McDonald's No Match for KFC in China as Colonel Rules Fast Food

On the edge of Tiananmen Square, just across the street from Mao Zedong's tomb, He Yingying munches on a piece of chicken and gazes at the benign-looking figure beaming down at her.

"We love him,"she says, bursting into an impish smile.

The 21-year-old student from Beijing's Capital University of Economics and Business isn't referring to Mao, whose iconic official portrait dominates the square. She's talking about a long-dead, white-bearded Kentucky colonel on the logo of the KFC restaurant where she's feasting on her favorite fast food, Bloomberg Markets reports in its March issue.

In China, KFC has achieved such dominance over McDonald's and local rivals that Colonel Harland Sanders's image is a far more common sight in many Chinese cities than that of Mao. That accomplishment is striking in a country where foreign companies often stumbled and ran into roadblocks in the past.

Read the full article in San Francisco Chronicle

Just how important China has become for Yum! Brands subsidiary KFC is well illustrated by the following infograph accompanying a publication in CNN Money on the same topic earlier this month:
 

China KFC Q3 profit and sales