Japan's Seiko was able to take off internationally largely because it was the official timekeeping watch for the 1964 Olympics hosted in Tokyo, said Sompop, the director of Chinese studies at Chulalongkorn University's Institute of Asian Studies.

There are already plans to capitalise on Beijing's various Olympic mega-projects. China is likely to make use of its purpose-built stadiums and legions of athletes and coaches as a springboard to position itself as the world's sports supplier.

The coach of Pawina Thongsuk, the first Thai woman to win an Olympic gold medal, is Chinese, said Sompop, referring to coach Zhang Jiaming.

While most infrastructure in Athens was left vacant after the 2004 Olympics, flats in Beijing's massive 517,000-square-metre Olympic village are now selling like hot pork buns. Sompop said a square metre fetched up to US$2,000 (Bt69,800). "It's a craze. People want to own a room where their favourite gold-medal athletes lived," he said.

Such a rise in spending power is driven largely by a burgeoning middle class, particularly in the coastal provinces, boosted not least by a new relaxed property law.

Thai businesses ought in the long run to monitor and study changes in Chinese consumer behaviour and lifestyles closely, Sompop urged.

He cited the social impact the one-child policy had had on the family unit, now an inverted pyramid. The middle-class Chinese single child is often treated as an emperor or empress, pampered by a procession of grandparents and parents.

With so many spoiled children to please, Vithita Animation has found its Pang Pond animation a hit in China and licensed the rights, after two years of negotiation, to the state-run Fortune TV Entertainment Production.

China wants to shed its image as a land of "R&C" (Research and Copy) to one of originality and creativity. Once example is the establishment of Hangzhou as an animation hub, allocated with a $2.4-million incentive.

Its strategy to evolve from an original-equipment manufacturing to an original-brand manufacturing economy depends on building its own brands from scratch and acquiring other brands, said Sompop.

Chinese companies have famously acquired IBM's personal-computer arm and MG Rover automobiles, incorporating new technology into their own.

Food for thought from Sompop: can you name a Thai brand that is known internationally?

Perhaps it is time for Thai companies to up the ante, lest they trail behind not only China, but also other overachieving neighbours, such as Vietnam.

Ki Nan Tsui

The Nation