The Chinese owned 1.6bn credit cards at 31 March 2008. That is 5 for every person in the USA. There are also 2.2bn bank accounts in China. That’s 7x the number of people in the USA. The credit cards are only used to about 10% of their limits, so there is plenty of available credit. The opportunity to sell things to the Chinese has definitely arrived. Lets just hope they don’t overdose on credit and get their economy into difficulty. At least the Chinese have seen the problems that can arise when consumers constantly spend more than they earn and when lenders start making loans people can never repay.
Cheers
Tom the Moneyman
