Barbie bets on Club Med and tech – China’s latest business and technology news

Mattel, the multinational toy company most famous for its Barbie and Ken dolls, is expanding on two fronts in China:

• The South China Morning Post reports that Mattel is forming a joint venture with one of China’s most aggressive investors, the Fosun Group, to set up a chain of learn and play clubs for children. The children’s education and entertainment service will be operated by Club Med, the French resort chain acquired by Fosun in 2015.
• Mattel is also launching a strategy “to create a more-integrated ecosystem of high-tech toys and related services” that will help it boost its China sales by three to four times their current levels by 2020, according to Caixin.
• Chinese parents tend to invest in their children’s education as early as possible for fear that their children will “lose at the starting line” (不能输在人生的起跑线上 bùnéng shū zài rénshēng de qǐpǎoxiàn shàng). The average cost of raising a child to age 18 is 23,000 yuan ($3,622) a year, which accounted for 43 percent of the average family’s annual income, according to research by Credit Suisse.

• Chinese peer-to-peer lenders continue to befuddle regulators / Caixin
  In China, there are more than 2,000 peer-to-peer (P2P) lending and investment platforms, which put together people and companies with money to invest with those who need loans and funding. The market is fast-changing and chaotic. Regulators worry about both fraud and the possibility of a financial crisis and last year established a set of rules to keep the market in line. However, P2P companies are finding creative ways to skirt around the rules.
• Emirates fined after two ‘unsafe incidents’ in China / Bloomberg
  “During an Emirates flight on April 17, the crew misunderstood instructions and flew at a wrong altitude above Urumqi in Xinjiang, according to CAAC. In another incident on May 18, the airline’s radio communications were cut off over the same region.”
• China’s smaller cities seen fueling a $9.7 trillion consumer market / Bloomberg
  “China’s smaller cities will fuel a $9.7 trillion consumption market by 2030, according to Morgan Stanley. That excludes megacities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen as well as 26 so-called tier-2 cities such as Tianjin and Xi’an.”
• Chinese investors hesitate over Indonesia investment / Financial Times (paywall)
• China stands pat on rates after Fed lifts benchmark / Reuters