The Chinese Timekeeper, Small Second Automatic, CTK04 offers an unprecedented jaw dropping alliance of stainless steel and blue PVD.

Proud of its Chinese roots the small second dial has more than one unique characteristic. Indeed its 5 o’clock position offers a great twist but it is the numerals in Traditional Chinese that truly underline its rarity.

The Chinese Timekeeper logo visible on the dial, crown and back case is the representation of a Chinese sage, walking on the rotating gear of a watch movement.

China will be the world’s biggest luxury goods market by 2020 as its economy booms and an emerging middle class spends a growing chunk of their cash on high-end items.

Over the next decade, Chinese consumers — including a surging number of billionaires — will account for 44 percent of global spending on goods such as bags, vehicles, watches, shoes and clothes, the report by brokerage CLSA said.

The nation’s luxury goods sector was worth $25 billion in 2009, or about 10% of the world market, including purchases by consumers in HK, Macau and Taiwan.

A Chinese face or two in the crowd at the world’s auction houses often means one thing: the gavel will fall on a price far beyond the seller’s wildest dreams.

Fierce bidding by Chinese buyers for a vase at a small London auctioneer in November, for example, drove the price up nearly 40 times beyond its estimate, from around $1.9 million to $70 million.

It was the highest price ever paid for a Chinese artwork sold at auction and equivalent to a huge lottery win for the sellers, who found the 18th Century Qianlong Emperor-era piece while clearing out a house after a relative died.

Christie’s notched up the biggest sales figures in the art auction industry’s history last year, the firm announced Thursday, with record global sales of $5 billion.

And Chinese collectors continued to increase their prominence in the auction rooms as the number of buyers from China, Taiwan and HK accounted for a fifth of the total.

Sales in 2010 were up 53 percent with the firm selling more than half the world’s works over $50 million, including the most expensive painting ever to sell at auction: Pablo Picasso’s “Nude, Green Leaves, and Bust” for $106.5 million.

Miuccia Prada has already won plaudits for her spring/summer 2011 collection — simply-cut dresses and suits in a quirky mix of stripes and solids, with bold splashes of orange, violet and electric blue.

But by displaying the clothes on a runway in Beijing on Saturday evening, her first catwalk show outside Europe, and adding a few looks from her spring menswear line, the Italian designer signalled her focus on China’s huge market.

Actresses Gong Li and Maggie Cheung added a bit of high-wattage star power to the show at the Central Academy of Fine Arts museum — a surefire way to maximise local media coverage and get the Prada message to the masses.

The phrase “made in China,” once anathema to luxury brands for its suggestion of counterfeiting, is acquiring new meaning in the context of professional education.

Beginning in September of 2011, Skema Business School , which is among the largest of France’s Grandes Écoles, will offer the degree of master of science in luxury and fashion management at its Suzhou campus in China.

The yearlong program includes a compulsory three-month internship at an Asia-based firm and is designed to combine French managerial experience with China’s tradition of fine craftsmanship with valuable materials like silk and porcelain.