‘The Chinese love money,’ the PhD student Zhang told me, ‘because it has no history’.

balinghou — young people who were born after 1980, who never knew food rationing and were raised after China’s ‘reform and opening’ began. I’m talking here of the urban middle class, who dominate Chinese media both as purchasers and consumers.

U.S. companies are more adept than Chinese ones at designing high-tech products for a demographic that closely resembles Western Europe. But Chinese companies can more quickly gain market share in emerging economies (like those in Africa, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia) since they are already experts in serving a user base that is mobile-first and Android-centric; limited in bandwidth or power; highly engaged and motivated by entertainment apps; hyper-urbanized; young in internet use; and so on.

Chinese consumers really, really, really love deals and discounts.