Keeping Up With The Wangs

Besides poisoning us with their exports, MSN has an interesting article on the social and financial impact of China's emerging youth generation.

It is going to be interesting see what happens as they mature.

Hopefully, they can help push to get their government to slow down on pollution and consumption. And, oh yah, putting Melamine in food.

'Those who study the shifting sands of the Chinese consumer landscape believe that as long as China's one-child-per-family policy remains in force, developing products aimed at relatively affluent young consumers is likely to be a winning strategy.

"This is the 'have' generation, the single children who carry the expectations of their whole family with them and who are going be groomed from an early age to compete and win," says Jixun Foo, a Shanghai-based partner at Granite Global Ventures, a venture-capital firm.

All that attention has spoiled a lot of preteens: These "Little Emperors" can study anything from golf to violin from kindergarten on, and are accustomed to having their whims indulged. Such overindulgence has a cost -- witness the nationwide debate over childhood obesity, for instance, or the new pressure to perform. Many parents now fork over their hard-earned (and still scarce) cash for English tuition and special "backboards" to guard their children against posture damage from the big bookbags they lug around.

"In this new kind of capitalist society, people today are not equal," Foo says. "So instead of the hardships of previous generations, the younger people today are more likely to feel pressure to perform and to be among the winners."'

What do Chinese teens want?