Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Happy Year of the Goat or Sheep!

Over the past 20 years China has:

·         Increased its GDP and GDP per capita over 15-fold and surpassed Japan along the way to become the world’s 2^nd largest economy from a position in 1994 where it was the size of a combined Korea and Hong Kong

·         Gone from a weighting of 0% in the MSCI Asia ex-Japan Index in 1995 to 27% today

·         Seen its urbanisation rate almost double

·         Witnessed auto production move from 2m per annum in 2000 to an ave of over 2m per month in 2014

·         Increased its foreign exchange reserves from US$73bn in 1995 to US$3.8 trillion (the size of the UK’s stock market)

·         Added 150m people to its population – and returned Hong Kong and Macau to its sovereignty 

·         Become only the third nation to independently put a human into space

·         Provided a >5x increase in average annual wage since 2000

·         Become the world’s largest single consumer of a long-list of consumer items and natural resources

·         Moved into second place behind the US for highest number of millionaires

·         Joined the WTO and projected its economic (and military) strength across the globe

·         Risen from a position of nowhere to become the world’s biggest luxury-goods market

·         Become the number 1 global patent filer

·         Doubled its living space per capita while adding billions of gross floor area square-metres in housing

·         Built the world’s largest business port and longest high-speed rail network

·         Hosted a successful Olympic Games

·         Increased the number of commercial aircraft >5x and the amount of international travel 10x