A growing industry in a growing province

With about 20 million births in China every year, the baby products market is huge. The world's biggest companies in the field - Procter & Gamble Co, Johnson & Johnson, Pigeon Corp and the like - are all battling to control it.

In April 2011, Kao Corp, the largest manufacture of homecare products in Japan, set up a subsidiary in the Hefei Economic and Technological Development Area of Anhui province's capital, with an initial investment at 490 million yuan ($81 million).

In January last year, Kao (Hefei) Co Ltd produced its first batch of Merries Diaper, a brand that has been around in Japan for 30 years but only on the Chinese market for the past four, at a much lower price.