China hosts its second international import expo and opens their market to the world

The Chinese economy is going through a radical evolution - it is shifting from a dedicated focus on being the world's producer of goods towards becoming more consumer-centric.

Just to put this into context - at best South Africa has probably about 10 million active and affluent consumers in our market; China has 1400 million. So the Chinese consumer market is 140 times bigger than South Africa's.

So when China hosts their 2nd ever International Import Expo - that is something we pay careful attention to.

In President Xi Jinping's opening address at the expo - he presented a vastly different tone to the one currently being offered by the USA and UK. He pledged his commitment to opening up the Chinese economy to the world and emphasised the need to welcome business and brands to China in an effort to secure prosperity for all.

"Of the problems confronting the world economy, none can be resolved by a single country alone. We must all put the common good of humanity first rather than place one’s own interest above the common interest of all. We must have a more open mindset and take more open steps, and work together to make the pie of the global market even bigger. We need to strengthen the mechanisms for sharing benefits globally, and explore new ways of international cooperation. The goal is to give more impetus to economic globalization and remove impediments as much as we could."

In South Africa we still have a mindset of focusing on the developed West rather than naturally considering the opportunities offered by the East. Trump and Johnson are doing us all a favour and literally forcing innovators to look elsewhere for new markets.

This emerging shift from China certainly is an exciting one.