BLOOM OF THE BEAN: Starbucks To Open 1000 Stores In China

Who'd of thunk it? Another 1000 stores for Starbucks?

And what will Sunbucks do?...

By Douglas McIntyre

During the cultural revolution, Chairman Mao said that China should let a thousand flowers bloom. He wanted the country's cultural reach to extend from one end of the country to another.

Now, it would appear that the dead communist leader has competition from none other than capitalist America in the form of Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ:SBUX). The big coffee company has stated that it intends to have thousands of stores in China as part of its march to hit 40,000 stores worldwide.

Each journey must begin with just one step, so Starbucks is buying 90% of Beijing Mei Da Coffee Co., which operates 60 Starbucks stores on the mainland out of the 190 stores Starbucks has there.

It remains to be seen whether Starbucks will run into some of the problems that Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT) has. In particular, the state-backed labor-union that has rounded up all of the Wal-Mart workers and passed out union cards.

Instead of labor benefits, maybe Starbucks could just offer free latte.

Douglas McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.