Middle-class matrons do not make big money, but to a large extent they control the nation's spending. Now, they are even influencing global financial markets.

In the mid-1980s, before I enrolled in a US business school, I noticed a print ad in the Chinese press. It was from United Airlines, if I'm not mistaken, and featured a middle-aged Chinese lady in the center of the design. She was not a fashionable woman, mind you, just someone average.

"Gee, this is not the kind of person who can make this kind of purchase," I told myself. At that time, flying to the US was miles too expensive for most Chinese. Even if a family was sending a kid to the States for graduate study, it would probably be the price - and price alone - that was the determining factor.