Unbelievable

Rico says it shows how far China has come since Mao (who's undoubtedly spinning in his mausoleum) died. Steve Rothwell has an article at BusinessWeek.com:

Avis Europe Plc, the continent’s second-largest car-rental company, plans to quadruple the number of outlets in China as sales in its home market fail to grow. Avis Europe, which has 26 rental stations in China in a joint venture with Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, plans to raise that number to 100 by 2012, Finance Director Martyn Smith said in an interview. Avis probably accounts for 46 percent of the outlets run by international operators in the country, which is currently a “very, very small” car-hire market, he said.
“We’re particularly driving China,” Smith said today by phone. “We’re putting more in the bigger cities, and we’re also going into the next size of cities, going further out as well.”
Avis is targeting emerging markets where renting a car isn’t as common as in Europe and where economic growth is likely to be greater, Smith said. The World Bank predicts China’s economy will expand nine percent in 2010, and India’s government is projecting 8.2 percent growth in its next fiscal year. That compares with European Union forecasts of 0.7 percent growth for countries using the euro and 0.6 percent for the U.K.
“Things are not getting any worse but it’s difficult to see any catalyst of a recovery at the moment,” Smith said.
Group sales last year fell 16 percent to 1.4 billion euros ($1.9 billion), the company said today in a statement. Countries outside Europe account for less than one percent of revenue at Avis Europe, which ranks second to Eurazeo’s Europcar vehicle-rental division. Avis’s annual sales in China total about 20 million euros, Smith said.