One Financial Times article that caught my eye this week concerned the success of Meituan Dianping, whose “Everything app” enables Chinese consumers to have their meals delivered, review and book hotels, and even order at-home massages. After the company’s revenues rose by 44 per cent in the third quarter, it is now worth about $75bn.
Sixteen years ago, this would have been difficult to imagine, given that China was much poorer and the iPhone and phone apps had not been invented. But, as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels observed in the Communist manifesto in 1848, “The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe.”
I do not pick 16 years at random: I started this column in 2003 and this will be the last one. It is more au revoir than goodbye since, after a sojourn in Tokyo with Nikkei Asian Review, I will return next year to a new column about business from the point of view of consumers and citizens.