Newly-introduced mobile telephone numbers

"Newly-introduced mobile telephone numbers containing three or four 'lucky eights' are auctioned off by the local post bureaux for ... as much as ... sixteen times the official national average GNP per capita. Mobile phones themselves cost an identical amount to purchase and to run each year. China now has some four million credit card holders ... card-holder spending has grown at an annual rate of 20 per cent per annum since 1988, and was twice as much in the first half of 1992 ... it is estimated that a regular 55,000 people per day pass through the newly opened McDonald's restaurant in downtown Beijing to pay for a hamburger much more than most Chinese will earn in a week." (David S.G. Goodman in Access China, December 1992.)

"In Peking, the gossip in the markets ... is that GATT membership will open a new world of consumer pleasure by cutting duties on luxury imports ...

"Perhaps in anticipation, Peking's car parks have been besieged this winter by ragged peasants wielding buckets and cloths and offering a cleaning service while you wait". (Michael Andrews, China Trade Report, February 1993.)

From GLW issue 101