The $10 Trillion Prize

NINE

Luxury

Trading Up in China and India—Fast Cars, Watches, and Catwalk Clothes

How the newly affluent are starting to enjoy their wealth, spending record amounts on the luxuries of la dolce vita and providing vast new markets for the prestige brands of Milan, Paris, London, and New York

ALICE SUN, KNOWN AS SUNNY to her friends, takes us for a walk down one of the wide boulevards of Beijing. This ancient metropolis, the stage for the Olympics in 2008, is the place where planners knocked down scores of buildings to create a Hollywood set of a magnificent entranceway for a great city.

Now, it is a permanent celebration of China’s success and coming of age. Twenty-four-year-old Alice, who has a degree from Peking University, one of China’s most ...