HAIER by Wing-Gar Chen

“Haier Group targets rural customers with refrigerators featuring metal plates to cover holes on the back and thicker, ‘bite-proof’ wiring, Philip Carmichael, president of Asia Pacific operations, said in Hong Kong.

‘When you plug in a refrigerator in the countryside and the compressor goes on, that’s like a beacon for rodents to build their nests,’ Carmichael said. ‘That’s what makes us think about making it rodent-proof.’

Those features helped convince Yang, who bought Haier’s 1,600 yuan, two-door model.

Yang Shibo, a 50-year-old farmer in China’s Shandong Province, bought a refrigerator to keep vermin away from his family’s meat and vegetables. The government eased his purchase by knocking 13 percent off the price.

‘We see a lot of rats running around, they run around on the ceilings, they eat our food,’ Yang, who grows peanuts, said as he swatted flies in his kitchen. ‘We didn’t have a fridge before. It’s much more convenient now.’

Farmers are benefitting from more than 15 billion yuan ($2.23 billion) in subsidies this year for appliance purchases by rural residents as the government tries to boost domestic consumption and ease a reliance on infrastructure spending and exports. That more than doubled first-quarter profit at Qingdao Haier Co., part of China’s biggest appliance maker. TCL Multimedia Technology Holdings Ltd., part of China’s biggest consumer-electronics maker, said net profit rose 69 percent.”