Emerging fields inject new vitality into special relationship

In 2013, when I worked in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in the run-up to the launch of China Daily's African edition, a local auto dealer told me that unlike in China, where cars are purely consumer products, Ethiopians treat them as commodities that can be used for hedging purposes.

As the Ethiopian economy relied heavily on agriculture and aid from the Western world at that time, people believed that the value of cars rose like that of the US dollar and the euro, regardless of whether they were new or used.

I was shocked to hear that because I knew that in China, as soon as a new car is sold, its value notably drops and it becomes a used vehicle, even if it is only a week old.