bracing for a dramatic upsurge in patients, both under quarantine at home and in the hospitals because the Omicron variant is highly transmissible but less mortal, he told state media on Sunday 11 December.Read More →

China is taking a short breath from the anti-Covid protests and comes to terms with the effect of the sudden relaxation of the zero-Covid measures. Political analyst Victor Shih takes a step back at KQED and looks at the fallout of the protests in the short term.Read More →

Leading economist Arthur Kroeber, author of China’s Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know®, discusses how China’s leadership balances between control and economic growth, looking at the zero-Covid policies and the property crisis at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and the Harvard Kennedy School Rajawali Foundation Institute for Asia.Read More →

When even an acknowledged China bull like strategic analyst Shaun Rein turns negative on its short-term economic development, things do not look well for the middle kingdom. “Consumer confidence has brutally collapsed and I think investors need to think twice or maybe even three or four times before investing in China right now,” says Rein in the Economic Times.Read More →