By Sim Chi Yin & Grace Ng

WHEN the going gets tough, it's time for retail therapy in China.

When farmer Wang Cheng Qi jubilantly told Xinhua news agency about the 53cm television set he had bought using a government subsidy in August, little did he realise that he was actually part of a new economic experiment to keep China's economic engine humming.

As the global credit crisis started to deepen late last year, Beijing stepped in with a rash of measures to boost domestic consumption. These included a pilot scheme entitling rural families to buy up to two TV sets, two refrigerators and two mobile phones.

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