Chinese lifting sales of European luxury goods

Ice Fu plans to pack light when she travels to Paris this month. The 28-year-old restaurant owner from Shenzhen in southeastern China needs to leave room for the Chanel, Hermes and Louis Vuitton handbags she plans to buy. "We have Chanel shops in China, but they're always out of stock," says Fu. "The Hermes bags I want to get still aren't available in China." Even as makers of luxury goods are racing to open stores in China, they're finding their European flagships mobbed by tourists like Fu. Around 2.5 million mainlanders visited Western Europe this year, 500,000 more than in 2009. And that number is expected to climb to 3 million by 2012 as incomes continue to grow, according to British forecaster Oxford Economics.