China today is the emerging, cash-rich economic powerhouse worldwide.
Consider:

• The Chinese Government will top $2 trillion in cash reserves by the end of 2008¹. The U.S. Government is $1 trillion in debt.
• Chinese individuals hold roughly $4 trillion in combined savings².
• China's share of world consumer spending is projected to equal the US by 2020³.

The same force that drove America’s economic revolution in the last 50 years is driving China's growth: highways. Highways will bring China the same economic freedom it brought the US economy. Companies like Wal-mart, Holiday Inn, and UPS would not exist without our highway system.

In 10 years, China has built 51,000 miles of highway. That’s equal to the number of highway miles America built in five decades. Moreover, China plans to build nearly 2 million miles of two-lane blacktop in the next 15 years. At the same time, they’re increasing public rail transit fifteen fold. Consider:

• China’s auto culture is developing with sales of $8.8 million in 2007—second only to the U.S. If China’s GDP goes up by 10%, car sales are projected to go up by 20% (2 x GDP). By 2015, China will sell 15 million cars per year, equaling the U.S.
• It was Japan in the sixties, Korea in the eighties, and it will be China by 2010 who will steal market share from U.S. automakers. The Chinese will make an significant impact within five years due to the low prices and acceptable quality in a high-price gasoline environment. Think cars under $10,000 when gas reaches $5 per gallon.

ENGINEERING SOCIAL CHANGE
In the last 25 years, average income in China has quadrupled⁴. Moreover, the Chinese Government plans to double the nation's middle class in the next 10 years, which means creating roughly 20 million new middle class jobs every year during that time.

At the same time, the country will relocate 300 million workers from its rural provinces to its Midwestern region for infrastructure-related jobs. Consider the economic impact: Those 300 million workers will all need basic living amenities like housing, water and electricity—not to mention everything from restaurants to retail—plus the people needed to offer those goods and services.

THE WORLD HAS TAKEN NOTICE
Some examples of China’s market potential:

• Retail giant, Carrefour, operates 387 stores employing nearly 50,000 people. The chain has plans to build 500 new stores in China—which means Carrefour alone will need 65,000 additional workers to operate the stores⁵.
• KFC (now the number one wedding caterer in Shanghai) plans to build 30,000 restaurants in China over the next decade.
• FedEx has a distribution center in Shanghai that operates five times more daily flights than the distribution center in Memphis, Tennessee.

FREEDOM DOESN’T MEAN THE SAME THING TO EVERYONE. To Americans, “freedom” starts with the Bill of Rights. To the Chinese, economic freedom is freedom. In China today, the “genie” of capitalism is out of the bottle—and the government knows that it can’t be put back.

¹ Fortune magazine, 5/3/07
² MSN, 2/13/07
³ Asia Times Online, 6/24/06
⁴ Newsweek Special Report, The Future Belongs to China, 5/9/05
⁵ Carrefour.com website, article 2/08

Note:  Foreign markets, particularly emerging markets, can be more volatile than the U.S. market due to increased risks of adverse issuer, political, regulatory, market, or economic developments and can perform differently from the U.S. market.  Emerging markets can be subject to greater social, economic, regulatory, and political uncertainties and can be extremely volatile.