Domo Arigato, Walmart shoppers.

This news about luxury fruit buyers in China suggests that the trade deficit between the U.S. and China has fueled a level of affluence which is leading to some interesting buying habits.

Also this article suggests that a couple of things might be at work here. The affluent Chinese might be looking towards Japan for clues on how to remain Asian and yet still be 'cultured'. The decades of totalitarian communist rule left the older generation with brutish and rude manners. That the most popular charm school in Shanghai is run by a Japanese women shouldn't be surprising then.

The L.A. Times months back spun an article about the same woman differently. They emphasized the generational difference in the behavior of the Shanghai elite and that the older one's wouldn't be caught dead being taught by a Japanese woman whereas the younger one's assumed that anyone Chinese wouldn't know what they were talking about when it came to etiquitte so being Japanese was an advantage.

The same thing might be going on with these apple growers. All this new wealth in China requires expression. And what better way to express wealth than spending $100 dollars on a piece of fruit.

Maybe the monied elite with their taste for Japanese fineries will rein in the militirasts from too much sabre rattling with regards to their neighbor. Trade generally is a stabilizing factor in international relationships.

Even though the Chinese are by far the older culture, the disruption caused by 'The Great Leap Forward' has severed many of the connections to that past so copying the master copiers from the Land of the Rising Sun might be the most efficient way for Chinese people to connect back to their 'Chinese-ness'.

(This is all idle speculation, feel free to rip it apart)