It's simple economics really…as demand drops worldwide, so too, do prices for a number of materials, products, and trade dependent services.  Purchasing.com reports that steel beam prices, polyuerethane, and ABS, materials used in large volumes in the slowing construction and automotive industries, are now falling in price. 

Shipping rates have also decreased quite a bit in the last few months.  Supply Chain Digest cites some reports claiming that 20' container rates from Asia to Europe have plunged from $2800 to just $700.  From Asia to the US, rates have fallen to $1500 per container.  Interestingly, the London-based consulting firm, Drewry Shipping Consultants Ltd., expects container volumes from Asia to the US to shrink by approximately 5% in 2009, after years in double-digit annual gains.  What seems to be a modest projected decrease in container volumes is actually quite a shift for the shipping industry, which had been ramping up capacity on expectations that double-digit volume increases would continue into the future.

It's unclear how long price reductions will hold.  Many producers are now cutting supply, but cuts have not kept pace with the fall in demand.  When equilibrium is reached, the decrease in prices will likely hold and then begin to pick up again as the global economy begins to emerge from the downturn. 

Thus, falling prices can be a short-term bright spot in an otherwise doom-and-gloomy economic time.  There are worries that the short-term challenges could inflict long-term damage on some industries.  Steve Dickinson, of ChinaLawBlog, posted an informative piece on the risks the credit freeze poses to the ship building industry.  In tough economic times, waves of consolidation in any industry are not uncommon, as weaker players either go under or are acquired by larger companies.  Just look at what happened in the US finance industry this year.  A good friend of mine, who is a financial advisor at Morgan Stanley, watched two of his major competitors disappear within a matter of weeks. 

The reduction in prices, as well as the economic challenges facing us, will likely not hold.  But, for the time being, enjoy the bright spots and negotiate appropriately. 

So what if you’re not the NBA in the Chinese market?  (Not that NBA jerseys are flying off the shelves in China anyways)

In southern China earlier this week, I had several conversations with locals about the domestic consumer market.  I also thought that several readers of ChinaLawBlog’s post on this topic made solid comments worth reading.  The general consensus seemed to be that China’s domestic consumer market is still nascent. 

Before we look to NBA viewership stats and firms selling services through marketing reports, a strong weathervane of the domestic market might indeed be Chinese companies themselves.

A logical key indicator, to me, in determining whether China’s domestic markets are indeed on the rise, would be that their domestic companies and manufacturers would be more eager to sell locally rather than export to foreign markets.  This doesn’t seem to be the case for a few very fundamental reasons.

• Often, receiving payment from Chinese buyers is much riskier than foreign buyers. Many Chinese companies prefer to sell to foreign buyers because they have a strong likelihood of payment.  They may have to work on tough terms, but in the end, cash is king.  Late cash and/or some cash, is better than no cash.
• Quality standards.  The overall purchasing power of Chinese consumers remains comparatively low to developed countries.  To sell into this market entails manufacturing poorer quality product to be profitable.  A well-run factory will not use the same production line to create product for export markets as well as domestic markets.  You will see a great many companies that make product for both markets.  But quality from these firms is to be watched.  It’s unlikely that you’ll see an export-oriented firm falling all over itself to lower quality and sell into the Chinese market.  I have yet to run into an export-oriented manufacturer that will send all of the quality control staff home at lunch on Thursdays and Fridays so they can get some lower quality product out into the local market.

For these two basic reasons (not including serious challenges of distribution), in my humble opinion, the Chinese market has not arrived and will certainly take quite some time to mature.  Yes, there is an upper class in coastal cities that is growing in affluence.  This, however, is still very small.

A concise and well-written article, Reality Check, by James Fallows (h/t Chinahearsay) at The Atlantic, brings great clarity to the situation.  His anecdotal observations create an image that, to me, is far closer to reality, than so many of the China-sized hype articles out there.  I highly recommend the read.  I’ve personally emailed this article to friends because it’s important (to me) that America has an accurate perspective of China. 

Is the Chinese domestic market arriving?  That depends…are you the National Basketball Association?  Or, are you another reader of China-sized hype?

ChinaLawBlog recently covered an email/article by Shaun Rein of the China Market Research Group out of Shanghai.  The email discussed many points covered in a Business Week article entitled China’s
Rising Retail Market: Chinese youth intend to spend "considerably more"
in 2008 than they did in 2007. Multinationals had better start thinking
young,"

The email summary began with:

While retail sales are plummeting in the US, sales in China are
continuing to boom, driven by optimistic shoppers largely shielded from
the global economic malaise. China as a market to sell into rather than
a place to source cheap products from has become a major engine for
growth for even the largest companies worldwide.

In another recent report by Booz, Allen, Hamilton and the AmCham Shanghai (h/t AllRoads), the #1 reason US companies would stay in China despite rising costs is access to the domestic market.

What gets these companies salivating over the consumer market in China?  Consider the example of a regular season NBA basketball game.

The most
televised TV sports event, a regular season NBA basketball game between
two average NBA teams, which happened to have two native Chinese
basketball players (Yao Ming of the Houston Rockets and Milwaukee’s Yi
Jianlian), drew an estimated 250 million viewers.  This figure that puts
any SuperBowl to shame.  That’s right, a regular season NBA basketball game trumps the Superbowl because of two Chinese guys.  That is significant.  In advertising, three digit numbers in front of the word "million" causes excitement.

If you’re the NBA, you’re happy.  If you’re selling to a very small group of affluent Chinese kids in a handful of coastal cities, you’re interested in reading the China Market Research Group’s report.

But, unfortunately, NBA + 250 million viewers, does not equal 1.3 billion customers.  Not even by a long shot…

Part II is coming…

Fast Company’s latest issue covered a great perspective on the "world is flat" idea, discussed by Richard Florida (originator and advocate of the "Creative Class"), in his book Who’s Your City?.  The general premise?

The world is not flat, a notion widely popularized by Thomas Friedman, but rather spiky.  Florida proposes that the geographic regions of the world at large, can be classified into four general types or clusters, based on population and socioeconomic circumstances.  What are the four clusters?

Four kinds of places make up the landscape of our spiky world: first,
the tallest spikes that attract global talent, generate knowledge, and
produce the lion’s share of global innovation. Second are the emerging
peaks that use established ideas, often imported, to produce goods and
services. Some of these cities, such as Dublin and Seoul, are
transitioning into places that generate innovation, but most, from
Guadalajara to Shanghai, function primarily as the manufacturing and
service centers of the 21st-century global economy. The two remaining
types of places are being left behind: third-world megacities
distinguished by large-scale "global slums," with high levels of social
and political unrest and little meaningful economic activity; and the
huge valleys of the spiky world, rural areas with little concentration
of population or economic activity.

A few interesting, additional observations made by Florida are that 1) the world is much more "flat" and connected for those in the "spikes", or areas of innovation and concentrated talent.  Thus, those that inhabit and frequently travel between cities like London, Paris, Shanghai, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Tokyo, Singapore, etc. are much more likely to be connected in the way that Thomas Friedman alludes to.  2) The divide between these areas and the bottom two areas, the developing world and rural areas, is growing dramatically. 

This spikey/cluster concept was first introduced to me a few years ago in a talk by a futurist at the Commonwealth Club.  I think Florida’s depiction paints a much more accurate portrayal of the world with respect to socioeconomics.  I live in and frequently travel in cities that would be considered spikes, but I have also lived in and traveled through places that would be at the bottom of the rungs.  From a cultural standpoint, there is a shift in the way someone like myself might connect to people in the rural areas of my own country and people in the spikes of other countries.  It largely depends on context.  My ability to relate to a farmer in Nebraska might be much stronger in
areas of politics, family, and issues that ring home in my American
upbringing.  However, in certain contexts, my ability to connect with the young, technologically hip, professional in Shanghai is markedly stronger than a farmer in Nebraska.  This would be apparent on issues of business, lifestyle, and world affairs, etc…

This also helps to bring a more accurate description to the socioeconomic circumstances of very dynamic, emerging economies like China.  Many of the China-hype articles that have been published in top business magazines over the last few years, depict China as a country ready to challenge the world in areas like innovation, design, and other cutting-edge capacities.  These articles are most assuredly talking about an extremely small, handful of people and companies in the spikiest of clusters like Shanghai.  Articles like this often serve as a reader’s only impression of China, if they have never done business there.  It’s no wonder that hype like this has fostered fear and suspicion of China’s imminent challenge to other economies in these areas.  In reality, China, in many ways, is still a country of rural peasants.  There are world-class talent and capabilities there, but believe you me, it’s a relatively small group of people in the spiky clusters.

So many products today are often truly global when considering who and what places are involved in developing, producing, marketing, and buying them.  Not only does this process bring together people in different geographic areas, it involves adept management of people across several of the clusters at one time, to capture the benefits and strengths of each in the process.