Rectangle Oreos and cucumber gum, <br>made in China for China

By John Ruwitch

SUZHOU, China -- There are no bad ideas inside Kraft Foods' (KFT.N) biscuit research lab in China, according to director Maggie Wang. Not even the chewing gum Oreo cookie that a colleague asked her to bite into one day.

Instead of creamy white "stuff" in the centre, a glob of gum was sandwiched neatly between a pair of Oreo's iconic dark chocolate biscuits.

"The taste was ok. The problem was that you could not swallow it," said Wang, a Kraft food scientist with two decades of experience in the biscuit industry.

Investment may be powering the Chinese economy but experiments like the gum cookie - which, for better or worse, never made it to store shelves - are a reminder that consumption is rising sharply. That means it is vital for food companies to get the right products into the market, particularly with demand dimming in the United States and Europe.

A survey published earlier this year by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, the largest foreign trade group in China, showed that for about three in five of its member companies, the top priority here is producing or sourcing goods in China for the Chinese market.

"The stereotype is we're exporting jobs and everything's being manufactured with cheap labor and sent back, and that's not the case at all," said Kent Kedl, Managing Director of China and North Asia for the consultancy Control Risks, which collaborated on the AmCham survey.

China, with its 1.3 billion people, overtook the United States as the world's biggesAir Jordan