Adding fire of technology to gasoline trade

Anticipated entry of MNCs to herald quantum leap in gas stations' offerings

Insiders of China's fuel retail industry are an excited lot these days, and they use an analogy to describe what they see as the coming epochal change.

Imagine, they said, an old banger morphing into a glamorous, irresistible, state-of-the-art mean machine, and it would help you to visualize plain-Jane filling stations transforming into shiny, gleaming modern metal-and-glass structures.