Audi 2006 Annual Report Download - page 77

SOCIETY: INTERNATIONAL CAR TRENDS
PHOTO: TIM MC CONVILLE/CORBIS
75AUDI 2006 ANNUAL REPORT
The cars that
China wants
Does it have a DVD
player? Will I be able to
connect up my iPod?
How powerful is the air
conditioning? These are
the questions that sales
executives even of com-
pact cars have to deal
with. Expectations are
rising along with the
range on the market, par-
ticularly when it comes
to interior equipment.
Because equipment is
particularly important to
the Chinese – often more
so than the technology
under the bonnet. Around
three-quarters of Chinese
car buyers are investing
in their very first car.
And as yet, they have little
experience of brands,
service and technical
reliability.
China: waiting patiently and taking
tea. Letting everything flow
Martin Kühl is a journalist and Sinologist.
Together with his wife Christiane Kühl, he
established the journalism office karma-
news in Beijing at the start of 2000. Martin
Kühl reports from China for such media as Focus,
Financial Times Deutschland and Welt am Sonntag.
White and silver: these are the colours of inde-
pendence on China’s roads. Anyone who can
afford it will emphasise their status as a private
individual with a gleaming, light-coloured car,
in stark contrast to the black that is associated
with state apparatchiks. For decades, imposing
limousines with tinted or even taped-over win-
dows seemed to be the norm on the roads of
Beijing and Shanghai. Black and status-laden,
with an extra-long wheelbase, they singled out
their occupants as high-ranking government
officials or the bosses of a state-run company.
For businessman and party member alike, the
car is unquestionably a four-wheeled status
symbol. Business meetings commonly involve
one party picking up the other – not that either
of them has to do any of the driving. A trip in
a business car acquires the status of a social
occasion.
It is said that the Chinese only ever look
forwards – and nowhere is this maxim truer than
on the roads. Chinese drivers make a bee-line for
whatever gap they have spotted in the traffic,
glancing neither sideways nor in the rearview
mirror. This stubborn focus on what lies ahead is
one of the things that makes the traffic seem so
perilous to a Western passenger. Upon closer
observation, however, it becomes apparent that
chaos and aggression are conspicuous by their
absence. Everything flows in China.
If you nevertheless encounter traffic conges-
tion in this land of flow, it is down to “yuanfen” –
divine providence. The Chinese know that get-
ting hot under the collar will not change any-
thing. Even when events are happening thick
and fast, calmness counts for much in the coun-
try known poetically as the “Middle Kingdom”. In
a country where sleeping in public is regarded as
proof of competence, the chauffeur-driven busi-
nessman leans back in his ultra-soft seats while
his driver opens his thermos flask. You wait, take
tea and recuperate – until the even flow begins
again. In China’s metropolises, you know that
forward is the only direction to go.