Chinese shoppers a boon to Japan's flagging retailers

Chinese shoppers are heading across the East China Sea to Japan for a fire sale, and changing the Japan-China economic relationship in the process.

China, although the world’s second-largest economy, is still home to many poor people. Chinese gross domestic product on a purchasing power parity basis divided by population ranked a lowly 125th place, at an estimated $7,600 in 2010, well behind 34th placed Japan with an estimated $34,000, according to figures from the CIA handbook.

But China’s rich are big spenders, and their numbers are growing rapidly while Japan’s economic growth is stagnant. Indeed, the gap between the richest cities in China Shanghai and Beijing...