The Guardian newspaper reports today on a gala event in Shanghai where the rich of China voted on their favourite brands – alongside Ferrari and Armani their favourite search engine brand turns out to be Baidu.
We’ve spoken a lot about China in Multilingual Search recently – but as the Guardian report says, the Chinese are now more accepting of the ‘rich’. Thus the ‘Best of the Best’ gala dinner in Shanghai brought together 589 people with incomes in excess of 10 million Yuan (£700,000 / $500,000).
Favourites pursuits of the rich Chinese are such things as travel and golf as well as raising children and parachuting (!).
A search marketer phoned me yesterday to discuss launching an e-commerce project in China – obviously conscious of the rapid growth of the Chinese economy.
Good idea – but let’s not forget we are still talking about a country which represents huge technical and cultural challenges for western marketers. So yes there there are rich Chinese now – but much the eastern provinces of China (as The Guardian reports) are still living on less than a dollar a day. This story makes the headlines because rich Chinese and communism don’t seem to be natural bedfellows. There are still many more rich people in the west – the main question is for how much longer?
And while I think about it – I’m wondering whether fellow SMA search marketer ‘Shak’ of Chinawhite was invited to that gala dinner!
Andy Atkins-Kruger
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