DALIAN, China — At the Beautiful Club, a dimly lighted basement karaoke bar here, silk-gowned Chinese hostesses wait on Japanese businessmen who have some yen for company.
In the penthouse restaurant of the Senmao Building, an imposing new marble-and-glass skyscraper constructed by Mori Building Co. of Tokyo, Japanese diners linger over elegant courses of yellowtail sushi and sea urchins.
At the new Golden Pebble Beach Golf Club north of town, Japanese golfers--who pay a membership fee of $70,000 for the privilege--tee off on a rocky shoreline course designed to look and play like the challenging Northern California links for which the club is named.
The Japanese are back.
From 1905 until the end of World War II, Dalian was the overseas pearl of imperial Japan, which won the seaport from Russia in the Russo-Japanese War.
At the peak of Dalian's colonial era, 300,000 Japanese lived here, many in the European-style villas on the hills above the city center. The Dalian train station is an exact replica of Ueno Station in Tokyo. The courthouse was a replica of Yasudo Kodo Auditorium at Tokyo University.
Arriving air passengers could see "Big Japan" spelled out in giant characters on the rooftops of the picturesque city on the tip of the Liaodong peninsula.
Today, the city famed for its ice-free deep-water port has reemerged as Japan's cultural and economic beachhead on the Chinese mainland.
Dalian, home to about 4,000 Japanese expatriates, is key to Japan's campaign to win a portion of the giant China market--a campaign that it seems to be winning on many fronts.
According to the Chinese government's estimates for 1996, Japan is China's biggest foreign trading partner, followed by the United States, Hong Kong and the European Union.
Despite vestiges of bitterness over Japan's World War II aggression, China's growing consumer class rates Japanese products above all others. According to a 1995 Gallup Organization survey of consumer attitudes, six of the top 10 foreign brands identified by consumers are Japanese.
Only three American brand names--Coca-Cola, Mickey Mouse and Marlboro--made the list. Meanwhile, the four best-known Japanese brands--Hitachi, Toshiba, Toyota and Panasonic--also had the highest product-quality ratings.
While winning a substantial chunk of the emerging market, Japan has largely avoided providing China with the technology transfers that have characterized U.S. and European investments in China.
