Gordon B. Clarke
Banned
- Joined
- May 29, 2010
- Location
- Denmark
Just back from a 2 week+ vacation in China and a few things stuck me. OK, I could give some great recommendations about where to spend time and what to see but that doesn’t quite fit PM so I’ll stick to the relevant stuff.
We spent 6 days in Guangzhou (14,000,000 inhabitants), Guilin (170,000) and Shanghai (20,000,000) all in the southern half of China and definately not poor areas.
Not too long ago USA were the leaders in automobile production. Where I was in China there were some American cars but European made cars dominate the Chinese market with Japanese and Korean a rather distant second and third. There were also cars I had never heard of or seen before and were Chinese.
Of the thousands of taxis virtually every one was a VW. I lost count of the number of Mercedes, Audis and BMWs I saw, each one bigger than the other. Ferrari, Lamborghini and Maserati not forgetting Porche and a few Rolls Royces weren’t uncommon either. French cars were popular too - Citroen and Peugot. Electric bikes and electric scooters by the countless thousands. Segway could be extremely popular but I never saw anything that even resembled one
Millions of Chinese have money and aren’t afraid of spending it. Owning “western” gives prestige and makes me wonder why the US only seems to export a fraction of what it imports. Am I missing something? As I’ve mentioned in other threads Europe seems to be benefitting more by trading with China than the USA and with the current rate of exchange with the US$ against the Euro € you should be beating us hands down. The bottom line to me is that CEOs in too many US companies seem to be sitting on their thumb but maybe it’s just me being naïve or ignorant.
Production of car license plates can't seem to follow the number of cars being sold so many cars drive around without plates. Old plates are being sold at up to $10,000 so money as said, isn't an issue.
Anyone have any thoughts or comments? I’m neither pro China or anti American - just wondering why what could be and is a huge market seems to get ignored by the USA.
There were other things I noticed but I’ll see how this thread progresses before adding more.
We spent 6 days in Guangzhou (14,000,000 inhabitants), Guilin (170,000) and Shanghai (20,000,000) all in the southern half of China and definately not poor areas.
Not too long ago USA were the leaders in automobile production. Where I was in China there were some American cars but European made cars dominate the Chinese market with Japanese and Korean a rather distant second and third. There were also cars I had never heard of or seen before and were Chinese.
Of the thousands of taxis virtually every one was a VW. I lost count of the number of Mercedes, Audis and BMWs I saw, each one bigger than the other. Ferrari, Lamborghini and Maserati not forgetting Porche and a few Rolls Royces weren’t uncommon either. French cars were popular too - Citroen and Peugot. Electric bikes and electric scooters by the countless thousands. Segway could be extremely popular but I never saw anything that even resembled one
Millions of Chinese have money and aren’t afraid of spending it. Owning “western” gives prestige and makes me wonder why the US only seems to export a fraction of what it imports. Am I missing something? As I’ve mentioned in other threads Europe seems to be benefitting more by trading with China than the USA and with the current rate of exchange with the US$ against the Euro € you should be beating us hands down. The bottom line to me is that CEOs in too many US companies seem to be sitting on their thumb but maybe it’s just me being naïve or ignorant.
Production of car license plates can't seem to follow the number of cars being sold so many cars drive around without plates. Old plates are being sold at up to $10,000 so money as said, isn't an issue.
Anyone have any thoughts or comments? I’m neither pro China or anti American - just wondering why what could be and is a huge market seems to get ignored by the USA.
There were other things I noticed but I’ll see how this thread progresses before adding more.