每天读报(十六)
分享到:
1已有 615 次阅读  2014-01-22 02:04


分享 举报
上篇文章,我分成了两篇。

China’s Massive Urbanization Project is Shifting its Focus

It’s easy to forget that China’s migration from farm to city is the biggest flow of human beings in world history—and there are still an estimated 300 million who will eventually make that shift.

While new migrants continue to flock(floc) to China’s largest cities, which have long enjoyedsome of the country’s best schools, hospitals, public transportation, and—crucially—job opportunities, complaints about the resulting overcrowding, pollution, and sky-high real-estate prices reached a fever pitch in 2013. A bitter joke about the Beijing subway at rush hour is that a rider goes in as a person and comes out as a photograph—because he has been squeezed paper-thin. Reforms to China’s household registration system, known as hukou, that would allow migrants to major cities easier access to public services like schooling are likely to meet staunch resistance from natives.

Those complaints won’t stop the massive influx of newly minted urbanites, at least not for now. The Chinese government has identified continued urbanization as one of the most important engines of growth, because it creates more demand for consumer goods among China’s saving-conscious citizens, but the government has determined that something must change. In November 2013, the central government announced plans to scrap the hukou system for small cities and gradually make it easier to settle in medium-sized cities, while strictly controlling the population of metropolises like Beijing and Shanghai. For that to work, though, the Chinese government will have to institute extensive policy changes to make what it calls “townization” appeal enough to rural migrants that they ignore the siren call of high-paying jobs in the big city.

China’s Domestic Film Industry is Fighting Hollywood Competitors—and Winning

It’s an underdog story that almost seems ripped from a Hollywood script. To protect domestic films (and to keep out subversive Western values), Beijing imposed an import quota on American blockbusters for much of the last two decades: ten per year starting in 1994, and upped to twenty per year in 2002. But quotas didn’t stem the appetite. Chinese moviegoers mostly turned up their noses at staid and heavily censored Chinese films, and instead turned to bootlegged DVDs to get their Hollywood fix, proceeds of which went to street vendors and pirates, not Hollywood studios.

After losing a legal battle to the United States before the World Trade Organization in 2009, China increased its quota to thirty-four films in February 2012, with a significant number of IMAX or 3-D action flicks added to the mix. The only people happier than China’s movie watchers were Hollywood executives, who salivated at the prospect of a billion new eyeballs. For many in China’s film industry, it was as if they woke up to find a Los Angeles-sized spaceship hovering above, firing up its high-tech beams to annihilate their little workshops.

But Chinese filmmakers didn’t cower; instead, they dug in their heels and got creative. The stunning result: Over the past year, China’s domestic films took in more than half of all box office receipts there, even when faced with Hollywood-made blockbusters such as Iron Man 3 and Pacific Rim. The biggest domestic film of the year: Big-budget Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons, a film that blends fantasy, action, and a good dose of dark comedy.The theater-going habits of the viewing public certainly helped Chinese filmmakers’ bottom line; as of early December, total box office receipts in China for the year had reached $3.3 billion, compared to less than half that only three years ago. But the real surprise of the year was that Chinese audiences are now willing to pay to see domestic movies with little or no dazzling computer-generated special effects, providing they come with enough social media buzz. Among the top ten films in China over the past year: the comedy drama American Dreams in China, which profiled three entrepreneurs, the lowbrow sleeper hit Lost in Thailand, whose bumbling(bumble) anti-heroes duel it out in a familiar travel destination, and the syrupy campus romance So Young,which appealed to Chinese Internet users nostalgic for puppy love.

China’s Small-Town Folk are Changing E-commerce

Ever heard of Qingliu County in Fujian Province (pop. 145,000)? Don’t worry; neither have most Beijingers. That’s just fine with Qingliu’s avid online shoppers, who despite having a much lower per capita income(当年为了考试记住了,考试结束后,再也没用过这个词组), spent an average of more than $3,000 shopping online in 2012, compared to about $750 by Internet shoppers living in China’s first and second-tier metropolises. (2013 data is not yet available but will probably show further separation.)

In China’s massive e-commerce market of $26 billion, small-town residents, often looked down upon by their urban counterparts, are starting to demand attention from retailers and e-commerce companies. According to a survey released in July 2013 by Taobao, small-town web shoppers spent an average of over $900 online in 2012, roughly $160 more than their big city counterparts. The report says that about 30 million online shoppers live in small cities—a small number by Chinese standards, but one estimated to grow faster than e-commerce in urban areas. Cutthroat competition among online retailers and logistics companies has driven improvement in delivery networks and better outreach to new customers in small towns, allowing them to enjoy the same delivery of Clinique lotion, Uniqlo sweaters, and Vans sneakers once easily accessible only to city slickers’ doorsteps.


声明: 本文及其评论仅代表个人观点,不代表飞赞网立场。不当言论请举报

评论 (1 个评论) 发表评论





涂鸦板