Seems to me that the New PRC is enjoying incredible growth and certainly the urban standard of living has improved many-fold over the past 20 years. Further evidence of its' growth and prosperity is the PRC is also the largest holder of US debt instruments by a huge margin. Sorry to bore everyone, but US debt has risen $500B each year since 2003 BUT $1 Trillion in 08, $1.9T in 09, and $1.7T in 10. It was 15.5 Trillion March 1, 2012 with the PRC holding 26%, or over $4 Trillion of it. With a population over 4 times that of the USA, it's a great market.
But, there is also an interesting anomaly in the Chinese urban numbers - they are not all poor rural folks. China has 171 cities of over 1 million, 279 with 500K to 1 million, for a total of 450 cities over 500K. Here, we have 9 over 1 million and 24 with 500K to 1 million for a total of 33 over 500K (2010 #'s). So, China has over 14 times the number of cities we do with over 500K people. That is a powerful urban customer base.
If BIEL makes a deal to do all the manufacturing and assemby of its devices in China for pennies for the Chinese market, compared to any of those processes more expensively in the US for this market, and sell them there as well under its Chinese patents, doesn't all that bode well for shareholders?
Chinese medicine doctors have traditionally been more open-minded than doctors in 'Western' medicine and they've only been doing it for a few thousand more years. I am wondering, does BIEL have regulatory approval in China, and if not, how difficult is the process to obtain it?
