You are right the Captiva is an AWD. The Nissan Xtrail is also an AWD but has the CV drive, and looking at Xtrail events on YouTube they are quite capable in rough terrain.

The fortuners and others are grey imports. There is a large car market up near the Garden Expo in the North. One of the sales halls is imports.

Q. Do you need a full blown 4x4, or will a 4wd soft roader work for you. There are lots of these. The Chevrolet Captiva is 7 seater and I paid 300k about 18 months ago. They are only available in 2.4ltr petrol now.

A lot of imported, from Thailand etc. SUV for sale in Kunming, including the 4tuner. But these are expensive - 700k+
The Mitsubishi Pajero/Shogun is also made in China as part of a JV and these used to start at about 400 000 rmb for the 4wd.

There is also the Toyota FJ Cruiser is also available, and the basic model comes sans carpet etc for hosing out when mucky. Not sure on the price.

I would avoid some Chinese brands due to reliability. Greatwall are getting good now but I am not sure about the spares distribution outside China, should you break down.

@Alex,

I haven't seen them yet, as I have just returned after a long spell away. I would imagine that they are indeed LED. These are also usually dual intensity, they are less bright after dark so that people are not dazzled.

LEDs burn less energy, and should last for many 10s ths of hours, but as they are very low voltage the transformers used to generate a lot of heat and the transformers used to fail. As I see more of these LED signs around the world I am assuming that the systems are now more reliable. If this is the case we will see lot more of them, a good thing IMHO.

I only wish reliable LED technology was available for domestic use at an affordable price, LEDs cost only about a cent to produce. LEDs don't contain the toxins of low energy lamps, and last longer.

@geogramatt

We are on the same page, but sadly rushed development (usually to meet political ends) changes what can happen.

I know where you are coming from with urbanisation. In an ideal world I agree with you. But TIC.
In many developing cities the usual case of non-joined up government means that unless the infrastructure goes in first, this safe development cannot happen.
This new development usually requires green field sites. Brown field development, usually (not always) means that a redeveloped city block still needs to plug into the surrounding ancient infrastructure.

We recently had complaints from a poster on here, about lack of water supply for most of the week. This is perhaps dues to new development on old infrastructure. In the last city I lived in, we lived in an new area with inadequate infrastructure, we lost water for up to a week at a time every 3 months or so. This lack of mains water affects sanitation.

I also agree with you on population density figures, I did not want to post too long, and skipped the issue of local areas of more density. In the last city I lived in the most densely populated area was 38000/km2. Like most statistics, there is room for more detail.