Our February issue on “Small Business” highlights the fact that Chinese firms are competing with Western firms in every area, but it still came as a surprise to me to learn that China was by 2003 “the world’s sixth most important grower of vines and tenth most important producer of wine.” Given China’s trajectory in other areas, one wonders what this statistic will be at the end of 2007. This information comes from “A light dusting of wine in Davos,” by Jancis Robinson, the well-known British wine writer, who gathered top vintages for the world leaders gathered at Davos last week (among whom was C.S. Kiang, the dean of the new environmental science program at Peking University, whom I’m meeting next week):

None of the participants at this second tasting, who this time included a high proportion of Kuwaitis, came anywhere near to guessing that even by 2003, the last year for which we have official statistics, China had become the world’s sixth most important grower of vines and tenth most important producer of wine.

I have to say that this bodes well for those of us working in China!