Word: chengdu
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Wang Li may live deep in China's interior, in a city you may never have heard of--the provincial capital of Chengdu--but that doesn't stop her from shopping like the big spenders of Tokyo, Hong Kong or Shanghai. One Friday evening, Wang, 28, trolls down Chunxi Street, a jam-packed thoroughfare of flashing neon signs, McDonald's restaurants and boutiques, looking for the latest fashions she's admired in Cosmopolitan magazine...
...Chengdu. Although 1,000 miles from the glamour of Shanghai, Chengdu has a surprising number of choices for Wang and her fellow aspirants. As China's fourth largest city, it is catching up to the world's richest at a blistering pace. It has a booming economy, escalating incomes and 10.8 million people--more than New York City. Wooing the newly wealthy of Chengdu is a top priority for consumer companies from Coca-Cola to General Motors to Christian Dior. Chengdu is only one of several mammoth metropolises--like Chongqing, Wuhan and Xi'an--experiencing similar booms of investment, wages...
...Chengdu's main square, near the outstretched arm of a statue of Mao, sits a shopping center with Cartier, Zegna and Hugo Boss outlets. One night at the new Seibu department store, which opened last April, Italy's Missoni held a fashion show with Chinese models strutting to thumping reggae music. "Everybody who comes to Chengdu has a surprise," says an ebullient Antonino Laspina, the Italian trade commissioner in China, on the sidelines of the show. Living in Chengdu "is becoming like living in New York, Paris or Milan...
...quite. Yet only a few years ago, the boundless interior was a daunting and unprofitable place for many companies. Giant cities like Chengdu languished, starved of investment and government attention that went to Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Chengdu was known mainly as China's largest panda-preservation center. Some companies like Korea's Samsung that tried to make an early move were disappointed and left, or limited their expansion...
...decade before business really starts to boom in some of the secondary cities now being targeted?metropolises like Hefei, Harbin and Chengdu. But early movers such as InterContinental hope to reap the benefits of choice locations and greater brand awareness by getting there first. Eric Wong, a property-sector analyst for UBS Hong Kong, observes: "If I'm a big hotel company, the question is, should I wait ten years to plant my flag in China now? The big chains have all decided, and are in the midst of a flag-planting race...