The global economy's new rule-maker

In a recent commentary for the South China Morning Post, Helen Wong, HSBC's chief executive for Greater China, noted that China's rising generation of 400 million young consumers will soon account for more than half of the country's domestic consumption. This generation, Wong notes, is largely transacting online, through innovative, integrated mobile platforms, indicating that it has already "leapt from the pre-web era straight to the mobile internet, skipping the personal computer altogether".

Of course, China's rising middle class is not news. But the extent to which digitally oriented younger consumers are driving rapid growth in China's service industries has not received much attention. Services, after all, will help drive China's structural transition from a middle-income to high-income economy.

Not too long ago, many pundits doubted that China would be able to make the shift from an economy dominated by labor-intensive manufacturing, exports, infrastructure investment and heavy industry to a service economy underpinned by domestic demand. Yet even though China's economic transition is far from complete, its progress in this regard has been impressive.