the LONG LONG QUEUE for the China games tickets in Shanghai & Beijing

Woow! How much is the ticket for those games?

KH

 

300 £¤ ~ 3000£¤

Les would be drooling all over these pictures.

Folks in China queued 36 hours for tickets, must show positive photo IDs, phone number, address, register each ticket, everybody is limited to 4 tickets.

 

Cheapest one for $25

But most tickets are around $200.

Yao reserved a 10-seats suite for his relatives, about $1200 each.

Price is pretty high even in US standard. But they were sold out
in Beijing already.

 

ticket price form 12.5 dollars(the lowesst price, for students only) to 18750 dollars(the most expensive).

http://sports.sina.com.cn/s/2004-09-11/1041363499s.shtml

 

Forgive my ignorance but could someone from China describe the socioeconomic breakdown there. Is a majority of the population in the cities moving towards a middle class like we have in the U.S.? Also, who are usually the ultra wealthy that can afford the $19,000 tickets?

 

government officials...

 

lol i guess thats communism at its best

 

Not really. Beijing and Shanghai have a large population of
millionaires and well-paid white collars.

 

If u can afford $19,000 basketball tickets in China, you are not only a well paid white collar.

 

Well I'm by no means an expert. But the way I've heard it, China definitely has a burgeoning middle class. A lot of people have taken advantage of the relatively young capitalistic economy. There remains a huge gulf between the rich and the poor, and even the middle class and the poor. The more rural areas are home to many extremely poor people. And quasi-sweatshops are still very popular throughout the country.

A good analogy that I heard was to imagine if Mexico was part of the United States. Then you might be able to get a sense of the kind of socioeconomic imbalances in China.

Percentage wise, this burgeoning middle class might not make up a huge part of the population. Let me pull a 15-20% of the population figure out of my ass. THIS IS A COMPLETE GUESS SO DON'T HOLD ME TO IT. 15-20% of 1.3 billion people is an amazing amount of buying power.

One more note that I really found interesting. I think most people are aware that the Chinese government has instituted a 1 child per household policy for many years now. Technically you can have more than 1 children, but you have to pay some kind of fine for each child after the first. Well what has happened is that most couples only have one child and with two sets of grandparents, the child gets very spoiled. A lot of these kids get all the luxuries that preppy kids in America would get. All the latest CDs/DVDs, cell phones, toys, games, whatever. So a lot of kids from China, even from working class families, are getting just as materialistic as anybody from America. It's a pretty interesting phenomenon.

 

I think the 19,000 one is for a "box" that contains 10 people. So each person only has to pay around 2000 dollars. Still a lot!

 

China is the largest market for the BMW 7 Series (and its top model 760 Li). China is also a country where 550 million people live on less than $2 a day and 220 million people less than $1/day.


This boy is not poor enough to get food stamp

 

Nah, the gov't officials salaries isn't that high. The ones that are corrupt and "makes money on the side" wouldn't dare flaunting it like this. The penalty for corruption is death.

It's prolly going to be the new rich people in China, the ones that takes advantage of the new economic reforms and the rise in economics.

 

Same with India. Home of the owner of the costliest Home in the world. Some of the richest people in the world are from there, yet there are probably more people that are pooor there than anywhere else.

 

Another thing is that social imbalance is there significantly. Shanghai and Beijing are very well off. The inner regions are not. The mexico comparison is right on. Not just economically either. For example, a Shanghainese would definitely would try to avoid the country side and even people from the country side, just because there is a stereotype that these people who poor and uneducated are more liable to cheat, steal, rob and kill you.

 

Many companies will spend the money for client entertainment and to show off.

 

Yep, China's doing business more and more like the US everyday.

 

off topic!