As Gap, the US clothing retailer, prepares to enter China for the first time later this year, it’s expressing optimism that its “casual American” style will find a ready market among the country’s rapidly expanding middle class.

John Ermatinger, president of Gap’s Asia Pacific region, says that Gap is targeting the “golden generation” of young adults brought up after the market opening of 1979, mostly as single children under the country’s one-child policy, who face the intense stress of competing in a rapidly evolving society.

“Unlike their parents they have only known prosperity, they have only known freedom, they’ve only known growth and they have essentially been afforded everything they could imagine,” he said in an interview with the Financial Times. “This is a core group now that has grown up with a lot more modern and different view of China than their parents.”

Not surprisingly, foreign automakers in China are on the qui vive for any signs that the labour woes of their Japanese counterparts Toyota and Honda may spread.

Volkswagen and General Motors are the twin foreign pillars of China’s auto industry (VW makes the most passenger cars of any foreign OEM in China and GM makes the most light vehicles including mini-trucks, through joint ventures with Chinese manufacturers). Both say they have had no copycat strikes or supplier disruptions – nor do they expect any.

When they built the Sheraton Futian Hotel in Shenzhen, the Chinese special economic zone bordering Hong Kong, they must have harboured an aspiration to one day host US government press conferences. The hotel’s West Lobby could be in Washington, with its wall-to-wall marble and six large eagle statues providing the perfect backdrop for America’s ambassador to Beijing.

Jon Huntsman came south to attend an intellectual property rights forum and was keen to talk about the issue. Unfortunately for him, the assembled press corps – comprised of local media, the Financial Times’ south China correspondent and Plastic News’ Asia bureau chief – were only really interested in labour unrest and the renminbi.