From talking with Shanghai’s business cognescenti in the bars up and down Tongren Lu, the mood of late has been that business is getting back on its feet. And from the recent news in the China Daily (if this is a worthy source) the uptick in business is reflected in figures and not just sentiment. 
According to the report,
China’s foreign direct investment (FDI) saw a third consecutive monthly increase in October, up 5.7 percent year-on-year, the Ministry of Commerce said Monday.
In October, China attracted $7.1 billion in FDI, compared with more than $6.7 billion in October 2008, said Yao Jian, spokesman of the Ministry of Commerce.
Of course, the figures for late 2009 were shockingly low following the collapse of a few old banks in New York and such, but this is still encouraging. In my opinion, however, we won’t start to see real movement towards a pickup in business until after Chinese New Year 2010 when all the new budgets are in place and real spending allocation is being implemented.
For now, those of us who operate on the Chinese fiscal year (the same as the calendar year) are getting our budgets for 2010 ready and dreaming of big new offices at bargain prices. More about that soon.
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