"<i>Ultimately, all China’s barriers to higher consumption are a product of the fact that for the past three decades its entire economy has been focussed on one thing: making stuff.</i>"<p>Which leaves out the elephant in the room: for those same three decades, the government has been focused on making fewer people thought the one child per family policy.<p>How can the author talk about the paucity of the social safety network without mentioning the 4-2-1 problem: 4 grandparents have 2 parents who have 1 child, who's obviously not going to be in a position to take care of all 6 above him?<p>That's a big reason why the Chinese personal savings rate is around 50%. The government isn't going to take care of them and there are strict limits on what their children will be able to do.
"Chinese consumers aren’t really reaping the full fruits of their labor."<p>If having <i>savings</i> is not a fruit of labor here in the US, we'd do well to emulate that behavior more. The Depression generation learned that lesson the hard way, and we clearly forgot it.<p>Part of the reason is that hard-sell marketers here manage to continually create 'needs' where none existed, and 'value' that's abstract in the extreme. I can't fault the Chinese for erring on the side of caution. I can only wonder when we'll remember why the 'fruit' of financial security is one worth treasuring.