3) Consumer power: how do Chinese incomes track GDP growth figures?
China’s economic growth will slow to 6.3 percent in 2019, with a further slowdown projected in 2020, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit. This is natural as the economy matures, but how does this impact on growth in incomes? Wage growth has outstripped GDP growth in recent years and this has been a driver of retail and seafood sales. Average Chinese wages doubled between 2011 and 2018, driving demand for imported seafood and making China the world’s top source of tourists. And those tourists are spending more, as China’s average industrial wage is more than four times that of India, for example. Also, China’s working population has plateaued since 2016 as the country ages, thus supporting wage growth.
