Viewpoint: Gentlemen, Please

My wife and I were in a department store last week not far from where we live in Shanghai, the red-hot center of China's booming economy. And business, at least in one part of the store, was ... really lousy. We were in the consumer electronics section, looking at flat-screen televisions, DVD players and sound systems, and in the areas selling Japanese branded goods—all those Sonys and Panasonics—we pretty much had the place to ourselves. Which is probably just as well, because if there had been any Chinese customers around to see what was on display in the Hitachi section, there...