Special Report: Inside China - Hot opportunities
The country's booming economy has opened up plenty of sectors where foreign investors can find significant profits.
For all the breathless hype about the Chinese economy, foreign companies have often found it hard going. Joe Studwell's classic book, The China Dream (2002) chronicles the disastrous joint ventures, naive strategies and giddy over-optimism of a whole host of multinationals that were tempted in the 1990s by the prospect of a billion customers. Better to manufacture in China and sell abroad, so the common mantra went, than to sell to the Chinese. In the last few years, however, this conventional wisdom has started to break down.
When an economy is growing at 10% a year, there have to be plenty of opportunities. As China has become richer and the foreign companies more savvy, multinationals have started to make significant profits. Here are four sectors where the opportunities are particularly interesting.
RETAIL/CONSUMER