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- China’s booming economy means a booming demand for luxury brands and a growing list of billionaires.
- China is the world’s largest exporter, but there’s a lot more to China’s economy than the goods it exports to the US.
- Here are 11 facts you might not have known about the modern Chinese economy.
- Visit MarketsInsider.com for more stories.
China is the world’s largest exporter. Your air conditioner was probably made in China, as was your computer and maybe even your shoes.
But there’s a lot more to China’s economy than the goods it exports to the US.
China’s booming economy means a booming demand for luxury brands and a growing list of billionaires. And old traditions have been given a modern twist — Lunar New Year is not only the most important and widely celebrated Chinese holiday, but now the biggest shopping week of the year, too.
Here are 11 facts you might not have known about the modern Chinese economy:
China imports more US agricultural products than Canada and Mexico
Mark Wilson/Getty Images
China is the main market for agricultural exports from the US, beating our closest neighbors, Canada and Mexico. Soybeans accounted for more than half of the $9.2 billion China bought from US farmers in 2018.
China is home to a retailer bigger than Walmart and Amazon
Carlos Barria/Reuters
If you think the world’s biggest retailer is Walmart, think again. If you think Amazon is the biggest online retailer, wrong again. Both titles go to Alibaba.
China’s online sales giant moves almost three times as much merchandise as Amazon and, when you count its subsidiaries, it has inched past Walmart as the biggest retailer. Alibaba is making a foray into the American e-commerce market with AliExpress, which is already the sixth-biggest online-shopping site in the US.
China has the second-largest number of billionaires, after the US
Zhang Peng/LightRocket via Getty Images
The number of billionaires in China (388) is a little more than half that of the US (680). And, collectively, US billionaires have almost three times as much money as those in China. But China is coming up fast, adding 55 new billionaires in 2017, the most of any country (though a 2018 downturn knocked 49 billionaires down to mere millionaires).
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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Source: Business Insider – feedback@businessinsider.com (Laura McCamy)