I'm sick of having to walk out into the traffic on any traffic-clogged Beijing street. That's because the city's footpaths are now for cars. Yes, the country's middle class, rushing out to buy four wheels (bicycles are for losers) without thinking about where to park them. Hence walking home recently I had a couple park their new silver saloon right in front of me, on the footpath I was using. When I'm cycling they take the bike lane (not enough lanes in the typical four-lane Beijing artery). It's all down to marketing and a stupid middle class vulnerability to consumption/marketing, while those of us who don't drive choke in their smoke. Few people have put it better than those market analysts at Access Asia, who email out a pithy weekly review of what's topical and what's hot and what's not in China's consumer and media markets.
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1999 - 'The eMusic Market', written by Gordon McConnell it focuses on how the internet could change the music industry. Boy was he on the money, years before any of us had heard of an iPod or of Napster.