If you want to learn how China's export engine works, check out the Canton Fair.
It's been 10 years since China joined the WTO, a landmark event in the process of China's opening-up to the outside world. Despite great concerns both in China and in other member states about the challenges China would face and those it might bring to other members, the worst-case scenario did not happen. On the contrary, China's membership has proved to be positive both for the country and for the rest of the world.
In July 1978, Hong Kong businessman Zhang Zimi approached the Dongguan government, in South China's Guangdong province, with a radical idea: to start making handbags for the Hong Kong market. Zhang's deal called for him to inject HK$2 million and provide the designs and raw materials.
Looking back on 30 years of retailing, it is difficult to fathom that China would emerge as the face of a global retail revolution. It was a time when China was just shaking off the shackles of a planned economy and the retail sector was strictly regulated. In other words, it was a different time and a different era.
Zhuozhou is a small city 60 kilometers southwest of Beijing. I learned about the town not because it was home to emperors, or their tombs, but due to a farmer who knocked on my door when I was about 9.
Zhou Qiyuan does not like shopping. His distaste for shopping spans many years. "There was nothing to shop for in the late 1970s and early 1980s," says the 65-year-old Beijing resident. "It was all about getting coupons, standing in long queues, choosing from the few goods that were available and, more often than not, being bullied by salespersons."
Among China's first drivers were newspaper photographers, who took advantage of the faster form of transport to follow fire trucks and zoom to action hot spots. Veteran China Daily photographer Wu Zhiyi and former China Daily employee Chen Xiong can remember Beijing in the 1980s when driving a car in the capital was a sheer delight. There were sunny blue skies, very few cars and no traffic jams.
During the 1980s, one of the major seeds of change sprouting from China's new market economy was the all-new motoring industry.
When I was asked to write this column, I felt a little embarrassed. The main reason is that as a senior correspondent and editor covering the auto industry over 12 years at China Daily, I'm still not a car owner, although I got a driving license eight years ago. For this, I'm always ridiculed by many colleagues.
It may be disappointing that I'm not going to talk in this column about whether it's time to buy into China's stock market when the market looks cheap after a recent derating. I have to admit that, despite being one of the first journalists who began reporting on China's financial and stock markets more than two decades ago - when the Chinese stock market was set up - I have never bought a single share.
It has been 20 years since the birth of China's stock market, which has experienced wild ups and downs. Looking back, I think we should reflect on what kind of market it has developed into, what role it has played in China's economy and what we should do next.
Jiang Zhikang's foray into China's fledgling stock market in the early 1990s was not only risky but required great patience. "I lined up at the small trading counter for a whole night in order to buy the stock subscription certificates,?Jiang, 62, says. "I thought that owning stocks may be better than just putting my money in a bank account.?
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