By the looks of the glitzy shopping malls in Beijing and Shanghai, selling everything from Louis Vuitton luggage to Lenovo laptops, China is well on its way. Certainly, with 1.3 billion potential consumers, the future is bright for Chinese retailers. "In the next five to 10 years, the retail sector will go through dramatic growth," says Wharton marketing professor John Zhang.
A quarter of a billion people have migrated from the countryside to the cities in the last 25 years, and rising incomes are spurring an expanding middle class. By 2025, that middle class is expected to number 612 million, or 76 percent of the population, up from 43 percent in 2006, according to the McKinsey Global Institute.
