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Thanks for the comment from "the inside". A note for folks who have not been to China before about the sheer scale of the "Tier 1/2/3" cities talked about here. When someone mentions Tier 3 in China, those are cities that are considered big enough to warrant calling a city, but too numerous to know all of them off the top of your head. A Tier 1 city for an American is like NYC, San Francisco, Seattle, etc. For a resident of the UK, Tier 1 = London; France = Paris; you get the idea. But here is the catch. In America, a Tier 3 city can be in a top-100 list by population, but still be relatively ho-hum and if not unknown, not exactly in the headlines every day. Take the smallest 10 cities in a top-100 list, like Chula Vista, CA, and arbitrarily draw the line for Tier 3 there. These cities barely crack 200,000 in population. In China, I found out Tier 3 "ho-hum" cities (rank 90-100 by population) have no fewer than 600,000 population. That blew my mind when I learned that, and put China's rural-to-city migration into perspective. Now consider this young work force migrating en masse to Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities due to pricing pressures in Tier 1 cities. If they have a critical mass of the right entrepreneurial factors in place, that's like over 100 Austin, TX (the brightest growth story the US can point to at the moment) popping up nearly simultaneously within the next 5-10 years. Pretty exciting times ahead. |
I must admit that I am a little bit exaggerated in my original reply.