The top echelon of Chinese is finding new ways to live the life of luxury. As BON’s Katie Fischer reports, the latest trend is more lavish than the average American car.

Prada, Louis Vuitton, Yves Saint-Laurent, Rolex - once reviled as symbols of the worst bourgeois excess, outlets for high-end luxury goods manufacturers like these can be found on main streets and in up-market shopping malls across China today.

And they're no longer restricted to the bigger cosmopolitan cities of the eastern seaboard – second and third tier cities are also sprouting luxury shopping streets, with developers seeing outlets for brands like these as key tenants in prestige commercial projects.

A new report says one quarter of the world's luxury goods were consumed by Chinese last year. And in the next five years, China is expected to be the largest consumer of luxury goods. Robert Polet, the CEO of Gucci, has been quoted as saying China will replace the United States as the second largest luxury products consumer next year. Insiders expect the Chinese to consume nearly 15 billion US dollars worth of luxury goods during the next five years. Statistics show Chinese consumers purchase luxury products when they travel overseas. Tourism operators say, when Chinese book tours to Europe, nearly all request some time to shop in luxury stores. Our researcher KEVIN JIA has been looking into online reaction to this story and we can join him now in the news room.

Fifty five years ago the Soviet’s helped build this Beijing exhibition center to promote Moscow’s Communist ideals. 

Now it’s playing host to China’s first ever imported auto expo – a display of luxury that would surely have made this building’s founders blush.

Tibetan Luxury

Geely is one of China's biggest car makers. It's so big, in fact, that it actually has its own university outside of Beijing. And it can hand pick from a production line of new graduates, studying everything from transmissions and engines to performance and design. As BON's Mark Dreyer reports, the low-end car manufacturers is counting on its new crop of young employees to expand into more affluent territory.

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