In January, a remarkable thing happened: more cars were bought in China, the land of bicycles, than in the US, the land of – well – cars. US annual light vehicle sales skidded below 10m, fewer than in China where January sales ran at 10.7m a year. For those counting on the Chinese consumer to ride to the world's rescue, here, surely, was the news they had been waiting for.
Unfortunately, those vehicle numbers were not quite what they seemed. Nor – not yet, at least – is the Chinese consumer.
It turns out that China and the US count cars differently and that China's numbers were temporarily flattered by the lunar new year. Still, China remains a bright spot in the thickening gloom. Other industries too are counting on the Middle Kingdom, the largest market for television sets and mobile phones, steel and cement. Shiseido, a Japanese cosmetics company, has been racking up 30 per cent Chinese sales growth. Alex Salmond, Scotland's first minister, on a clean-energy-to-whisky sales tour of China this week, revealed there were more cashed-up Chinese than American students in Scottish universities.