By Sophie Taylor
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - The Chinese worker driving the export-led boom in the world's fourth-largest economy is fast becoming the Chinese spender.
Foreign and local firms -- from HSBC Holdings (0005.HK: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) (HSBA.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) to Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and China Yurun Food Group (1068.HK: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) -- are thinking local as they tap rising spending power from a 1.3 billion-strong potential consumer market.
Overseas banks, now able to gain access to China's retail market as Beijing opens up the sector under WTO obligations, are queuing up to incorporate locally. Sino-foreign fund management joint ventures, meanwhile, are mushrooming.
"As Chinese people become richer and richer, the demand for professional wealth management services is also becoming higher," said Chen Yikang, deputy CEO of AXA SPDB Investment Managers, a fund venture between Shanghai Pudong Development Bank Co (600000.SS: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and French insurer AXA (AXAF.PA: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).
Nearly five years of roaring economic growth of 10 percent or more a year has put China on track to overtake Germany as the world's third-biggest economy.
That has fed China's booming domestic stock market -- up more than 90 percent this year after gains of 130 percent last year -- which, in turn, has minted a growing class of millionaires and helped China's middle class balloon.
Urban disposable incomes in China have risen 87 percent since 2000, to 11,759 yuan (US$1,559) per person last year. Insurance premiums over the same period have risen more than threefold, to 564.1 billion yuan.
At the luxury end of the consumer market, China -- now the world's third-largest consumer of luxury goods after Japan and the United States -- is expected to grow 10 percent annually between 2008 and 2015, when sales will exceed US$11.5 billion, a recent KPMG survey estimated. Continued...
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