McDonald's opens drive-thru in Beijing

By JOE McDONALD, AP Business Writer

BEIJING - McDonald's Corp. opened its first drive-thru in Beijing on Friday, launching a partnership with a major Chinese oil company to set up dozens of drive-thrus to exploit the country's growing taste for both cars and Western fast food.

The Beijing drive-thru is McDonald's 16th in China but the first in its venture with China Petroleum and Chemical Corp., which McDonald's China CEO Jeffrey Schwartz said would open 25 to 30 more in the next 12 to 18 months.

China's booming market is a key growth area for the hamburger chain, Schwartz said.

"It's huge. It's a real priority for the global company because of the potential growth in China," he said. "We think drive-thrus are a big part of this."

McDonald's and its partner, also known as Sinopec, christened the new two-story Beijing restaurant, set beside a Sinopec filling station, with a ceremony that mixed traditional lion dancers and a Chinese-speaking Ronald McDonald.

Minutes later, Beijing resident Dong Tianwu and his daughter pulled up at the drive-thru window in a Chinese-made Xiali compact and bought three meals and drinks.

"It's certainly convenient," Dong said. At a walk-in McDonald's, he said, "if you take a child, sometimes you have to line up for hours and that's a lot of trouble."

China's double-digit economic growth has created a burgeoning market for cars, fast food and other consumer goods. China has become the world's second-biggest vehicle market with 7.2 million sold last year.

McDonald's, based in Oak Brook, Illinois, opened its first restaurant in China in 1990 and has grown to 780 outlets in 120 cities with 50,000 employees.

It faces strong competition from Yum Brands Inc., the industry leader in China with more than 2,000 KFC restaurants and 300 Pizza Huts.

"China is certainly a significant market for McDonald's, and they're focused on seizing that," said John Owens, who follows the restaurant industry for financial firm Morningstar Inc.

McDonald's plans to open about 100 new restaurants in China over the coming year, with more than half equipped with drive-thru windows, Schwartz said.

The 20-year deal with Sinopec gives McDonald's the pick of any sites where the Chinese partner decides to open a restaurant beside one of its filling stations.

Sinopec, the country's No. 2 oil company, has more than 30,000 outlets throughout China and is adding 500 to 600 a year.

"It's a very interesting opportunity for McDonald's," said Owens. "They can cherry-pick the best sites."

Schwartz declined to give figures for McDonald's sales growth in China but said it is "very strong."

The company said this week its sales for Asia, Africa and the Middle East rose 5.5 percent last year. That was above the 5.2 percent growth rate reported for the United States.

McDonald's speeded up its plan to open drive-thrus in China after seeing strong demand at the first, which opened in December 2005 in the southern city of Dongguan near Hong Kong.

"We thought we were two to three years early, and once we opened it, we thought we might be two to three years late, because of how successful it was," Schwartz said.

The company also has drive-thrus in Shanghai and the southern cities of Guangdong and Shenzhen.

Beijing bid to oust Starbucks

Beijing's Forbidden City may close down its Starbucks in the face of growing protests that the presence of a US coffee shop in the former imperial palace is an insult to Chinese culture.

The China Daily newspaper reported yesterday that an online campaign initiated by a television host to drive Starbucks out of the Forbidden City had won the backing of more than half a million internet users.

Rui Chenggang, an anchorman on state television channel CCTV9, wrote in his blog that Starbucks' presence was "not globalising, but trampling, Chinese culture", the paper said.

"The museum is working with Starbucks to find a solution by this June in response to the protests," Xinhua news agency quoted museum spokesman Feng Nai'en as saying.

"Whether or not Starbucks remains depends on the entire design plan that will be released in the first half of the year."

Mr Feng said that as part of a facelift, shops in the Forbidden City were being "reassigned" and that one-third had already been removed.

The rectangular Forbidden City, formally known as the Palace Museum, covers 74 hectares, surrounded by a moat, to the north of Tiananmen Square and has a fabled 9999 rooms. It was listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage site in 1987.

The Starbucks outlet opened in 2000 amid a media backlash so severe that museum authorities considered revoking its lease after several months.

Starbucks vice-president for greater China, Eden Woon, was quoted by the Beijing News as saying the company had no plan to leave the site.

"Starbucks appreciates the deep history and culture of the Forbidden City and has operated in a respectful manner that fits within the environment," he said. "We are honoured to have the opportunity, under an agreement with the Forbidden City, to enhance visitors' museum experience."

In 2002, public protests led to a KFC outlet being booted out of Beihai Park, a former royal garden neighbouring the Forbidden City.

REUTERS

Household size in Beijing shrinks

Beijing, Jan 19. (PTI): The average size of a household in Beijing has shrunk from 3.89 members in 1982 to 2.71 members now, a new survey shows.

Chaoyang District in eastern Beijing, a district with many foreign residents, has the smallest average household size of 2.58 members, according to the survey conducted by the Beijing Statistics Bureau.

As the economy has developed and living conditions improve, Beijing has seen big changes to families, the basic unit of society, said an official from the population department of the bureau.

Households are moving away from the extended family model towards a more nuclear family orientation. Single generation households accounted for 39 per cent of the total in 2005, compared with 31 per cent in 2000, while households made up of two and three generations dropped by 5.9 and 2.3 percentage points respectively, Xinhua news agency reported.

Households will continue to shrink in size, and the number of bachelors and DINK (Double Income No Kids) families will increase, as a result of low birth rates and changing family concepts, the official said.

As the extended family unravels, people who once lived together are occupying separate residences. Statistics show that there were 5.25 million households in Beijing in 2005, an increase of 27.5 per cent on the 2000 figure.
 

www.hindu.com

 

 

Beijing to put 264 new subway cars into use

Beijing plans to replace and refurbish hundreds of its subway cars on two key metro lines later this year as it moves to modernize the capital's rapid transit system in advance of the Beijing Olympic Games.

The replacement will begin in the second half of this year. By May 2008, 184 new, more modern subway cars will replace old ones on the 31-kilometer line one and the 23-kilometer line two, according to the Beijing Subway Operation Co., Ltd.

An additional 84 cars will be added to those already running on line two, which will mean trains will run every two minutes, reducing the wait for a subway by a minute.

A train of new cars will be able to carry 400 more passengers than current trains.

The new cars will also be wheelchair accessible.

Beijing rapid transit system now has four lines totaling 114 kilometers. They carry 2.1 million passengers a day.

The city will have nine lines totaling 200 km by 2008, and nineteen lines totaling 561.5 km by 2020, which could make it the largest underground rail system in the world.

Source: Xinhua

Beijing-bound bullets

A new high-speed train arrives in Shanghai yesterday. Each of the four trains that pulled into town has eight cars - the first and last shaped like a bullet. The trains will travel between 200 and 250 kilometers an hour when speeds are raised in April on the route linking Beijing and Shanghai, cutting two hours off the present 12-hour trip. - Shanghai Daily